The prompt action of the Executive Department, through its Attorney-General, in directing the marshal to afford all necessary protection against threatened danger, undoubtedly saved a justice of the Supreme Court from assassination, and the Government from the disgrace of having pusillanimously looked on while the deed was done.

The skill and learning of the lawyers who presented the case of Neagle in the lower and in the appellate courts reflected honor on the legal profession.

The exhaustive and convincing opinion of Circuit Judge Sawyer, when ordering the release of Neagle, seemed to have made further argument unnecessary.

The grand opinion of Justice Miller, in announcing the decision of the Supreme Court affirming the order of the Circuit Court, was the fitting climax of all.  Its statement of the facts is the most graphic and vivid of the many that have been written.  Its vindication of the constitutional right of the Federal Government to exist, and to preserve itself alive in all its powers, and on every foot of its territory, without leave of, or hindrance by, any other authority, makes it one of the most important of all the utterances of that great tribunal.

Its power is made the more apparent by the dissent, which rests rather upon the assertion that Congress had not legislated in exact terms for the case under consideration, than upon any denial of the power of the Federal Government to protect its courts from violence.  The plausibility of this ground is dissipated by the citations in the majority opinion of the California statute concerning sheriffs, and of the federal statute concerning marshals, by which the latter are invested with all the powers of the sheriffs in the States wherein they reside, thus showing clearly that marshals possess the authority to protect officers of the United States which sheriffs possess to protect officers of the State against criminal assaults of every kind and degree.

During the argument in the Neagle case, as well as in the public discussions of the subject, much stress was laid by the friends of Terry upon the power and duty of the State to afford full protection to all persons within its borders, including the judges of the courts of the United States.  They could not see why it was necessary for the Attorney-General of the United States to extend the arm of the Federal Government.  They held that the police powers of the State were sufficient for all purposes, and that they were the sole lawful refuge for all whose lives were in danger.  But they did not explain why it was that the State never did afford protection to Judges Field and Sawyer, threatened as they notoriously were by two desperate persons.