He decides the question, and what more have we then? He is, by his office, commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of the State; for the State can have both military and naval forces. It has its militia at all times. It is authorized expressly by the Constitution to keep ships of war, in time of war. There is, certainly, a prohibition in the Constitution of the United States against a State granting letters of marque; but that is a prohibition against its granting letters of marque in a war against foreign States; it has no reference whatever to any possible collision that may take place between the State and the Federal Government. And that rule is laid down by _Grotius_ and _Vattel_ both; for they both maintain and assert the right of the people, under every limited Constitution, in the case of a palpable infringement of power by the chief of the State, forcibly to resist it; and GROTIUS puts the case of a State with a limited Constitution, having both a King and a Senate, in which the power of declaring war was in express terms reserved to the King alone, and he says that by no means prevents the Senate, in case of an infringement of the Constitution by the King, from declaring and making war against him; because the phrase is to be understood of a war with foreign nations and not of an internal war. I say, therefore, that in a case of that kind--a palpable infringement by the General Government of the Constitution--the Governor of the State, in the first place, has the only means and the only right of deciding whether that infringement has taken place. In each State the Governor is commander-in-chief of the naval and military forces; he has a right to give military orders to citizens; he has a right to order them to muster in the service of the State; and if they disobey him they can be punished the same as they can in any civilized country. And more than that: suppose a case arises of that kind, in which the General and State Governments come into forcible collision, and suppose a citizen should take arms against the State; there is the law of the State which punishes for treason every citizen of the State who adheres to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort; and, under the theory of the prosecution, if he adheres to the State, and the Federal Government should happen to be the victor in the contest, there is the law of the Federal Government which punishes him for adhering to the State. So that the poor citizen of the State, if this theory be correct, is to be punished and hanged, whichever party may succeed in the unhappy contest.