Now these acts of hostility complained of in the indictment took place long subsequent to that. This proclamation was in the month of April. These commissions were not issued, and the Act of the Confederate States to authorize their issue was not passed, until some time afterwards--after they had learned of this proclamation; and this commission was not granted until the month of June subsequent. I say, therefore, a case was presented for the exercise of the jurisdiction of the Government of the United States, to decide whether it was exercising its rightful powers, under the Constitution, and for the Governor of the State to decide, for the State, that same question; and that an unhappy case of collision, ever to be regretted and deplored, had arisen between the Government of the United States and the Government of those States; and I say that the citizens of any one of those States owing the duty of allegiance to two sovereigns--to the government of their State and to the Government of the United States--had a right honestly to make their election to which of the two sovereigns they would adhere, and are not to be punished as traitors or pirates if they have decided not wisely, nor as we would have done in the section of the country where we live. I am sorry, gentlemen, to detain you on the question; but it is a most important one--one that enters into the very marrow of this case; and we do claim that the issuing of this commission, whether on the footing of its having been issued by a _de facto_ Government, or by authority from the State, considering it as remaining under the Constitution, was a commission that forms a protection to the defendants, and one which is not within the purview of the Act of 1790; because it was not, in the language of that section, a commission taken by a citizen of the United States to cruise against other citizens of the United States, either from a _foreign_ Prince or State, or a person merely. You will observe that if the claim of the Confederate States, that the ordinances of secession are valid, be correct, then it is true that they are foreign States; but their citizens have ceased to be citizens of the United States, and are therefore not within the purview of the ninth section of the Act of 1700. If, on the contrary, the claim on the part of the Government of the United States, that these ordinances are absolutely void, be correct, then the States are still States of this Union, and the commission, being issued by their authority, is not a commission issued by a _foreign_ State, and therefore the case is not within the purview of the ninth section of the Act of 1790.