The moment the term "civil war" comes up, the idea of punishing, as rebellion or as piracy, the capture of a vessel, is an abuse of justice; and it is not only an abuse of justice, but it is an abuse of the fact, to say that those who are large enough to be a nation are to be considered as the enemies of all nations, because they undertake to make civil war. The point is not founded upon any technical considerations; it is founded upon the great doctrines of humanity and civilization. Because, what is to be the end of it? If we hang twelve men, they hang one hundred and fifty-six. If we treat them as rebels, why they treat our captured forces as these rebels are treated. You bring on a war without any civilizing rules. You bring in a war of worse than Indian barbarity. You bring in a war which can know nothing except bloodshed, in battle or upon the block. This is not a technical notion. It is that, when civil war is found to exist (and that altogether comes from the magnitude of the opposition), then the rules of war apply, as much as in any public war, so far as to protect the individuals acting under them. What would be said if you should take a gentleman who was made prisoner at Fort Hatteras, and try him for treason, and hang him? What would be said in this country, or in Europe,--what would be said anywhere, in the present or in future ages,--as to an act like that? Well, why not? Because justice must be equal. If you do it to one, you must do it to all. If you do it to all, you carry on an extermination of the human race, against all the principles which can animate a Court of Justice, or find a seat in the human bosom. Therefore, if we have the fact of civil war, we have the rules of war introduced.