Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New YorkWarburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
History
Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York
Warburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
Piracy -- United States; Privateering -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
"This right to inquire by process of habeas corpus, and the duty of
the officer to make a return, grows necessarily out of the complex
character of our Government, and the existence of two distinct and
separate sovereignties within the same territorial space, each of
them restricted in its powers, and each, within its sphere of
action prescribed by the Constitution of the United States,
independent of the other."
Now, if your honors please, upon that question still further--that
where there is no possibility of the power of the judiciary being
exercised, there being, as the learned Chief Justice expresses it in
his own language, "two distinct and separate sovereignties within the
same territorial space" exercising jurisdiction, the right of forcible
resistance exists in the State governments. I beg to refer to the
Federalist, No. 28, by Alexander Hamilton, p. 126. He says:
"It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system,
that the State governments will in all possible contingencies
afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by
the federal authority. Projects of usurpation cannot be masked
under pretences so likely to escape the penetration of select
bodies of men as of the people at large. The Legislatures will have
better means of information; they can discover the danger at a
distance, and, possessing all the organs of civil power and the
confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of
opposition; they can combine all the resources of the community.
They can readily communicate with each other in the different
States, and unite their common forces for the protection of their
common liberty."
I refer also to the _Federalist_, No. 46, by James Madison, where
he uses this language:
"Were it admitted, however, that the Federal Government may feel an
equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power
beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in
the means of defeating such encroachments. If the act of a particular
State, though unfriendly to the National Government, be generally
popular in that State, and should not too grossly violate the oaths
of the State officers, it is executed immediately, and of course by
means on the spot, and depending on the State alone. * * * On the
other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the Federal
Government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom
fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which
may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are at
hand. * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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