It is not necessary for me, if your honors please, to enlarge upon that. I rely, for that proposition, on the same authorities that I have already cited to the point, that robbery or piracy cannot be committed, unless it is committed with felonious or piratical intent. But I say, with reference to the validity or invalidity of those acts of separation from the Union, that the counsel for the prisoners, whatever their private convictions may be, are not at liberty to concede their invalidity, so long as that concession may affect the lives of their clients. Their validity has been maintained by some of the ablest lawyers of the country, and in the Senate of the United States itself, and by all the authorities, legislative, executive and judicial, of the States which have adopted them. If, as they undoubtedly did, the prisoners _bona fide_ believed in their validity, the argument in favor of the protection afforded by the commission, or, by what comes to the same thing, the absence of criminal intent, becomes so much the more irresistible. And even though wholly invalid, such illegal action could not deprive the citizen of the State of the shield and protection afforded him by the action of the State government authorizing resistance, and regarded as still continuing a member of the federal Union. The next proposition is: That under the state of facts existing in South Carolina, as established by the public documents and other evidence in the cause, those administering the Government of the so-called Confederate States constituted the _de facto_ Government which replaced the Government of the United States in those States before and at the time of the commission of the acts charged in the indictment; and the defendants who are citizens of those States were justified by overpowering necessity in submitting to that Government, in yielding their allegiance to it, and thenceforth in actively aiding and supporting it; and that the capture of the Joseph, having been a belligerent act in a war between such _de facto_ Government, and the people of the States which had submitted to its authority on the one side, and the United States on the other, such defendants cannot be convicted under this indictment. Now, with reference to that, allow me to call your honors' attention to but a single authority, in addition to those which I cited in my opening remarks to the Jury. It is the case of _The United States_ vs. _The General Parkhill_, decided by Judge Cadwalader, in the United States District Court, in Philadelphia, in July, 1861. He says: "The foregoing remarks do not suffice to define the legal character of the contest in question. It is a civil war, as distinguished from such unorganized intestine war as occurs in the case of a mere insurrectionary rebellion.