That the Acts of Congress and the Proclamations of the President since the outbreak of the present struggle evidence the existence of a state of war between the Federal Government and the States calling themselves the Confederate States from a time anterior to the performance of the acts charged in the indictment, in which all the citizens of those States are involved and treated as public enemies of the Federal Government, whether they had any agency in initiating the conflict or not; and that the natural law of self-preservation, under these circumstances, justified the defendants, who are citizens of those States, in the commission of the acts charged in the indictment, as a means of weakening the power of destruction possessed by the Federal Government. Now the counsel on the other side, from the intimation which he gave when he addressed the Court, intended to treat that subject of a _de facto_ Government, or whatever it was, on the footing of men under duress, not in danger of their lives, joining with rebels and aiding them in a treasonable enterprise. Your honors will perceive that was not the footing on which we put it at all. It was the footing on which it stood at one time, when rebellion first broke out, when forts were seized--acts which it is no part of the duty of counsel on this trial to justify or say anything about, because there is no act connected with that part of the struggle which is in evidence on this trial. But on that I wish to refer to what Judge Cadwalader said in another case--that of _Greiner_--which undoubtedly the learned counsel for the Government had in his mind when he drew that distinction. Shortly before the late so-called secession of Georgia, a volunteer military company, of which _Greiner_ was a member, by order of the Governor, took possession of a fort within her limits, over which jurisdiction had been ceded by her to the United States, and garrisoned it until her ordinance of secession was promulgated, when, without having encountered any hostile resistance, they left it in the possession of her Government. A member of this company, Charles A. Greiner, who had participated in the capture and detention of the fort, afterwards visited Pennsylvania, at a period of threatened if not actual hostilities between the Confederate States and the United States. He was arrested in Philadelphia, under a charge of treason. Your honors will very readily perceive what a difference there was between that case and this. Judge Cadwalader applies the rule in reference to that; and, speaking of this doctrine of allegiance due to a Government in fact, he says: