Now, what did the Minnesota do? The Commodore took the prisoners on board that vessel, as he tells you, for the purpose of sending them to New York by the first naval vessel that he should be able to detach from the service. Did he, in the interval between the capture and the complete transmission and reception of the prisoners here, ever make a port or a landing from his vessel, or ever depart from the design of the voyage on which he was engaged? No. He was on his cruise, bound to no port, always at sea, and only in such relations to the land as the performance of his duty to blockade at such points as he saw fit, whether at Charleston or the Capes of Virginia, required him to be in. And there is no difference, in the quality of the act, arising from his having stopped at Hampton Roads, and thence sent forward the prisoners by the Harriet Lane, because she was the first vessel that was going to New York--going, as has been stated, for a change of her armament and for repairs. Now, I submit to your honors, that there is nothing, either in the design or the act of this blockading vessel, the Minnesota, or of the Harriet Lane, that causes the course of transmission of these prisoners to the point of their arrest in this District to differ from what it would have been if, with an even keel, and without any interruption, the capturing vessel, the Perry, had started for New York, and had, in the course of her navigation, come within the line of a marine league from the shore of some District of the United States, and had, perchance, anchored there, for the purpose of replenishing her supplies for the voyage. In other words, in order to make out, within the terms of the statute, a bringing into a District of the United States, so as to make it a District of jurisdiction, within the sense of the statute, it is impossible for the Court to fail to require the ingredient of a voyage into a port, at least as a place of rest and a termination of the passage of the vessel, temporary or otherwise. That is requisite, in order to make an introduction within a District. And I cannot imagine how his honor, Judge Sprague, or his honor, Judge Clifford, could, in the case before them, have given any such significance to the prior arrival of the vessel of the United States at Key West; for, it was but a stopping at an open roadstead for the purpose, not of a port, but of continuing at sea or in the sea service of the country.