None of the counsel in the Milligan case claimed that a Military Commission could possibly have jurisdiction to try a simple citizen in a State where there was no war or rumors of war. "We do fully agree, that if at the time of these occurrences there were no military operations in Indiana, if there was no army there, if there was no necessity of armed forces there, * * * then this Commission had no jurisdiction to deal with the relator, and the question proposed may as well at once be answered in the negative." They contended, as the very basis of their case, that the acts of Milligan "took place in the theatre of military operations, within the lines of the army, in a State which had been, and then was constantly threatened with invasion." And, in fact, the record in so many words so stated, and the statement was uncontroverted by the relator. General Butler with great earnestness put the question: "If the Court takes judicial notice that the courts are open, must it not also take judicial notice how, and by whose protection, and by whose permission they were so open? that they were open because the strong arm of the military upheld them; because by that power these Sons of Liberty and Knights of the American Circle, who would have driven them away, were arrested, tried and punished. "If the soldiery of the United States, by their arms, had not held the State from intestine domestic foes within, and the attacks of traitors without; had not kept the ten thousand rebel prisoners of war confined in the neighborhood from being released by these Knights and men of the Order of the Sons of Liberty; there would have been no courts in Indiana, no place in which the Circuit Judge of the United States could sit in peace to administer the laws." Moreover, the opinion of the minority Judges bases their contention that Congress had the power, if it had chosen to exercise it, to authorize such a Military Commission, upon this very fact. "In Indiana, for example, at the time of the arrest of Milligan and his co conspirators, it is established by the papers in the record, that the State was a military district; was the theatre of military operations, had been actually invaded, and was constantly threatened with invasion. It appears, also, that a powerful secret association, composed of citizens and others, existed within the State, under military organization, conspiring against the draft, and plotting insurrection, the liberation of the prisoners of war at various depots, the seizure of the State and national arsenals, armed co-operation with the enemy, and war against the national government." Not one of which circumstances (except that it was a military district) can be truthfully predicated of the District of Columbia at the time of the assassination.