The President recognizes governments,
foreign governments, as they appear from time to time in the occurrences
of this changeful world. And the Constitution and the laws, if an
insurrection exists against the government of any State, rendering it
necessary to appear with an armed force, make it his duty to call out
the militia and suppress it.

Two things may here be properly considered. The first is, that the
Constitution declares that the United States shall protect every State
against domestic violence; and the law of 1795, making provision for
carrying this constitutional duty into effect in all proper cases,
declares, that, "in case of an insurrection in any State against the
government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United
States to call out the militia of other States to suppress such
insurrection." These constitutional and legal provisions make it the
indispensable duty of the President to decide, in cases of commotion,
what is the rightful government of the State. He cannot avoid such
decision. And in this case he decided, of course, that the existing
government, the charter government, was the rightful government. He
could not possibly have decided otherwise.

In the next place, if events had made it necessary to call out the
militia, and the officers and soldiers of such militia, in protecting
the existing government, had done precisely what the defendants in this
case did, could an action have been maintained against them? No one
would assert so absurd a proposition.

In reply to the requisition of the Governor, the President stated that
he did not think it was yet time for the application of force; but he
wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, in which he directed him to
confer with the Governor of Rhode Island; and, whenever it should appear
to them to be necessary, to call out from Massachusetts and Connecticut
a militia force sufficient to _terminate at once_ this insurrection, by
the authority of the government of the United States. We are at no loss,
therefore, to know how the executive government of the United States
treated this insurrection. It was regarded as fit _to be suppressed_.
That is manifest from the President's letters to the Secretary of War
and to Governor King.

Now, the eye of this court must be directed to the proceedings of the
general government, which had its attention called to the subject, and
which did institute proceedings respecting it. And the court