ded, in
confirmation of this, that for some months back, gatherings of
people, strangers, as well as citizens, have been held from time
to time in the vicinity of the place of the recent outbreaks, at
which exhortations were made and pledges interchanged to hold
the law for the recovery of fugitive slaves as of no validity,
and to defy its execution. Such are some of the representations
that have been made in my hearing, and in regard to which, it
has become your duty, as the Grand Inquest of the District, to
make legal inquiry. Personally, I know nothing of the facts, or
the evidence relating to them. As a member of the Court, before
which the accused persons may hereafter be arraigned and tried,
I have sought to keep my mind altogether free from any
impressions of their guilt or innocence, and even from an
extra-judicial knowledge of the circumstances which must
determine the legal character of the offence that has thus been
perpetrated. It is due to the great interests of public justice,
no less than to the parties implicated in a criminal charge,
that their cause should be in no wise and in no degree
prejudged. And in referring, therefore, to the representations
which have been made to me, I have no other object than to point
you to the reasons for my addressing you at this advanced period
of our sessions, and to enable you to apply with more facility
and certainty the principles and rules of law, which I shall
proceed to lay before you.

If the circumstances, to which I have adverted, have in fact
taken place, they involve the highest crime known to our laws.
Treason against the United States is defined by the
Constitution, Art. 3, Sec. 3, cl. 1, to consist in "levying war
against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and
comfort." This definition is borrowed from the ancient Law of
England, Stat. 25, Edw. 3, Stat. 5, Chap. 2, and its terms must
be understood, of course, in the sense which they bore in that
law, and which obtained here when the Constitution was adopted.
The expression, "levying war," so regarded, embraces not merely
the act of formal or declared war, but any combination forcibly
to prevent or oppose the execution or enforcement of a provision
of the Constitution, or of a public Statute, if accompanied or
followed by an act of forcibl