les of society, or by our
constitution, which gives that power to Congress alone, and not to the
citizens individually. Then the first position was not true; and no
citizen has a right to go to war of his own authority, and for what he
does without right, he ought to be punished. Indeed, nothing can be more
obviously absurd than to say, that all the citizens may be at war, and
yet the nation at peace.

It has been pretended, indeed, that the engagement of a citizen in an
enterprise of this nature, was a divestment of the character of citizen,
and a transfer of jurisdiction over him to another sovereign. Our
citizens are certainly free to divest themselves of that character by
emigration and other acts manifesting their intention, and may then
become the subjects of another power, and free to do whatever the
subjects of that power may do. But the laws do not admit that the bare
commission of a crime amounts of itself to a divestment of the character
of citizen, and withdraws the criminal from their coercion. They would
never prescribe an illegal act among the legal modes by, which a citizen
might disfranchise himself; nor render treason, for instance, innocent
by giving it the force of a dissolution of the obligation of the
criminal to his country. Accordingly, in the case of Henfeild, a citizen
of these States, charged with having engaged in the port of Charleston,
in an enterprise against nations at peace with us, and with having
joined in the actual commission of hostilities, the Attorney General of
the United States, in an official opinion, declared, that the act with
which he was charged was punishable by law. The same thing has been
unanimously declared by two of the Circuit Courts of the United States,
as you will see in the charges of Chief Justice Jay, delivered at
Richmond, and Judge Wilson, delivered at Philadelphia, both of which are
herewith sent. Yet Mr. Genet, in the moment he lands at Charleston, is
able to tell the Governor, and continues to affirm in his correspondence
here, that no law of the United States authorizes their government
to restrain either its own citizens or the foreigners inhabiting its
territory, from warring against the enemies of France. It is true,
indeed, that in the case of Henfeild, the jury which tried, absolved
him. But it appeared on the trial, that the crime was not knowingly and
wilfully committed; that Henfeild was ignorant of the unlawfulness of
his undertaking; that in the