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UNITED STATES vs. CASTNER HANWAY,

INDICTED FOR TREASON,

IN THE

CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA,

Delivered November 28, 1851.

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SPEECH.

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT, GENTLEMEN of the Jury—

It becomes my duty, as the officer charged by the law with the prosecution of crimes and offences committed against the laws of the United States within the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to submit for your consideration the indictment upon which the prisoner at the bar has been arraigned, in order that you may determine upon the question of his guilt or innocence. It charges him with the commission of a crime of a highly aggravated character; in its nature, the most serious that can be perpetrated against a human government. It is technally called high treason, and is defined in the Constitution of the United States and the Act of Congress of 30th April, 1790. It consists in this country only in levying war against the United States, and in adhering to their enemies, by giving to them aid and comfort. The treason charged against the prisoner at the bar, is that of levying war against the United States; and I desire you distinctly to understand that it is not a case of constructive treason, but one of actual treason, and embraced within the perview of the Constitution and the Act of Congress to which allusion has been made. What the law is upon this subject I will fully explain before I conclude my opening remarks; but I now state that any combination or conspiracy by force and intimidation to prevent the execution of an Act of Congress, so as to render it inoperative and ineffective, is in legal estimation high treason, being an usurpation of the authority of government. This construction of the Constitu tion of the United States has been cotemporaneous with the adoption of that instrument, and every judge, whether state or federal, whose attention has been directed to the subject, has agreed in this interpretation. It was so held in the cases of the Western in urgents in 1795, in the cases of the Northampton insurgents in 1799, in the case of Aaron Burr in 1807, by Judge STORY in his charge to the Grand Jury in 1842, by Judge KING, President of the Court of Common Pleas of this county, in his charge to the Grand Jury, in

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