Mr. Sullivan, of Counsel for the prisoners, said:
May it please the Court: Gentlemen of the Jury:
This case has brought to my mind an interesting episode in ancient history, to which I beg permission to refer. For many years, the States of Greece had been engaged in bloody civil strife, which ended in the discomfiture of Athens. The Spartans and their allies assembled in council to consider and determine on her fate. Animated by resentful passion, the Thebans urged extreme and vindictive measures: that Athens should be razed to the ground, that the hand of the victorious States should fall heavy, and the Athenians be proclaimed exiles from their homes and outlaws in Greece. This proposal was applauded by the Corinthians and some others, but at that moment the deputy of the Phocians, who owed a debt of gratitude to the Athenians, sang in the assembly the mournful Choral Ode from the Electra of Sophocles, which moved all present in such a manner that they declared against the design. The poem had lifted them from the passion of the hour, and invoked the memories and ancestral glories of their common nation. The spirits of departed heroes now lent the inspiration of their presence, and yielding to it the members of that council and jury became great Greeks, as of old their fathers were. Marathon and Salamis, Platæa and Mycale, were pictured in the chambers of their souls, with Miltiades, Themistocles and Aristides for their counselors; and then, and not until then were they fit to render a verdict upon Athens, the loveliest sister of them all.
And gentlemen, before we touch upon the details of this case, may we not contemplate some examples and sentiments which will enlighten and strengthen our spirits as guardians of the important interests committed to our hands this day? I am sure it will be agreeable to you and to seek them in the annals of our forefathers,
"The great of old,
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits, from their urns."
It may be that a voice like that of the Theban delegate, and like the voice of Corinth, is sounding in your ears, and appealing, by sophistries, and passion, and prejudices, to you to lay the hand of your Government with all possible severity upon those of her enemies who are now in her power and arraigned at her bar. But I entreat you to lift yourselves to that stand-point from which our ancestors, who founded this Union, who enacted the law upon which this prosecution is founded, would have regarded a case analagous to that of Captain Baker and the other defendants herein. What was the central and distinguishing idea of Government, blazing like another sun on the world, which our fathers established and made honorable? Was it not the imperishable doctrine of revolutionary right—and that without special regard to the names, and forms, and paths through which it might be sought? For many other causes they may have pledged their fortunes; there were many for which they periled their lives; but only for this is it recorded by them, "We pledge our sacred honor." It is their incommunicable glory that they consummated their purpose; and if for anything we have a place in history and a name in the world, it is that we have hitherto professed to be the special guardians of that principle among the nations. Will you rise with me to the dignity and affecting associations that surrounded and auspicated the struggle of our forefathers for this principle? Shall their memory be your guiding light, and their honorable purpose that upon which your thoughts will linger? Let us subject our hearts to their influence, for it will not mislead us. And, now, would our fathers with casuistry and technical constructions of a statute which they never meant should apply to such a case as the present, pronounce judgment of piracy and outlawry against any people who were making an effort, by the recognized forms of war, to assert revolutionary right and independent self-government for themselves? Never! And while the page on which our fathers' history is written is lustrous, it would be readorned with all the beauty of immortal splendor, if under it were written to-day, "That which the American people of 1776 claimed for themselves (the right to 'dissolve the political bands that bound them to another'), they possessed the greatness of soul, in 1861, to acknowledge against themselves, when another portion of the same race sought the same end. Beguiled by the almost omnipotent sophistries of interest and passion, they have nevertheless adhered in loyal faith to their time-honored doctrine of free government. In the faithful devotion of the Sons, the principles of the Fathers have been revindicated. Henceforth the nation must stand unapproachable in their greatness."
Why I make these observations, gentlemen, is, that when the officers of the United States ask you to-day to find a verdict of guilty against these prisoners, they ask you to do that which, shape it and distort it and reason about it as they may, is asking you to lift an impious hand and strike a parricidal blow, conspicuous in the eyes of the world, against the ever sacred doctrine which our ancestors transmitted to us as their best legacy and a part of their own good name. Will you abandon it? Nay, rather cling to it,
"As one withstood clasps a Christ upon the rood,