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80 thirty-six human beings! - The Attorney General of the United States, at once an Executive and a judicial officer of the American people, bound in more than official duty to respect the right of personal liberty and the authority of the Judiciary Department had given a written opinion, that, at the instigation of a foreign minister, the President of the United States should issue his order, directed to the marshal to whose custody these persons had been committed, by order of the judge, as prisoners and witnesses, and commanding that marshal to wrest them from the hands of justice, and deliver them to such persons as should be designated by that same foreign minister to receive them. Will this Court please consider for one moment, the essential principle of that opinion? Will this Court inquire, what, if that opinion had been successfully carried into execution, would have been the tenure by which every human being in this Union, man, woman, or child, would have held the blessing of personal freedom? Would it not have been by the tenure of Executive discretion, caprice or tyranny? Had the precedent once been set and submitted to, of a nameless mass of judicial prisoners and witnesses, snatched by the Executive grasp from the protective guardianship of the Supreme Judges of the land, (gubernativamente), at the dictate of a foreign minister, would it not have disabled forever the effective power of Habeas Corpus? Well was it for the country - well was it for the President of the United States himself that ht paused before stepping over this Rubicon!--That he said--"We will proceed no further in this business." And yet, he did not discard the purpose, and yet he saw that this executive trampling at once upon the judicial authority and upon personal liberty would not suffice, either to satisfy the Spanish Minister, or to satiate the public vengeance of the barracoon slave-traders. Had the unfortunate Africans been torn away from the protection of the Court, and delivered up to the order of the Spanish Minister, he possessed not the means of shipping them off to the Island of Cube. The indignation of the freemen of Connecticut, might not tamely endure the sight, of thirty-six free persons, though Africans, fettered and manacled in their land of freedom, to be transported beyond the seas, to perpetual hereditary servitude or to death, by the servile submission of an American President to the insolent dictation of a foreign minister. There were judges of the State Courts in Connecticut, possessing the power of issuing the writ of Habeas 81 Corpus, paramount even to the obsequiousness of a federal marshal to an Executive mandate. The opinion of the Attorney General, comprehensive as it was for the annihilation of personal liberty, carried not with it the means of accomplishing its object. What then was to be done? To save the appearance of a violent and shameless outrage upon the authority of the judicial courts, the moment was to be watched when the judge of the District Court should issue his decree, which it was anticipated would be comfortable to the written opinion of the Attorney General. From that decree the Africans would be entitled to an appeal, first to the Circuit and eventually to the Supreme Court of the united States--but with suitable management, bu one and the same operations they might be choused out of that right, the Circuit and Supreme Courts ousted of their jurisdiction, and the hapless captives of the Amistad delivered over to slavery and to death. For this purpose, at the suggestion of the District Attorney Holabird, and the requisition of the dictatorial Spanish Minister, the Grampus, one of the smallest public vessels of the United States, a schooner of burden utterly insufficient to receive and contain under the shelter of her maindeck, thirty-six persons additional to the ship's company, was in the dead of winter, ordered to repair from the navy yard at Brooklyn to New Haven where the Africans were upon trial, with this secret order which I have read to the Court, signed "Martin Van Buren," commanding the Marshal of the District of Connecticut to deliver to Lieut. John S. Paine, commander of the Grampus, and aid on conveying on board that schooner all the negroes, late of the Spanish schooner Amistad, in his custody, under process [now] pending before the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut. Of this ever memorable order, this court will please to observe that it is in form and phraseology, perfectly comfortable to the written opinion which had been given by the Attorney General. It is not conditional, to be executed only in the event of a decision by the court against the Africans, but positive and unqualified to deliver up all the Africans in his custody, under process now pending. There was nothing in the order itself to prevent Lieut. Paine from delivering it to the marshal, while the trial was pending; it carries out in the form the whole idea of the Attorney General's opinion, that the President's order to the marshals's opinion is of itself all sufficient to superseded the whole protective authority of the 11