to the Supreme Court.  General and absolute confidence was expressed in the determination of the highest tribunal of the nation.  The appeal was argued on the part of Neagle by the Attorney-General of the United States and Joseph H. Choate, Esq., of the New York bar; and the briefs of counsel in the Circuit Court were also filed.  The attorney-general of California and Mr. Zachariah Montgomery appeared upon behalf of the State, and briefs of Messrs. Shellabarger and Wilson were also filed in its behalf.

The argument of the Attorney-General of the United States was exceedingly able.  He had watched all the proceedings of the case from the outset.  He had directed that protection should be extended by the marshal to Justice Field and Judge Sawyer against any threatened violence, and he believed strongly in the doctrine that the officers of the general government were entitled to receive everywhere throughout the country full protection against all violence whilst in the discharge of their duties.  He believed that such protection was necessary to the efficiency and permanency of the government; and its necessity in both respects was never more ably presented.

The argument of Mr. Choate covered all the questions of law and fact in the case and was marked by that great ability and invincible logic and by that clearness and precision of statement which have rendered him one of the ablest of advocates and jurists in the country, one who all acknowledge has few peers and no superiors at the bar of the nation.[1]

The argument of the attorney-general of the State consisted chiefly of a repetition of the doctrine that, for offenses committed within its limits, the State alone has jurisdiction to try the offenders—­a position which within its proper limits, and when not carried to the protection of resistance to the authority of the United States, has never been questioned.

The most striking feature of the argument on behalf of the State was presented by Zachariah Montgomery.  It may interest the reader to observe the true Terry flavor introduced into his argument, and the manifest perversion of the facts into which it led him.  He deeply sympathized with Terry in the grief and mortification which he suffered in being charged with having assaulted the marshal with a deadly weapon in the presence of the Circuit Court in September, 1888.  He attempted to convince the Supreme Court that one of its members had deliberately made a misrecital, in the order committing Terry for contempt, and treated this as a mitigation of that individual’s subsequent attack on Justice Field.  He did not, however, attempt to gainsay the testimony of the numerous witnesses who swore that Terry did try to draw his knife while yet in the court-room on that occasion, and that, being temporarily prevented from doing so by force, he completed the act as soon as this force was withdrawn, and pursued the marshal with knife in hand, loudly declaring in the hearing of the court, in language