So it is Thursday, November 20th at 11.15 a.m. What are we going to be talking about?

Okay, Roman. Here's a question for you. Was the Civil War a war?

Oh, God. Huh. Uh, uh, whoa. Let's see. Declared. I'm trying to think of what I know from Article 1 at this point.

You could just have it off the cuff.

Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say yes. I, yes. The Civil War was a war. Let's go with that.

Yeah. I think that's right. And it might seem obvious to us now that it was a war. But in 1863, it was an open question

and a dangerous question for President Lincoln. And that was because of the Amy Warwick,

the Hiawatha, the Briante, and the Crenshaw, all four ships that were captured by the U.S. Navy.

Now, after Confederate troops fired on the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter in April of 1861,

and that's the start of the Civil War, President Lincoln responded by issuing a series of executive proclamations.

He called up 75,000 volunteer soldiers to form what would become the Union Army.

And Lincoln also issued a naval blockade of the South. Now, this was meant to cut off supplies to the

Confederacy and to prevent it from selling its goods overseas to raise funds for the Confederate Army.

All of this was premised on Lincoln's Warpower as president.

Now, why a naval blockade?

A blockade meant that the U.S. Navy could seize private ships that were violating the blockade,

and in fact, such a ship and its cargo

could be claimed as a prize of war. By the 18th century, there existed a complex body of law

called prize law. And prize law worked like this. The Navy would board a ship to determine

whether it was violating the blockade, and if the ship to determine whether it was violating the blockade,

and if the ship appeared to be in violation of the blockade, the captured ship would be sent

to a union court where a prize court was located. The prize court would then determine whether

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