For all that, the "executive power" clause was invoked as a grant of
power in the first Congress to assemble under the Constitution, and
outside Congress in 1793. On the former occasion Madison and others
advanced the contention that the clause empowered the President to
remove without the Senate's consent all executive officers, even those
appointed with that consent, and in effect this view prevailed, to be
ratified by the Supreme Court 137 years later in the famous Oregon
Postmaster Case.[38]

In 1793 the protagonist of "executive power" was Alexander Hamilton, who
appealed to the clause in defense of Washington's proclamation of
neutrality, issued on the outbreak of war between France and Great
Britain. Prompted by Jefferson to take up his pen and "cut him to pieces
in face of public," Madison shifted position, and charged Hamilton with
endeavoring to smuggle the prerogative of the King of Great Britain into
the Constitution via the "executive power" clause.[39] Three years
earlier Jefferson had himself written in an official opinion as
Secretary of State: [The Executive branch of the government],
"possessing the rights of self-government from nature, cannot be
controlled in the exercise of them but by a law, passed in the forms of
the Constitution".[40]

This time judicial endorsement of the broad conception of the executive
power came early. In laying the foundation in Marbury _v._ Madison for
the Court's claim of power to pass on the constitutionality of acts of
Congress, Marshall said: "The government of the United States has been
emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men".[41] Two pages
along he added these words: