liberty to receive advice or submit to instructions from the
President of the United States?

This question stirred the country to its depths in 1799. Great
Britain applied to our government for the extradition of a seaman
who claimed to be an American citizen and was charged with
committing murder on a British man-of-war. He was arrested in
South Carolina, under a warrant from the District Judge, and
lodged in jail. There was a treaty of extradition between the
two powers covering cases of murder, but no particular machinery
had been provided for regulating the surrender. The British
consul asked the judge who had made the commitment to order his
delivery to him. The judge doubted his power to do so.
Thereupon the Secretary of State, by authority of the President,
wrote him that the President advised and requested him to make
the surrender, if satisfied with the proofs of criminality, as he
(the President) was of opinion that any crime committed on a
man-of-war was committed within the territory of the power to
which it belonged. The judge complied with this request, after a
public hearing on a writ of _habeas corpus_, under which he
ordered the man in question to be brought before him, and in the
course of it this letter was shown to counsel on both sides.

The surrender became at once the subject of heated debates in
Congress, but the President's course was ably and conclusively
defended by Marshall on the floor of the House,[Footnote: United
States _v._ Nash _alias_ Robins, Bee's Reports, 266;
Robbins' Case, Wharton's State Trials, 392.] and the course
pursued has since been followed in substance by our extradition
statutes.[Footnote: United States Revised Statutes, Secs. 5270,