treasury of the United States. The Court unanimously
acceded to this doctrine and gave directions accordingly. After reading the order to the Court, Mr. Edwards passed over the subject sub silentio." While
the action of the Circuit Court was undoubtedly correct, and while the Presidential order was utterly invalid, the refusal to recognize his authority was regarded by Jefferson as a political move on the part of
Adams' Judges, especially since it became the subject
of comment in the Federalist party organs who exulted
over the defeat of "executive usurpation."[1] That
the United States Courts, however, were determined to
maintain their independence of the Executive, whether
Federalist or Republican, had been made plain at the
August Term of the Supreme Court in this same year
at the argument of Ship Amelia, Talbot v. Seaman, 1 Cranch, 1. In this case, involving the right to salvage by an American vessel which had recaptured a
neutral vessel previously captured and armed by the
French, in order to prove the legality of the recapture,
James A. Bayard, counsel for the claimants, had offered
to read the instructions of President Adams construing the statute passed by Congress authorizing hostilities by American ships. To the reading of this paper,
all the Judges were opposed, and Judge Paterson stated
that he had "no objection to hearing them, but they
- ↑ New York Evening Post, Jan. 22, 1802. See also New York Commercial Advertiser, "To the President", No. XVIII; Connecticut Courant, Jan. 18, 1802, which said: "Your directing the prize money of the French Schooner Peggy condemned in the Circuit Court in Connecticut to be released to the claimant was held by the
Court to be illegal; the Court disobeyed the order and decreed the money to be
paid into the Bank of the United States for the public benefit."
In United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch, 108, at the December Term 1801, the Supreme Court held that Jefferson's construction of the treaty as applied to the facts in this case was correct, and that by the decree of the Circuit Court the vessel was not “definitively condemned", and that it should be returned to its French owners; see also Attorney-General Lincoln's opinion to the contrary, June 17, 25, 1802, Ops. Attys.-Gen., I, 114, 119. As to this episode, see also letters of Gallatin to Madison, June 9; Madison to Pichon, July 19; Gallatin to Hamilton, Aug. 13, 1802, Hamilton Papers MSS.
