J.
LETTER CCLXXXVII.--TO GOVERNOR MONROE, July 11, 1801
TO GOVERNOR MONROE.
Washington, July 11, 1801.
Dear Sir,
As to the mode of correspondence between the general and particular
executives, I do not think myself a good judge. Not because my position
gives me any prejudice on the occasion; for if it be possible to
be certainly conscious of any thing, I am conscious of feeling no
difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth; but
because I have ever thought that forms should yield to whatever should
facilitate business. Comparing the two governments together, it is
observable that in all those cases where the independent or reserved
rights of the States are in question, the two executives, if they are
to act together, must be exactly co-ordinate; they are, in these cases,
each the supreme head of an independent government. In other cases, to
wit, those transferred by the constitution to the General Government,
the general executive is certainly pre-ordinate; e.g. in a question
respecting the militia, and others easily to be recollected. Were there,
therefore, to be a stiff adherence to etiquette, I should say that in
the former cases the correspondence should be between the two heads, and
that in the latter, the Governor must be subject to receive orders from
the war department as any other subordinate officer would.
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