Feeling as he did the President was greatly annoyed when Judge Marshall’s opinion was reported to him, still obstinately maintaining that he should appear in court. After reflection he sat down and framed a letter to Hay presenting his arguments against obeying the subpoena. The Chief Justice, he complained, as was usual with him when an opinion was to be supported, right or wrong, dwelt much on smaller objections and passed over those which were solid. He had laid down the general position that all persons owe obedience to subpoenas. But, argued Mr. Jefferson, if the Constitution enjoined a particular officer to be always engaged in a particular set of duties, did not that supersede the general law, subjecting him to minor duties inconsistent with these? “The Constitution enjoins his constant agency in the concerns of six millions of people. Is the law paramount to this which calls on him in behalf of a single one?” Mr. Jefferson applied the Judge’s doctrine to his own case. Suppose, he said, the sheriff of Henrico County (in which the Judge was domiciled) should summon him from court to quell a riot. Would the Judge abandon major duties to perform lesser ones? Then he got down to the root of the matter, which was the battle being waged between the executive and the judiciary. “The leading principle of our Constitution,” he reminded, “is the independence of the legislature, executive and judiciary of each other, and none are more jealous of this than the judiciary. But would the executive be independent of the judiciary if he were subject to the commands of the latter, and to imprisonment for disobedience; if the several courts could bandy him from pillar to post, keep him constantly trudging from north to south and east to west, and withdraw him entirely from his constitutional duties?” The President now came to the most personal part of the opinion in which the Chief Justice intimated that his duties were not unremitting. “If,” said Mr. Jefferson, “he alludes to our annual retirement from the seat of government, during the sickly season, he should be told that such arrangements are made for carrying on public business that it goes on as unremittingly there as if he were at the seat of government. I pass more hours in public business at Monticello than I do here every day and it is much more laborious, because all must be done in writing.” Thus Mr. Jefferson excused himself from casting aside his official duties in Washington and departing posthaste to Richmond at the request of Aaron Burr and on the order of Judge Marshall. He still had to deal with his other tormentor, Luther Martin. The President was not very successful in concealing the fact that the vindictive attack of the Baltimore lawyer had gotten under his skin.