"It might, perhaps, be inferred, from the earnestness with which these principles are pressed in your communication, that they have been controverted on my part. Permit me, therefore, to bring again before you the following distinct admissions: 'I do not question the constitutional right of a State to make such a penal code as it shall deem necessary or expedient; nor do I claim that citizens of other States shall be exempted from arrest, trial and punishment in the State adopting such code, however different its enactments may be from those existing in their own State.' Thus you will perceive that I have admitted the sovereignty of the several States upon which you so strenuously insist. To prevent, however, all possible misconstruction upon this subject, I beg leave to add that no person can maintain more firmly than I do the principle that the States are sovereign and independent in regard to all matters except those in relation to which sovereignty is expressly, or by necessary implication, transferred to the Federal Government by the Constitution of the United States. I have at least believed that my non-compliance with the requisition made upon me in the present case would be regarded as maintaining the equal sovereignty and independence of this State, and by necessary consequence, those of all the other States." I contend, then, that the people of the several States, in forming the State governments, have surrendered to the latter supreme and sovereign jurisdiction over all questions affecting the State, or its citizens as a body politic, not included in the grant of power to the General Government by the Federal Constitution. This surrender necessarily includes the power and jurisdiction to determine, co-ordinately with the Federal Government, whether the Federal Executive Government is acting within or transgressing the limits of its legitimate authority in any case affecting the State as such, or its citizens as a body politic, when the question is not one of the validity or constitutionality of a law of the United States, operating directly upon individual citizens, and conformity to which is to be enforced or resisted by suit or defence in the Federal or State Courts, with the right of ultimate appeal, in either case, to the Supreme Court of the United States; but, on the contrary, brings into collision the Federal and State Executive Departments of the Government, in the exercise of powers which, from their very nature and the mode in which they are exerted, never can be presented for the determination of a Court. And with regard to that proposition I would cite Vattel, Book I., chap. 1, sec. 2, upon the proposition that jurisdiction to determine such a mixed question of law and fact has been ceded equally to the State as to the Federal Government. Vattel says: