Yet nations could not so readily as individuals swing about on a course opposite to that which they had been led to expect. The American public had been wrought to anger against Spain. Of the negotiations little was publicly known. Monroe had come, and gone; the Marquis Yrujo had remonstrated, and had written in newspapers; but the rights and wrongs of the Spanish dispute remained a mystery to the public at large, which knew only that Spain had rejected all the offers made by the United States, had resumed her depredations on American commerce, and had taken a menacing attitude at Mobile and on the Sabine. Throughout the year the Republican press had followed hints from the Government at Washington, all looking toward a rupture with Spain. The same newspapers had shown at first a wish to make light of the late British seizures,--a course which misled the Federalist press into denunciations of England such as would never have been risked had the party in power not seemed disposed to apologize for England’s conduct. The country at large was prepared to hear the President advise a rupture with Spain, and upon that rupture to found his hope of success in negotiating with Pitt. The warlike tone of the Annual Message was certain to give additional strength to this expectation; and Jefferson might have foreseen that the sudden secret change of tone to be taken immediately afterward in the special message on Spanish affairs would produce bewilderment among his followers. No one could doubt where the confusion would first appear. The last session had ended in a series of quarrels, in which party distinctions had been almost forgotten. The summer had done nothing to reunite the factions; on the contrary, it had done much to widen the breach. Already the “Aurora” announced that the Yazoo question was to determine “the relations, the principles, the characters, and the strength of parties in the next session of Congress;” and the public knew that the Yazoo question had passed beyond the stage of rational argument, and had become the test of personal devotion, the stepping-stone to favor or proscription with the next President. Three years before the election of 1808 Congress was already torn by a Virginia feud,--a struggle for power between John Randolph and James Madison.