March 5 Madison at last sent his reply to Rose’s note of January 26. After repeating the reasons which forbade a withdrawal of the President’s proclamation, the Secretary closed by informing Rose that the President “has authorized me, in the event of your disclosing the terms of reparation which you believe will be satisfactory, and on its appearing that they are so, ... to proceed to concert with you a revocation of that act.”[155] Rose waited till March 17, as though hoping for some further overture, but finally replied, “It is with the most painful sensations of regret that I find myself ... under the necessity of declining to enter into the terms of negotiation which by direction of the President you therein offer.”[156] Rose’s professions of regret were doubtless sincere. Apart from the wish felt by every young diplomatist to avoid the appearance of failure, Rose could not but see that his Government must wish to be relieved of the three American seamen imprisoned at Halifax, whose detention, admitted to be an act of violence, must become a festering sore in the relations of the two countries. That the American government meant to profit by it was evident. By leaving the “Chesapeake” affair unsettled, Rose played into the hands of a national party. For the first time since 1794 language began to be used to a British minister in the United States which he could not hear without loss of dignity or sense of discredit. The word “war” was semi-officially pronounced. When on Monday, March 21, Rose made his parting visits, he found the President silent; the Secretary of State studiously avoided all political topics, while if Rose’s report was accurate, Gallatin and Robert Smith talked with intentional freedom.