“The ferment in the public mind,” he wrote July 21,[22] “has not yet subsided, and I am confirmed in the opinion ... that this country will engage in war rather than submit to their national armed ships being forcibly searched on the high seas.... Should his Majesty think fit to cause an apology to be offered to these States on account of the attack of his Majesty’s ship ‘Leopard’ on the United States frigate ‘Chesapeake,’ it would have the most powerful effect not only on the minds of the people of this country, but would render it impossible for the Congress to bring on a war upon the other points of difference between his Majesty and the United States at present under discussion.” A single blow, however violent, could not weld a nation. Every one saw that the very violence of temper which made the month of July, 1807, a moment without a parallel in American history since the battle of Lexington, would be followed by a long reaction of doubt and discord. If the President, the Secretary of State, and great numbers of their stanchest friends hesitated to fight when a foreign nation, after robbing their commerce, fired into their ships of war, and slaughtered or carried off their fellow-citizens,--if they preferred “peaceable means of repressing injustice” at the moment when every nerve would naturally have been strung to recklessness with the impulse to strike back,--it was in the highest degree unlikely that they would be more earnest for war when time had deadened the sense of wrong. Neither England, France, nor Spain could fail to see that the moment when aggression ceased to be safe had not yet arrived. The people were deeply excited, commerce for the moment was paralyzed, no merchant dared send out a ship, and the country resounded with cries of war when the “Revenge” sailed, bearing instructions to Monroe to demand reparation from the British government. These instructions, dated July 6, 1807, were framed in the spirit which seemed to characterize Madison’s diplomatic acts. Specific redress for a specific wrong appeared an easy demand. That the attack on the “Chesapeake” should be disavowed; that the men who had been seized should be restored; that punctilious exactness of form should mark the apology and retribution,--was matter of course; but that this special outrage, which stood on special ground, should be kept apart, and that its atonement should precede the consideration of every other disputed point, was the natural method of dealing with it if either party was serious in wishing for peace. Such a wound, left open to fester and smart, was certain to make war in the end inevitable. Both the President and Madison wanted peace; yet their instructions to Monroe made a settlement of the “Chesapeake” outrage impracticable by binding it to a settlement of the wider dispute as to impressments from merchant vessels.