Rarely in American history has been seen a struggle more furious or less ennobling than that which took place at Washington in the months of January and February, 1809. With a bold face, but with small confidence, Madison and Gallatin pressed their measures. After passing the Enforcement Act on the morning of January 6, Congress turned at once to a matter even more serious. January 7 a Resolution was offered in the House providing for an early meeting of the next Congress, and in the short debate that followed, a distinct line began for the first time to divide the advocates of war from the partisans of peace. The extra session was avowedly to be called for the purpose of declaring war. Simultaneously a bill was introduced to raise, arm, and equip fifty thousand volunteers to serve for the term of two years; while the Senate sent down another bill ordering all the frigates and gunboats to be “fitted out, officered, manned, and employed as soon as may be.” The fourth Monday in May was the date proposed for the extra session, and Congress at last found itself face to face with the naked issue of war. The effect of the crisis upon Congress was immediate. Doubt, defiance, dismay, and disgust took possession of the Legislature, which swayed backward and forward from day to day, as courage or fear prevailed. The old Republicans, who could not yield their faith in the embargo, begged almost piteously for delay. “A large portion of the people, the South almost unanimously,” urged David R. Williams of South Carolina, “have expressed a wish that the Government should adhere to the embargo till it produces an effect, or the capacity to produce the effect be disproved. You are like to be driven out of the embargo by war? Why, sir, look at the sensation in New England and New York, and talk about going to war when you cannot maintain an embargo!... If you do not adopt war before the fourth Monday in May, will the nation be ruined if you postpone it still further?”[362] Macon declared that the embargo was still the people’s choice:-- “As to the people being tired of the embargo, whenever they want war in preference to it they will send their petitions here to that effect.... Let each man put the question to his neighbor whether he will have war or embargo, and there is no doubt but he will answer in favor of the latter.” Such reasoning, honest and true as it was in the mouths of men like Macon and Williams, gave a tone of weakness and irresolution to the debate, while it acted on the Federalists with the force of defiance, and drew from Josiah Quincy a speech which long remained famous, and which no Republican ever forgot or forgave.