The sanguine temperament which challenged a duel accorded ill with the afterthought which shrank from it. Voluntarily, coolly, with mature reflection, Jefferson had invited Canning’s blow; and when Canning struck, Jefferson recoiled. Monroe might well claim that such conditions as were imposed on him should never have been made, or should never have been withdrawn; that at moments of violent irritation no nation could afford to tease another with demands not meant to be enforced. To increase the President’s embarrassment, the Secretary of War Dearborn made a natural mistake. The original instructions to Monroe, decided in Cabinet meeting July 2,[125] did not connect the “Chesapeake” outrage with impressments of merchant seamen. Neither July 4 nor July 5, when full Cabinet meetings were held, did the subject come up.[126] The final instructions, dated July 6, changed the original demand by extending the required redress over all cases of impressment; but meanwhile General Dearborn had left Washington for New York, and was not told of the change.[127] So it happened that when in October the Federalist newspapers began to attack Jefferson, on the authority of the English press, for coupling the subject of general impressment with the attack on the “Chesapeake,” Dearborn, who chanced to be in Massachusetts, denied the charge; and on his authority the Republican newspapers asserted that the alleged instructions had not been given. This denial created no little confusion among Republicans, who could not understand why the instructions had been changed, or on what ground the Administration meant to defend them. In truth, the change had been an afterthought, founded on the idea that as abandonment of impressments was a _sine qua non_ in the commercial negotiation, and a point on which the Government meant inflexibly to insist, it should properly be made a _sine qua non_ in this or any other agreement.[128] This decision had been made in July, with knowledge that England would rather fight than yield a point so vital to her supposed interests. In December, on hearing that Canning refused to yield, the President told Erskine that the _sine qua non_, so formally adopted, would be abandoned. That conduct in appearance so vacillating should perplex Jefferson’s friends and irritate his enemies was natural; but in reality nothing vacillating was in the President’s mind. These negotiations were but outpost skirmishes, and covered his steady retreat to the fortress which he believed to be impregnable. He meant to coerce Canning, but his method of coercion needed neither armies nor negotiators. While telling Erskine that the _sine qua non_ should not prevent a settlement of the “Chesapeake” affair, he set in motion the first of the series of measures which were intended to teach England to respect American rights.