Giles impressed the least agreeable qualities of his peculiar character on this Senate,--a body of men easily impressed by such traits. By a vote of twenty-four to four, they passed the Resolution in which Giles showed energy in throwing epithets at the British government, as they passed the bill for employing frigates to pretend energy that was not in their intentions. No episode in the national history was less encouraging than the conduct of Congress in regard to Giles’s Resolution. From December 18 to January 4, the House wasted its time and strength in proving the helplessness of Executive, Congress, parties, and people in the grasp of Europe. With painful iteration every Republican proved that the nation had been insulted by the British minister; while every Federalist protested his inability to discern the insult, and his conviction that no insult was intended. Except as preliminary to measures of force, Giles’s Resolution showed neither dignity nor object; yet the Republicans embarrassed themselves with denials of the Federalist charge that such language toward a foreign government must have a warlike motive, while the Federalists insisted that their interests required peace. If the Resolution[142] was correct in affirming as it did that the United States had suffered “outrageous and premeditated insults” from Jackson, Congress could not improve the situation by affirming the insult without showing even the wish to resent it by means that would prevent its repetition; but the majority saw the matter in another light, and when the Federalists resorted to technical delays, the Republicans after a session of nineteen hours passed the Resolution by a vote of seventy-two to forty-one. Macon, Stanford, and the old Republicans voted with the Federalists in the minority, while Randolph was ill and absent throughout the debate. The Resolution marked the highest energy reached by the Eleventh Congress. Giles’s bill for fitting out the frigates was allowed to slumber in committee; and a bill for taking forty thousand volunteers for one year into government service never came to a vote in the Senate. Congress was influenced by news from England to lay aside measures mischievous except as a prelude to hostilities. The change of Administration in London opened the way to new negotiations, and every fresh negotiation consumed a fresh year.