Although the two extremes still stood so far apart that their arguments bore no relation to each other, the violence of temper which marked the embargo dispute, and which was to mark any step toward actual measures of force, did not appear at this session. Indeed, the Federalists themselves were not unanimous; some of the most extreme, like Barent Gardenier and Philip Barton Key, supported Macon’s plan, while some of the extremists on the other side, like Troup of Georgia, voted against it. January 29, by a vote of seventy-three to fifty-two, the House passed the bill. The Senate soon afterward took it up; and then, as was to be expected, the factions broke loose. February 21, at the motion of Senator Samuel Smith, by a vote of sixteen to eleven the Senate struck everything from the bill except the enacting clause and the exclusion of belligerent war-vessels from United States’ harbors. An Administration measure could not without rousing angry feelings be so abruptly mutilated by a knot of Administration senators. Samuel Smith’s motives, given in his own words, were entitled to proper attention; but President Madison’s opinion on the subject, whether correct or mistaken, had even more effect on what was to follow. Madison believed that the rejection of the bill was an intrigue of the Smiths for selfish or personal objects. He recorded the language which he felt himself obliged to use on the subject, twelve months afterward, to Robert Smith’s face:[143]-- “For examples in which he had counteracted what he had not himself disapproved in the Cabinet, I referred to the bills called Macon’s bills, and the Non-intercourse Bill, on the consultation on which he appeared to concur in their expediency; that he well knew the former, in its outline at least, had originated in the difficulty of finding measures that would prevent what Congress had solemnly protested against,--to wit, a complete submission to the belligerent edicts; that the measure was considered as better than nothing, which seemed to be the alternative, and as part only of whatever else might in the progress of the business be found attainable; and that he neither objected to what was done in the Cabinet (the time and place for the purpose), nor offered anything in the place of it, yet it was well understood that his conversations and conduct out of doors had been entirely of a counteracting nature; that it was generally believed that he was in an unfriendly disposition personally and officially; and that although in conversations with different individuals he might not hold the same unfavorable language, yet with those of a certain temper it was no secret that he was very free in the use of it, and had gone so far as to avow a disapprobation of the whole policy of commercial restrictions from the embargo throughout.”