Jackson’s folly in thus tempting his fate was the more flagrant because his private letters proved that he knew something of his true position. “Madison is now as obstinate as a mule,” he wrote October 26.[98] “Until he gets [the absolute surrender of the Orders in Council] he will not even accept any satisfaction for the affair of the ‘Chesapeake,’ which has been now for the third time offered to him in vain;” and he added: “There is already a great and growing fermentation in the United States, which shows itself in a manner highly prejudicial to the amity and good understanding which doubtless our ministers wish to see established between the two countries.” A few days after writing this evidence of his own uneasiness, the British minister received from the Department of State a third note, dated November 1, which left no doubt that the President meant to push his antagonist to extremes. After accepting the explanations at last made in regard to the Orders in Council, and pointing out that they did not apply to the case of the “Chesapeake,” Madison requested Jackson to show his full powers, as an “indispensable preliminary to further negotiation.” The letter was short, and ended with a stern warning:-- “I abstain, sir, from making any particular animadversions on several irrelevant and improper allusions in your letter, not at all comporting with the professed disposition to adjust, in an amicable manner, the differences unhappily subsisting between the two countries; but it would be improper to conclude the few observations to which I purposely limit myself, without adverting to your repetition of a language implying a knowledge on the part of this Government that the instructions of your predecessor did not authorize the arrangement formed by him. After the explicit and peremptory asseveration that this Government had no such knowledge, and that with such a knowledge no such arrangement would have been entered into, the view which you have again presented of the subject makes it my duty to apprise you that such insinuations are inadmissible in the intercourse of a foreign minister with a Government that understands what it owes to itself.” This letter placed Jackson in a position which he could not defend, and from which he thought, perhaps with reason, that he could not without disgrace retreat. The insinuations he had made were but a cautious expression of the views he was expressly ordered to take. November 4 he replied, with more ability than he had hitherto shown, to the letter of November 1; but he gave himself, for a mere point of temper, into Madison’s hands.