The President looked upon this declaration as final. Already every preparation had been made to meet it. Only a fortnight before, the papers of John Henry had been sent to Congress, and the halls of Congress, as well as the columns of every Republican newspaper in the country, were filled with denunciations of England’s conduct, while the President prepared a message recommending an embargo for sixty days,--a measure preliminary to the declaration of war,--when March 23, two days after Foster’s interview, news arrived that a French squadron, under open orders, had begun to burn and sink American commerce on the ocean. The American brig “Thames” reached New York March 9, and her captain, Samuel Chew, deposed before a magistrate that February 2, in the middle of the Atlantic, his brig on the return voyage from Portugal was seized by a French squadron which had sailed from Nantes early in January, and which had already seized and burned the American ship “Asia” and the brig “Gershom.” The French commodore declared that he had orders to burn all American vessels sailing to or from an enemy’s port. The American newspapers were soon deluged with affidavits to the same effect from the captains and seamen of vessels burned by these French frigates, and the news, arriving in Washington at a moment when the Federalists were most eager to retaliate the insult of the Henry letters, caused extreme sensation. In face of these piratical acts no one longer pretended that the French Decrees were repealed. Republicans were angrier than Federalists. Madison and Monroe were angriest of all. Serurier was in despair. “I am just from Mr. Monroe’s office,” he wrote March 23;[148] “I have never yet seen him more agitated, more discomposed. He addressed me abruptly: ‘Well, sir, it is then decided that we are to receive nothing but outrages from France! And at what a moment too! At the very instant when we were going to war with her enemies.’” When the French minister tried to check his vehemence of reproach, Monroe broke out again:--