Proverbially wars are popular at their beginning; commonly, in representative governments, they are declared by aid of some part of the opposition. In the case of the War of 1812 the party in power, instead of gaining strength by the declaration, lost about one fourth of its votes, and the opposition actually gained nearly one fifth of the Administration’s strength. In the Senate the loss was still greater. There too the President’s Message was debated in secret, but the proceedings were very deliberate. A select committee, with Senator Anderson of Tennessee at its head, took charge of the Message, and consumed a week in studying it. June 8 the committee reported the House bill with amendments. June 11 the Senate, by a vote of seventeen to thirteen, returned the bill to the committee for further amendment. June 12 the committee reported the amendments as instructed. The Senate discussed them, was equally divided, and accordingly threw out its own amendments. June 15 the Senate voted the third reading of the House bill by a vote of nineteen to thirteen. June 16, after a strong speech for delay from Senator James A. Bayard, the Senate again adjourned without action; and only June 18, after two weeks of secret discussion, did the bill pass. Nineteen senators voted in its favor; thirteen in opposition. Samuel Smith, Giles, and Leib, the three Republican senators most openly hostile to Madison, voted with the majority. Except Pennsylvania, the entire representation of no Northern State declared itself for the war; except Kentucky, every State south of the Potomac and the Ohio voted for the declaration. Not only was the war to be a party measure, but it was also sectional; while the Republican majority, formerly so large, was reduced to dependence on the factious support of Smith, Giles, and Leib. The bill with its amendments was at once returned to the House and passed. Without a moment’s delay the President signed it, and the same day, June 18, 1812, the war began. “The President’s proclamation was issued yesterday,” wrote Richard Rush, the comptroller, to his father, June 20;[176] ... “he visited in person--a thing never known before--all the offices of the departments of war and the navy, stimulating everything in a manner worthy of a little commander-in-chief, with his little round hat and huge cockade.”