For a time the followers and friends of the Essex Junto had some reason to hope that matters would quickly come to this pass, for the declaration of war caused on both sides an outbreak of temper. In Massachusetts, Governor Strong issued, June 26, a proclamation[349] for a public Fast in consequence of the war just declared “against the nation from which we are descended, and which for many generations has been the bulwark of the religion we profess;” and although such a description of England would in previous times have scandalized the clergy, it was received with general assent. The returning members of Congress who had voted for war met a reception in some cases offensive and insulting, to the point of actual assault. Two of the Massachusetts members, Seaver and Widgery, were publicly insulted and hissed on Change in Boston; while another, Charles Turner, member for the Plymouth district, and Chief-Justice of the Court of Sessions for that county, was seized by a crowd on the evening of August 3, on the main street of Plymouth, and kicked through the town.[350] By energetic use of a social machinery still almost irresistible, the Federalists and the clergy checked or prevented every effort to assist the war, either by money or enlistments. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, with Chief-Justice Parsons at its head, advised[351] Governor Strong that not to Congress or to the President, but to the governor, belonged the right to decide when the Constitutional exigency existed which should call the State militia into the service of the United States; and Governor Strong decided that neither foreign invasion nor domestic insurrection existed, and that therefore he could not satisfy the President’s request for the quota of the United States militia to defend the coast. When, later in the season, the governor called out three companies for the defence of Eastport and Castine, in Maine, the chief-justice privately remonstrated, holding that this act yielded the main point at issue between the State and National government.[352]