The Message sent to Congress December 7 began by expressing regret that the British government had disappointed the reasonable anticipation of discussing and, if possible, adjusting the rights and pretensions in dispute. From France nothing had been received on the subjects of negotiation. Madison congratulated Congress on the success of the navy upon the ocean and the Lakes, and the victory won by Harrison and R. M. Johnson in Canada. He mentioned briefly the failure of the armies on the St. Lawrence, and at greater length the success of Jackson on the Coosa; and he entered in detail into the retaliatory measures taken on either side in regard to naturalized soldiers. The finances were treated with more show of confidence than was warranted by the prospects of the Treasury; and the Message closed by a succession of paragraphs which seemed written in a spirit of panegyric upon war:-- “The war has proved moreover that our free government like other free governments, though slow in its early movements, acquires in its progress a force proportioned to its freedom; and that the Union of these States, the guardian of the freedom and safety of all and of each, is strengthened by every occasion that puts it to the test. In fine, the war with its vicissitudes is illustrating the capacity and the destiny of the United States to be a great, a flourishing, and a powerful nation.” The rule that feeble and incompetent governments acquire strength by exercise, and especially in war, had been as well understood in 1798 as it was in 1813, and had been the chief cause of Republican antipathy to war; but had Madison publicly expressed the same sentiment in 1798 as in 1813, he would have found himself in a better position to enforce the rights for which he was struggling when the extreme discontent of nearly one third of the States contradicted his congratulations on “the daily testimony of increasing harmony throughout the Union.” Whatever the ultimate result of the war might be, it had certainly not thus far strengthened the Union. On the contrary, public opinion seemed to be rapidly taking the shape that usually preceded a rupture of friendly relations between political societies. Elections in the Middle States showed that the war, if not actually popular, had obliged the people there to support the government for fear of worse evils. New Jersey by a small majority returned to its allegiance, and the city of New York elected a Republican to represent it in Congress; but the steady drift of opinion in the Middle States toward the war was simultaneous with an equally steady drift in the Eastern States against it. The evidences of chronic discontent in the Eastern States were notorious. Less than a month before Madison wrote his Annual Message, Governor Chittenden of Vermont, by proclamation November 10, recalled the State militia from national service:[465]