Nothing less than necessity could at that moment of early summer have induced the members of Congress to remain in session at all. Stout as the majority might be in support of the war, the stoutest were depressed and despondent. They saw themselves disappointed in every hope and calculation on which they had counted a year before. Even their unexpected naval glory was lost for the moment by the victory of Broke’s frigate the “Shannon” over the “Chesapeake,” June 1, as Congress began its work. Disaster after disaster, disgrace upon disgrace, had come and were every moment multiplying. Suffocated with heat, members were forced to sit day by day in the half-finished Capitol, with a Southern village about them, their nearest neighbor a British fleet. “Defeated and disgraced everywhere,” said one of the stanchest war members describing the scene, “Congress was to impose the burden of taxes on a divided people, who had been taught by leaders of the war party to look upon a tax-gatherer as a thief, if not to shoot him as a burglar.”[36] According to the same authority, “the country was at the lowest point of depression, where fear is too apt to introduce despair.” In this condition of spirits, Gallatin’s tax-bills were reported to the House June 10,--measures such as the Republican party had, till very lately, not conceived as within the range of its possible legislation. They included a direct tax of three million dollars; taxes on salt, licenses, spirits, carriages, auctions, sugar refineries; a stamp tax, and a complete machinery for the assessment and collection of these odious and oppressive imposts. At the same moment, Daniel Webster began his career in Congress by moving Resolutions which caused a long and unprofitable debate on the conduct of France and the character of the French repealing Decree of April 28, 1811,--a debate that could have no other result or object than to mortify and annoy the President, who had been, like so many other rulers, the victim of Napoleon’s audacity. Pending this debate, June 13, the President took to his bed with a remittent fever, and for five weeks his recovery was doubtful. Madison was still confined to his bed, when, July 15, messengers from the lower Potomac brought news that the British fleet, consisting of eight or ten ships-of-the-line and frigates, was in the river, sixty miles below, making its way up the difficult channel to Washington. A reasonable and well-grounded fear took possession of the city. July 21, Serurier wrote to his Government:[37]-- “Every one is making ready to move. I know that they are secretly packing up at the Departments. I have as yet sent nothing away, in order not to show distrust of the Government’s power; but I have got ready my most valuable papers, and from the moment the President shall quit his residence, I shall follow where he goes, with my principal portfolios in one of my carriages.”