The Fourteenth Congress was well disposed to support the attempt. Under the stress of war the people had selected as their representatives the ablest and most vigorous men of their generation. The war leaders were mostly returned,--Calhoun, Clay, Lowndes, Richard M. Johnson, Peter B. Porter, and John Forsyth,--while the old peace party was strongly represented by Timothy Pickering, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, Grosvenor of New York, and Stanford of North Carolina; but perhaps the most distinguished member of all was William Pinkney of Maryland. A swarm of younger men, far above the average, reinforced both sides of the House. Philip P. Barbour sat again for Virginia. John McLean sat again for Ohio. Henry St. George Tucker came for the first time into the House. Joseph Hopkinson, Samuel D. Ingham, and John Sergeant raised the character of the Pennsylvania delegation; and Samuel Smith, at last ejected from the Senate by a Federalist legislature in Maryland, reappeared in the House for the first time since 1803. The Senate was also improved. The disappearance of Leib and Samuel Smith was made more suggestive by the resignation of Giles. David Stone of North Carolina, another independent much given to opposition at critical moments, also resigned; and another of the same class, Joseph Anderson of Tennessee, who had been a member of the Senate since 1797, retired to become First Comptroller of the Treasury. These retirements removed the chief abettors of faction, and changed the character of the Senate until it seemed to belong to a different epoch. Jonathan Roberts still sat in the place of Leib. Armistead Mason took the seat of Giles, and with James Barbour gave Madison for the first time the full support of Virginia. Macon took the place of David Stone. George W. Campbell took the place of Joseph Anderson. Robert G. Harper, the old champion of Federalism, succeeded Samuel Smith from Maryland. The Senate scarcely recognized itself as the same body that since 1808 had so persistently thwarted and fretted the President. In the arrangement of new party divisions the Fourteenth Congress, unlike its recent predecessors, consciously aimed to take a decided share. The House seemed for the first time in many years to pride itself on intellectual superiority. William Pinkney, Calhoun, Lowndes, Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, and their associates were not men who bowed to authority, even of the people, but rather looked on the task of government as a function of superior intellect. They proposed to correct what they considered mistaken popular tendencies. Each expressed his ideas with sufficient clearness in the form natural to him. Calhoun generalized before descending to particulars.[120]