The issue of impressment was then at its height. The British Navy, short of manpower, charged that many of its men were deserting to the American merchant marine to enjoy better pay and working conditions. It was not at all unusual for British men-of-war to hail American merchantmen on the high seas and search them for deserters. Nor were the British too careful about the men they took off, frequently including American citizens among them. This practice had been bitterly resented by a large part of the American public, but, while complaints had been made to the British Government, the abuse had not yet been considered a cause for war. The incident of the _Leopard_ and the _Chesapeake_, however, was different. This was the first time a British man-of-war had thus dealt with an American man-of-war. It therefore assumed the proportions of a national insult. In spite of the primitive communications of the times, the bad news traveled with astonishing speed. Three days after the clash between the two ships word of it reached Washington. It spread rapidly to the cities up and down the coast. As it spread public indignation rose to fever heat. Political animosities were for the time being forgotten as the public seethed with resentment at this latest outrage at the hands of the British Navy. The bitterness of the days of the Revolution against King George III, who, though old and broken mentally, was still on the throne, was revived. President Jefferson later remarked that at that moment he held the issue of peace and war in the hollow of his hand. The Richmond community shared wholeheartedly in this tidal wave of indignation. The sensational news from Norfolk reached the city almost simultaneously with the Grand Jury’s indictment of Burr and Blennerhassett and their alleged fellow conspirators. Momentarily the trial yielded first place in the public consciousness to this threat against national sovereignty from abroad. In its issue of Saturday, June 27, the _Enquirer_ published a dispatch from Norfolk, dated three days earlier, which revealed the intensity of public feeling there and clarified the reports and rumors that had reached Richmond by presenting an orderly account of what had actually happened. “We are now to present our readers,” said the _Enquirer_, “the details of the most unexampled outrage, on the perpetration of which the blood of our countrymen has been shed by the hand of violence, and the honor and independence of our nation insulted beyond the possibility of further forbearance.” There followed a vivid account of the attack.