Panic had been imminent before Harrison left office and remained for Cleveland to confront. Already Cleveland had taken a solid stand against free silver and the silver basis. He saw in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act the most striking cause of danger, and summoned Congress to meet in August, 1893, to repeal it, while he maintained the gold reserve for the next two years by borrowing on bonds. For the first time since the Civil War his party controlled every branch of the Government, yet it now met an issue on which it had not been elected and over which it broke to pieces. An angry minority opposed the Message in which Cleveland described the financial dangers and demanded the repeal of the Sherman Law. It was a sectional minority that included Western Representatives from both parties and many Democrats from the South. Men who had fought the Populists since 1890 now fraternized with them and raised their strength beyond their hopes. The President refused compromise, even to save his party from destruction, and found a majority for repeal among Easterners of both parties. The Sherman Law was repealed in November, and the liquidation following the crisis was effected during the next three years. It was a bad beginning for tariff revision, to split the party at its first session and to drive into opposition those Democrats who were most genuinely interested in tariff reform. Cleveland had lost his influence with Western Democrats before the repeal of the McKinley Act was undertaken, and they, like the Populists, had decided that he was the tool of the corporations and the "gold-bugs" of the East. The anti-corporation feelings of the West were increased by the accident which threw the corporations and the farmers into different sides upon the silver question.