When the nomination reached the Senate, nothing was done for five weeks. Meanwhile the leaders of the conspiracy were carefully preparing their speeches for publication and wide distribution. On the submission of the report, the venom behind the remarkable procrastination was revealed in a resolution, entrusted to one of the lesser lights,[389] to recommit the nomination with instructions to investigate the disruption of the Cabinet and whether Van Buren had “participated in any practices disreputable to the national character.” This, offered as a weak contribution to the attempt to blacken Van Buren’s reputation, having served its purpose, was withdrawn without action. Then the orators began. One after another, with a cheap simulation of sorrowful regret over the necessity of injuring an amiable man, poured forth his protest against the nomination. Clay, of course, made a slashing onslaught. Webster confined himself to attacking the victim because of his instructions to McLane. Clayton and Ewing, Hayne and seven others recited their elaborately prepared partisan harangues under the approving eye of Calhoun in the chair. The principal reply, and only four were made, was that of Senator John Forsyth, the accomplished floor leader of the Administration, and one of the most eloquent and resourceful of men. He vigorously protested against a partisan crucifixion, and sarcastically commended the fine public spirit of Senators who could voluntarily bring such distress upon themselves to serve the public good. This fling went home to many. Hayne, in later years, admitted that he had spoken and voted against his judgment at the behest of party,[390] and John Tyler, who was incapable of a pose, voted for the confirmation, “not that I liked the man overmuch,” but because he could find no principle to justify his rejection, and did not care to join “the notoriously factious opposition ... who oppose everything favored by the Administration.”[391] Indeed, the cooler and wiser heads among the enemies of the Administration considered the attack a serious political blunder. Adams, on learning of the plan, warned that “to reject the nomination would bring him [Van Buren] back with increased power to do mischief here.”[392] And Thurlow Weed, of the “Albany Journal,” uncannily wise and prophetic, sounded a solemn warning through his editorial columns that such persecution of Van Buren “would change the complexion of his prospects from despair to hope.” The plan persisted in, and “he would return home as a persecuted man, and throw himself upon the sympathy of the party, be nominated for Vice-President, and huzzahed into office at the heels of General Jackson.”[393]