When Congress met, Jackson had concluded to postpone his fight on the Bank. Three reasons entered into the decision--the friendliness of his Secretary of the Treasury to the institution, the realization that a majority in Congress favored the recharter, and the fear that a contest during the session would throw the tremendous weight of the Bank’s influence against him in the election. Most of his advisers, including Benton, were anxious to postpone the contest. Just as Biddle had thought that time would operate to the advantage of the institution, Benton was confident that it would work to its detriment, and he wished to strengthen the anti-Bank lines in the Senate and to have Van Buren in the chair when the contest came. McLane’s pronouncedly pro-Bank report had deeply embarrassed the President’s supporters. Creating indignation in some quarters, consternation in others, Jackson hastened to explain it away in a letter to Hamilton; but just how he persuaded himself that the views of the report did “not express any opposition to those entertained by myself,” is not clear.[441] The Bank supporters had eagerly seized upon the McLane report, and Webb, of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” now deserting the Administration on the Bank question, commented glowingly upon its author and his views. That this was gall and wormwood to Jackson and his intimates is evident in the correspondence which passed between them. “The article ... was calculated if Blair had replied, to do McLane irreparable injury in a political point of view, because it might have brought him and the President into seeming collision,” wrote Major Lewis to Hamilton.[442] And all this time, McLane, who was one of Hamilton’s correspondents, was frankly admitting to the latter that he had “most earnestly urged Mr. Clay not to attempt to pass a Bank bill at this session, insisting that, if deferred to the next session, he was satisfied that he could, by that time, induce Jackson to approve it”; but that Clay had “persisted in the hope, that if the President approved the bill, he would lose the support of those of his party who had approved his opposition to the Bank, and a vast many others who approved of the State Bank system.” Or, on the other hand, “if the President vetoed the bill, he would lose Pennsylvania and his election.”[443] Thus it is clear enough, that if Jackson could have determined, the Bank would not have been an issue in 1832.