“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has all the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It is really a manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that it will contribute to relieve the country from the domination of these miserable people.”[473] The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington Observer,” commented thus: “It is a mixture of the Demagogue and the Despot, of depravity, desperation and feelings of malice and vengeance partially smothered. It is the type of the detested hypocrite, who, cornered at all points, still cannot abandon entirely his habitual artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked, in a tone of defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will I.’”[474] So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology of the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the Message at its own expense! But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe” found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of the moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person of Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the battle-field are eclipsed--it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal fame.”[475] And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man of property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would give to Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the greatest of his victories in the field. Both parties were satisfied with the Message. V Never in the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White, a calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he could escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he wrote. “Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to slumber. Ill blood is produced by almost every event; and a great disposition is manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle.... No man can tell when or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all that a prudent man ought to do to avoid difficulties, but should it be my lot to have them forced upon me, my reliance is that Providence will guide me through them safely.”[476]