Even where the Whigs were strongest, the militant Democrats poured forth in defiant demonstrations. When Jackson, returning to Washington from the Hermitage in the closing days of the campaign, approached Lexington, the home of his rival, a multitude streamed down the road five miles to meet him, with over a thousand on horseback and in carriages, and before he reached his lodging the throng extended back two miles along the road “with green hickory bushes waving like bright banners in a breeze.”[525] It was inevitable that in such a campaign personalities should intrude. In the winter of 1831-32, while Congress was in session, Jackson took advantage of the presence of Dr. Harris, an eminent Philadelphia surgeon, to have the bullet from Benton’s pistol, long lodged in his shoulder, removed. When the surgeon appeared at the White House, he was engaged with company, but excused himself with the explanation that he would have to submit to an operation; and a few hours later he reappeared among his friends with his arm in a sling. “Precisely,” wrote Blair, “as he had appeared with it in battle among the enemies of his country.”[526] This gave the Whigs their cue, and their press teemed with references to the “disgusting affair” in which the shot had been fired. And Blair himself was able to retaliate in kind with the story of a wound received by Clay in a personal conflict. “He was taken to a kind friend’s house,” he wrote, “he was treated with the utmost tenderness and courtesy by that friend’s wife and family, and while enjoying their hospitality, he amused himself ... by winning the money of his kind host at Brag.” If Jackson was a brawler, it was given out thus that Clay was not only a brawler, but a gambler and an ingrate. Both stories made their way through the country.[527] If the cholera was not of sufficient importance for the news columns of the party press, it was rich in suggestion to the politicians. The Dutch Synod requested Jackson to set a day aside for prayer. He replied that he had faith in the efficacy of prayer, but that the special day to be set aside should be designated by the State authorities. Whereupon Clay arose to offer a resolution in the Senate setting a day aside and fixing the day. Aha, cried Blair, he wants a veto on a religious subject. “It is not the cholera that makes them so pious; it is the hope to steal a march on the old Hero.... What whited sepulchers some of these partisan leaders are!” he wrote.[528]