Thus the battle of the petitions went merrily on, some spontaneous, most inspired by the Bank agents, while the conflicting memorials were conceived to offset the intended effect. As the weeks extended into months, and the depression began to lift, extraordinary efforts were made to reawaken the country against the “tyrant in the White House.” Webster harangued a crowd in New York City; but the major part of the platform propaganda work was assigned to McDuffie, who better than most men knew how to “ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm”; to Preston, who could arouse men to frenzy or move them to tears; and to Poindexter, who was a veritable fire-eater. These three consummate mob-baiters set forth on a journey that took them to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The orators reached Baltimore on Sunday. But no matter; as a minister of the Gospel piously said, “in revolutionary times there were no Sabbaths,” and the meeting was held. It was on this occasion that McDuffie, with the true spirit of the demagogue, solemnly discussed the “rumor” that Jackson, the tyrant, might attempt to dismiss Congress at the point of the bayonet, and promised that “ten days after the entrance of the soldiers into the Senate Chamber, to send the Senators home, 200,000 volunteers would be in Washington.”[710] Meanwhile the Kitchen Cabinet was capitalizing all the intemperate attacks upon Jackson, and Blair was publishing letters in the “Globe” threatening the life of the President if he did not restore the deposits. One of these recited that three young men in New York had been selected to “proceed in the course of the present month to the capital, there to put in execution the design entrusted to their hands.”[711] III