John Quincy Adams contemplated the same extreme remedy, and Giddings went so far as to write, "Ohio is now a party to no subsisting Union." Those opposed to the measure felt hostile to the President who had favored and consummated it; the great number whose theory had been that it would not lead to war felt obliged to argue now that Polk had brought about a conflict unnecessarily; and everything in our relations with Mexico was viewed through a fog of prejudices and animosities rising from that gory political battlefield. Not a few appointments to high military positions had seemed to rest on political expediency, and the battles near the Rio Grande had been followed by a long period of inactivity, charged by many to the government. Volunteers not accepted for the war had remarks to make, and troops returning from the front often used expressions hardly coherent enough to be termed remarks. The six-months men called out by Gaines belonged in the latter class; and although Marcy did nothing respecting them save to obey the plain requirement of the law, citizens of Louisiana applied language to him that might have kindled sympathy for Judas Iscariot.[34.8] The government's fiscal system, though of course accepted by many, excited sharp resentment. Overwhelming the country all at once with such a combination of new laws--a warehouse act, a sub-treasury bill and a "free-trade" tariff--was denounced as an unspeakable outrage, and each of those measures amounted in the opinion of many to a crime. Gideon Welles thought the idea of reducing our tariff during the war an "insane project"; and the measure as framed, a compromise between theory and expediency, satisfied hardly any one. Real free-traders complained because their principles had been sacrificed, and the New Englanders because those principles had not been sacrificed enough. The iron and coal state raged and wept by turns: she had been betrayed, and "her groans were music" to the arrogant low-tariff section cherished by the government. Only corruption and intimidation could have carried such a monstrosity through Congress; and, worse yet, "Sir Robert Walker" had been truckling to England. "British all over," scribbled the _American Sentinel_ on the warehousing system; and the tariff was trailed to a British lair packed with British statesmen, British capitalists, British manufacturers and British merchants. To please them our wheels of production were to stop, our banks close, and the industrious North fall in despair at the feet of an implacable South. "'To your tents, O Israel!'" cried the _National Intelligencer_.[34.9] [DENUNCIATIONS OF THE WAR]