For these combined reasons he offered to Benton the post of lieutenant general, provided it could be established, before Scott left Washington, and about the first of January requested Congress to authorize the appointment of such an officer.[24.23] This precipitated a commotion. The Senator's harsh, domineering ways had made him unpopular, and grave doubts regarding his technical and temperamental fitness for the place existed not only in Congress but in the Cabinet. Calhoun and his friends detested the idea of letting Benton gain so much prestige and with it very likely the Presidency; the partisans of Taylor and Scott resented such treatment of their favorites; all the Whigs, besides suspecting Polk of scheming to evade responsibility and make Benton his grateful successor, rallied to the support of their two most prominent men; and, after serving for some time as an embarrassment, the plan was rejected.[24.25] Finally, then, after a conference committee had adjusted the differences between the two Houses, the Ten Regiment Bill, though defeated once in the Senate, passed that body on February the tenth, and received Polk's approval the next day; and as a loan bill had been worried through Congress at the end of January, something was apparently to be done.[24.24] Since, however, the officers were liable to be discharged on the conclusion of peace, it was not believed that many already in the service could be induced by a slight advance in rank to enter the new establishment, and for this and probably other reasons few of the more than five hundred places were offered to the army. The field was therefore clear for civilian warriors, and their campaign opened at once. Not limiting their operations to Capitol Hill, applicants for commissions besieged and assaulted the White House. "I have pushed them off and fought them with both hands like a man fighting fire," wrote Polk in his diary, but "it has all been in vain." "Loafers without merit" came, and equally meritorious Congressmen supported them. Not one in ten of the appointees was known to the President, and their degree of unfitness was precisely what might have been expected. A considerable number of them had actually been run out of the service--in some cases for bad conduct before the enemy--and many were found less teachable than privates.[24.25]