The propaganda was beginning to bear its fruits. John Ogden was writing from Litchfield that "many publications in the _Aurora_ have reached Connecticut, within four weeks, which have opened the eyes of the dispassionate" and he was asking for more pamphlets.[377] But a week later Ogden was arrested and to Jefferson he sent a letter "From Lichtfield Goal (sic) at the suit of Oliver Wolcott Esq", to affirm that "prison has no horror to the oppressed, inspired and persecuted." To Aaron Burr in New York Jefferson wrote very affectionately and very familiarly to acquaint him with the state of public affairs.[378] To Monroe he was sending pamphlets, asking him to distribute them where they would do most good, adding as usual "Do not let my name be connected in the business." He never tired of repeating that the proper argument to strike the voters was the enormous increase in the budget of the United States: a loan authorized for five millions at eight per cent., another of two millions to follow and that was just a beginning. All these measures were accepted by Congress in the teeth of Gerry's communications with Talleyrand, showing the French Government willing to continue the negotiations. Then on February 18 came "the event of events." While all the war measures were going on, while the Government of the United States was blockading the French West Indies and French vessels were captured, while there were in several instances cases of actual warfare, the President had had in his hand for several weeks letters exchanged between Pichon, the French chargé at the Hague, and Vans Murray, declaring that the French Government was ready to receive "whatever plenipotentiary the Government of the United States should send to France to end our differences and that he would be received with the respect due to the representative of a _free, independent, and powerful nation_." Adams, almost on the eve of the adjournment of Congress, had decided, as it seems, against the advice and without the knowledge of his Cabinet, not only to communicate the Vans Murray-Pichon papers, but to recommend that Murray be appointed as plenipotentiary to France. The Federalists in the Senate were appalled and at first did not know what to do.[379] But they were not lacking in strategy; not daring to come out openly, they appointed on the President's recommendation, not only Murray but Oliver Ellsworth and Patrick Henry, the last two "not to sail from America before they should receive from the French Directory assurances that they should be received with the respect due to the law of nations, to their character, etc."