The incident outraged American public opinion, and many felt the country's "sense of honor" had been violated. Americans of every political stripe spoke of the need to uphold national honor, and to reject the dismissal of the United States by Britain as a third-class nonentity. Americans talked incessantly about the need for force in response. President Thomas Jefferson noted: "Never since the Battle of Lexington have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present, and even that did not produce such unanimity." James Monroe, then a foreign minister acting under instructions from U.S. Secretary of State James Madison, demanded British disavowal of the deed, the restoration of the four seamen, the recall of Admiral Berkeley, the exclusion of British warships from U.S. territorial waters, and the abolition of impressments from vessels under the United States flag.