The British opened the war with a victory, capturing Porto Bello in Panama. That led to an outbreak of patriotic fervour, and further increased the pressure on Walpole and Newcastle for their perceived unwilling prosecution of the war. Newcastle tried to combat that by cultivating a reputation as the leading "patriot" of the cabinet. He took on additional military responsibilities and, for the first two years of war, served as a "de facto" Minister of War. One of his most notable suggestions during the period was the recruitment of large numbers of troops drawn from the American colonies, whose growing manpower had previously gone largely untapped.