THE EMBARGO
Almost at the beginning of his second term, Jefferson found himself in
troubled waters, as the United States was drawn slowly but surely into
the vortex of European war. The carrying trade at home and abroad had
fallen very much into the hands of Americans, and this became the root
of bitterness. The tonnage of their vessels employed in foreign trade
and entered at the custom-houses of the United States was equal to
nearly four fifths of the tonnage of British vessels engaged in the same
traffic and entered at home. But there was this difference: the foreign
commerce of Great Britain was almost all carried on from her own ports,
and the returns, therefore, showed its full volume. On the other hand,
the American ships were largely the carriers between the ports of the
belligerents and of other powers in Europe, and there were no entries at
the American custom-houses of their employment, or that they were
employed at all. As early as 1804-5, the aggregate value of this foreign
trade in the hands of Americans was probably much larger than that
controlled by English merchants; and the former increased to the time
of the promulgation of the Berlin decree of 1806, and the British orders
in council of the next year. Nor was it only that wealth flowed into the
country as the immediate return from this trade abroad. It stimulated
enterprise and industry at home by the increase of capital; and there
was not only more money to work with, but more to spend. Consequently
the increase in exports and in imports grew steadily. In 1805, 1806, and
1807, about one half the average total exports, something over the value
of twenty million dollars, went to Great Britain alone; and the value of
the imports from that country for the same period was about sixty
million dollars a year. Nor did this disproportion, though increasing
with the growing prosperity, represent a general balance of trade
against the United States, as one school of political economists would
insist it must have done. For the imports were small from other European
countries in exchange for American products; and the difference,
together with the profits of the carrying trade abroad, was remitted in
English manufactures. In other words, the imports from England
represented the returns for all exports to Europe, and the returns
also--available in the first instance through bills of exchange--of the
trade which had been gained by Americans, and lost by those nations
whose ships the war had driven from the ocean.
The British manufacturer had no reason for discontent with this state of
things. The best market for his goods was constantly improving, and he
did not much care who took them to America. But the English government,
and the English merchants who owned ships, looked on with neither
pleasure nor patience. It was impossible not to see that the United
States was fast becoming a great commercial rival. This in itself was
bad enough; but it was the harder to bear when it was remembered--and it
could not be forgotten--that the rivalry came from States so lately in
revolt against England, and that their President at that moment was one
of the most obnoxious of the rebels. Then what did it avail that England
was mistress of the seas, if her formidable enemy could laugh at any
effort of hers to destroy the commerce of France, so long as that
commerce could be carried on in safety under a neutral flag? If that
flag must be respected, English naval vessels and privateers would
cruise in vain for prizes, for the merchant ships of any belligerent,
not strong enough to protect them, stayed in port. It had not yet come
to be the acknowledged law of nations that free ships make free goods.
But nearly the same purpose was answered if the property of belligerents
could be safely carried in neutral ships under the pretense of being
owned by neutrals. The products of the French colonies, for example,
could be loaded on board of American vessels, taken to the United States
and reshipped there for France as American property. England looked upon
this as an evasion of the recognized public law that property of
belligerents was good prize. Accordingly, when she saw that French
commerce was thus put out of her reach, and that the rival she most
dreaded was growing rich and powerful in the possession of it, she
sought a remedy and was not long in finding one.
It was denied that neutrals could take advantage of a state of war to
enter upon a trade which had not existed in time of peace; and American
ships were seized on the high seas, taken into port, and condemned in
the admiralty courts for carrying enemy's goods in such a trade. The
exercise of that right, if it were one by the recognized law of nations,
would be of great injury to American commerce, unless it could be
successfully resisted. To show that it was not good law, Mr. Madison
wrote his "Examination of the British Doctrine which Subjects to Capture
a Neutral Trade not Open in the Time of Peace." The essay was a careful
and thorough discussion of the whole question, and showed by citations
from the most eminent writers on international law, by the terms of
treaties, and by the conduct of nations in the past, that the British
doctrine was erroneous and would lead to other infringements of the
rights of neutrals. But argument, however unanswerable, has never yet
brought the British government to reason, unless there was something
behind it not so easy to disregard. The appropriation for Mr.
Jefferson's gunboats could not get that naval arm ready for effective
service much before the year 1815, even if it could then be of use; and
there was, moreover, this further difficulty in the way of its
efficiency at the time,--that, as it could not go to the enemy, it must
wait for the enemy to come to it; the conflagration would have to be
brought to the fire-engines. A war with England must be a naval war; and
the United States not only had no navy of any consequence, but it was a
part of Mr. Jefferson's policy, in contrast with the policy of the
preceding administrations, that there should be none, except these
gunboats kept on wheels and under cover in readiness to repel an
invasion. But there was no fear of invasion, for by that England could
gain nothing. "She is renewing," Madison wrote in the autumn of 1805,
"her depredations on our commerce in the most ruinous shapes, and has
kindled a more general indignation among our merchants than was ever
before expressed."
These depredations were not confined to the seizing and confiscating
American ships under the pretense that their cargoes were contraband.
Seamen were taken out of them on the charge of being British subjects
and deserters, not only on the high seas in larger numbers than ever
before, but within the waters of the United States. No doubt these
seamen were often British subjects and their seizure was justifiable,
provided England could rightfully extend to all parts of the globe and
to the ships of all nations the merciless system of impressment to which
her own people were compelled to submit at home. Monroe, in a note to
Madison, said that the British minister had informed him that "great
abuses were committed in granting protections" in America, and
acknowledged that "he gave me some examples which were most shameful."
But even if it could be granted that English naval officers might seize
such men without recourse to law, wherever they should be found and
without respect for the flag of another nation, it was a national insult
and outrage, calling for resentment and resistance, to impress American
citizens under the pretense that they were British subjects. But what
was the remedy? As a last resort in such cases, nations have but one.
Diplomacy and legislation may be first tried, but, if these fail, war
must be the final ordeal. For this the administration made no
preparation, and the more evident the unreadiness the less was the
chance of redress in any other way. Immediate war would, of course, have
been unwise; for what could a nation almost without a ship hope from a
contest with a power having the largest and most efficient navy in the
world? If this, however, was true from 1805 to 1807, it was not less
true in 1812. But it need not have been true when war was actually
resorted to, had the intervening years been years of preparation. The
fact was, however, that the party which supported the administration was
no more in favor of war at the earlier period than the administration
itself was; and meanwhile, till a war party had come into existence and
gained the ascendency, the country had been growing every year less and
less in a condition to appeal to war.
The first measure adopted to meet the aggressions of the English was an
act prohibiting the importation of certain British products. This had
always been a favorite policy with Madison. He had advanced and upheld
it in former years, when a member of Congress, and when Great Britain
had first violated the rights and dignity of the United States by
interference with her foreign trade and by impressing her citizens.
Non-intercourse had been an effective measure thirty years before, and
had a kind of prestige as an American policy. It was not seen, perhaps
could not be seen without experience, that a measure suited to the
colonial condition was not sufficient for an independent nation. But the
President and secretary were in perfect accord; for Jefferson preferred
anything to war, and Madison was persuaded that England would be brought
to terms by the loss of the best market for her manufactures. Others,
and notably John Randolph, saw in the measure only the first step which,
if persisted in, must lead to war; while, in the mean time, to interfere
with importations would be quite as great an injury to the United States
as to Great Britain. Randolph was apt to blurt out a good deal of truth
when it happened to suit him. Impressment, he said, was an old grievance
which had been thought a sufficient provocation for war when the nation
was not prepared; and it was no more ready to resort to that desperate
remedy now than it had been in the past. Without a navy it would be
impossible to prevent the blockading of all the principal American ports
by English squadrons. The United States would need an ally, and he was
not willing she should throw herself into the arms of that power which
was seeking universal conquest. France, he said, would be the tyrant of
the ocean if the British navy should be driven from it. The commerce,
moreover, which it was proposed to protect, was not the "honest trade of
America," but "a mushroom, a fungus of war,--a trade which, so soon as
the nations of Europe are at peace, will no longer exist." It was only
"a carrying trade which covers enemy's property;" and he did not believe
in plunging a great agricultural country into war for the benefit of the
shipping merchants of a few seaports. There were many who agreed with
him; for it was one of the cardinal principles of the Jeffersonian
school of politics that between commerce and agriculture there was a
natural antagonism.
But the administration did not rely upon legislation alone in this
emergency. The President followed up the act prohibiting the
introduction of British goods by sending William Pinkney to England in
the spring of 1806 to join Monroe, the resident minister, in an attempt
at negotiation. These commissioners soon wrote that there was good
reason for hoping that a treaty would be concluded, and thereupon the
non-importation act was for a time suspended. In December came the
news that a treaty was agreed upon, and soon after it was received by
the President. The most serious difficulty in the way of negotiation had
been the question of impressment. The British government claimed the
right to arrest deserters from its service anywhere outside the
jurisdiction of other nations, and that jurisdiction, it was maintained,
could not extend beyond the coast limit over the open sea, the highway
of all nations. There was an evident disposition, however, to come to
some compromise. The English commissioners proposed that their
government should prohibit, under penalty, the seizure of American
citizens anywhere, and that the United States should forbid, on her
part, the granting of certificates of citizenship to British subjects,
of which deserters took advantage. But as this would be an
acknowledgment virtually of the right of search on board American ships,
and the denial of citizenship in the United States to foreigners, the
American commissioners could not entertain that proposition. They were
willing, however, if the assumed right to board American ships were
given up, to agree, on behalf of their government, to aid in the arrest
and return of British deserters when seeking a refuge in the United
States. But to this the British commissioners would not accede.
Monroe and Pinkney were enjoined, in the instructions written by the
secretary of state, to make the abandonment of impressment the first
condition of a treaty. A treaty, nevertheless, was agreed upon, without
this provision. But when it was sent to the President, the ministers
explained:--
"That, although this government [the British] did not feel at
liberty to relinquish, formally, by treaty, its claim to search our
merchant vessels for British seamen, its practice would
nevertheless be essentially, if not completely, abandoned. That
opinion has since been confirmed by frequent conferences on the
subject with the British commissioners, who have repeatedly assured
us that, in their judgment, we were made as sure against the
exercise of their pretension by the policy which their government
had adopted in regard to that very delicate and important question,
as we could have been made by treaty."
These assurances did not satisfy the President. Without consulting the
Senate, though Congress was in session when the treaty was received, and
although the Senate had been previously informed that one had been
agreed upon, the President rejected it. On several other points it was
not acceptable; but, as Mr. Madison wrote to a friend, "the case of
impressments particularly having been brought to a formal issue, and
having been the primary object of an extraordinary mission, a treaty
could not be closed which was silent on that subject." The
commissioners, therefore, were ordered to renew negotiations. This they
faithfully tried to do for a year, but were finally told by the British
minister that a treaty once concluded and signed, but afterward rejected
in part by one of the contracting powers, could not again be taken up
for consideration. The opponents of the administration made the most of
this action of Mr. Jefferson. The country was not permitted to forget,
even were forgetfulness possible, that thousands of seamen had been
taken from American vessels, and that the larger proportion of these
were native-born citizens of the United States. Not that these opponents
wanted war; that, they believed, would be ruinous without a navy, and
therefore some reasonable compromise was all that could be hoped for.
But what was to be thought of an administration that would not go to war
because it was not prepared; would not prepare in the hope that some
future conjunction of circumstances would stave off that last resort;
and, meanwhile, would accept no terms which might at least mitigate the
injuries visited upon the sea-faring people of the United States, and
possibly relieve the nation from an insolent exercise of power which it
was not strong enough to resent?
As England's need of seamen increased, the captains of her cruisers,
encouraged by the failure of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling
American ships and taking out as many men as they believed, or pretended
to believe, were deserters. In the summer of 1807 an outrage was
perpetrated on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize the contempt
with which a nation must be looked upon which only screamed like a woman
at wrongs which it wanted the courage and strength to resent, or the
wisdom to compound for. The Chesapeake was followed out of the harbor
of Norfolk by the British man-of-war Leopard, and when a few miles at
sea, the Chesapeake being brought to under the pretense that the English
captain wished to put some dispatches on board for Europe, a demand was
made for certain deserters supposed to be on the American frigate.
Commodore Barron replied that he knew of no deserters on his ship, and
that he could permit no search to be made, even if there were. After
some further altercation the Englishman fired a broadside, killing and
wounding a number of the Chesapeake's crew. Commodore Barron could do
nothing else but surrender, for he had only a single gun in readiness
for use, and that was fired only once and then with a coal from the
cook's galley. The ship was then boarded, the crew mustered, and four
men arrested as deserters. Three of them were negroes,--two natives of
the United States, the other of South America. The fourth man, probably,
was an Englishman. They were all deserters from English men-of-war lying
off Norfolk; but the three negroes declared that they had been kidnaped,
and their right to escape could not be justly questioned; indeed, the
English afterward took this view of it apparently, for the men were
released on the arrival of the Leopard at Halifax. But the fourth man
was hanged.
For this direct national insult, explanation, apology, and reparation
were demanded, and at the same time the President put forth a
proclamation forbidding all British ships of war to remain in American
waters. Of how much use the latter was we learn from a letter of Madison
to Monroe: "They continue to defy it," he wrote, "not only by remaining
within our waters, but by chasing merchant vessels arriving and
departing." Some preparation was made for war, but it was only to call
upon the militia to be in readiness, and to order Mr. Jefferson's
gunboats to the most exposed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed. The
captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed from his command, as having
exceeded his duty; but a proclamation on that side was also issued,
requiring all ships of war to seize British seamen on board foreign
merchantmen, to demand them from foreign ships of war, and if the demand
was refused to report the fact to the admiral of the fleet. It was not
till after four years of irritating controversy that any settlement was
reached in regard to the affair of the Chesapeake.
New perils all the while were besetting American commerce. In November,
1806, Napoleon's Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the
introduction into France of the products of Great Britain and her
colonies, whether in her own ships or those of other nations. This was
in violation of the convention between France and the United States, if
it was meant that American vessels should come under the prohibition;
but for a time there was some hope that they might be excepted. In the
course of the year, however, it was officially declared in Paris that
the treaty would not be allowed to weaken the force of a war measure
aimed at Great Britain. Under this decision, cargoes already seized were
confiscated and the trade of the United States faced a new calamity. The
decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation of a British order
in council of six months before, which had established a partial
blockade of a portion of the French coast. In the kidnaping business,
France could not, of course, compete with England; for there were few of
her citizens to be found on board of American vessels, and to seize a
Yankee sailor, under the pretense that he was a Frenchman, was an
absurdity never thought of. But hundreds of Americans, the crews of
ships seized for violation of the terms of the Berlin decree, were
thrown into French prisons. So far, therefore, as the United States had
good ground of complaint on any score against either power, there was
little to choose between them. Mr. Jefferson's repugnance to war was
sufficient to hold him back from one with England, though he might have
had France for an ally; still more unwilling was he, by a war with
France, to make a friend of England, whom he still looked upon as the
natural enemy of the United States; for, notwithstanding all that had
come and gone, he still regarded France with something of the old
affection. In the autumn of 1807 he called a special session of Congress
in consideration of the increasing aggressions of Great Britain,
especially in the attack upon the Chesapeake, and the injury done by the
interdiction of neutral trade with any country with which that power
was at war. But he had no recommendations to offer of resistance nor
even of defense, except that some additions be made to the gunboats, and
that sailors on shore be enrolled as a sort of gunboat militia. The
probable real purpose of calling the extra session, however, appeared in
about two weeks, when he sent a special message to the Senate
recommending an embargo.
An act was almost immediately passed which, if anything more was needed
to complete the ruin of American commerce, supplied that deficiency. A
month before this time the English ministry had issued a new order in
council--the news of which reached Jefferson as he was about to send in
his message--proclaiming a blockade of pretty much all Europe, and
forbidding any trade in neutral vessels unless they had first gone into
some British port and paid duties on their cargoes; and within
twenty-four hours of the President's message recommending the embargo,
Napoleon proclaimed a new decree from Milan, by which it was declared
that any ship was lawful prize that had anything whatever to do with
Great Britain,--that should pay it tribute, that should carry its
merchandise, that should be bound either to or from any of its ports.
All that these powers could do to shut every trading vessel out of all
European ports was now done; and at this opportune moment Mr. Jefferson
came to their aid by compelling all American vessels to stay at home. It
is not easy in our time to conceive of a President proposing, or of a
party accepting, or of the people submitting to, such a measure as this.
But Mr. Jefferson's followers were very obedient, and there was,
undoubtedly, a very general belief that trade with the United States was
so important to the nations at war that for the sake of its renewal the
obnoxious decrees and orders in council would soon be repealed. But,
except upon certain manufacturers in England, little influence was
visible. General Armstrong, the American minister in France, wrote:
"Here it is not felt; and in England, amid the more recent and
interesting events of the day, it is forgotten." When, however, the
effect was evident at home of a law forbidding any American vessels from
going to sea, even to catch fish, and prohibiting the export of any of
the products of the United States, either in their own ships or those of
any other country, then there arose a popular clamor for the abandonment
of a policy so ruinous. Within four months of its enactment, Josiah
Quincy of Massachusetts declared, in a debate in Congress, that "an
experiment such as is now making was never before--I will not say
tried--it never before entered into the human imagination. There is
nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of fiction.
All the habits of a mighty nation are at once counteracted. All their
property depreciated. All their external connections violated. Five
millions of people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the limits of
that once free country; now they are not even permitted to thrust their
own property through the grates." While American ships at home were kept
there, those which had remained abroad to escape the embargo were met by
a new peril. Some of them were in French ports awaiting a turn in
affairs; others ventured to load with English goods in English ports, to
be landed in France under the pretense, supported by fraudulent papers,
that they were direct from the United States or other neutral country.
The fraud was too transparent to escape detection long, and Napoleon
thereupon issued, in the spring of 1808, the Bayonne decree authorizing
the seizure and confiscation of all American vessels. They were either
English or American, he said; if the former, they were enemy's ships and
liable to capture; but if the latter, they should be at home, and he was
only enforcing the embargo law of the United States, which she ought to
thank him for.
The prosperity and tranquillity which marked the earlier years of
Jefferson's administration disappeared in its last year. Congress, both
in its spring and winter sessions, could talk of little else but the
disastrous embargo; proposing, on the one hand, to make it the more
stringent by an enforcement act, and, on the other, to substitute for it
non-intercourse with England and France, restoring trade with the rest
of the world, and leaving the question of decrees and orders in council
open for future consideration. The President no longer held his party
under perfect control. The mischievous results of the embargo policy
were evident enough to a sufficient number of Republicans to secure in
February, 1809, the repeal of that measure, to take effect the next
month as to all countries except England and France, and, with regard to
them, at the adjournment of the next Congress. But the prohibition of
importation from both these latter countries was continued till the
obnoxious orders in council and the decrees should be repealed.