The embargo was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the
scheme of President Jefferson’s statesmanship, non-intercourse was the
substitute for war,--the weapon of defence and coercion which saved
the cost and danger of supporting army or navy, and spared America
the brutalities of the Old World. Failure of the embargo meant in
his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every
political and social evil that war had always brought in its train. In
such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the
object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later
teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast, was a
proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller
interests. Jefferson understood better than his friends the importance
of his experiment; and when in pursuing his object he trampled upon
personal rights and public principles, he did so, as he avowed in the
Louisiana purchase, because he believed that a higher public interest
required the sacrifice:--
“My principle is, that the conveniences of our citizens shall yield
reasonably, and their taste greatly, to the importance of giving
the present experiment so fair a trial that on future occasions our
legislators may know with certainty how far they may count on it as
an engine for national purposes.”[228]
Hence came his repeated entreaties for severity, even to the point of
violence and bloodshed:--
“I do consider the severe enforcement of the embargo to be of an
importance not to be measured by money, for our future government as
well as present objects.”[229]
Everywhere, on all occasions, he proclaimed that embargo was the
alternative to war. The question next to be decided was brought by
this means into the prominence it deserved. Of the two systems of
statesmanship, which was the most costly,--which the most efficient?
The dread of war, radical in the Republican theory, sprang not so much
from the supposed waste of life or resources as from the retroactive
effects which war must exert upon the form of government; but the
experience of a few months showed that the embargo as a system was
rapidly leading to the same effects. Indeed, the embargo and the
Louisiana purchase taken together were more destructive to the theory
and practice of a Virginia republic than any foreign war was likely
to be. Personal liberties and rights of property were more directly
curtailed in the United States by embargo than in Great Britain by
centuries of almost continuous foreign war. No one denied that a
permanent embargo strained the Constitution to the uttermost tension;
and even the Secretary of the Treasury and the President admitted that
it required the exercise of most arbitrary, odious, and dangerous
powers. From this point of view the system was quickly seen to have
few advantages. If American liberties must perish, they might as well
be destroyed by war as be stifled by non-intercourse.
While the constitutional cost of the two systems was not altogether
unlike, the economical cost was a point not easily settled. No
one could say what might be the financial expense of embargo as
compared with war. Yet Jefferson himself in the end admitted that the
embargo had no claim to respect as an economical measure. The Boston
Federalists estimated that the net American loss of income, exclusive
of that on freights, could not be less than ten per cent for interest
and profit on the whole export of the country,--or ten million eight
hundred thousand dollars on a total export value of one hundred and
eight millions.[230] This estimate was extravagant, even if the
embargo had been wholly responsible for cutting off American trade;
it represented in fact the loss resulting to America from Napoleon’s
decrees, the British orders, and the embargo taken together. Yet at
least the embargo was more destructive than war would have been to
the interests of foreign commerce. Even in the worst of foreign wars
American commerce could not be wholly stopped,--some outlet for
American produce must always remain open, some inward bound ships
would always escape the watch of a blockading squadron. Even in 1814,
after two years of war, and when the coast was stringently blockaded,
the American Treasury collected six million dollars from imports; but
in 1808, after the embargo was in full effect, the customs yielded
only a few thousand dollars on cargoes that happened to be imported
for some special purpose. The difference was loss, to the disadvantage
of embargo. To this must be added loss of freight, decay of ships and
produce, besides enforced idleness to a corresponding extent; and
finally the cost of a war if the embargo system should fail.
In other respects the system was still costly. The citizen was not
killed, but he was partially paralyzed. Government did not waste money
or life, but prevented both money and labor from having their former
value. If long continued, embargo must bankrupt the government almost
as certainly as war; if not long continued, the immediate shock to
industry was more destructive than war would have been. The expense of
war proved, five years afterward, to be about thirty million dollars
a year, and of this sum much the larger portion was pure loss; but
in 1808, owing to the condition of Europe, the expense need not have
exceeded twenty millions, and the means at hand were greater. The
effect of the embargo was certainly no greater than the effect of war
in stimulating domestic industry. In either case the stimulus was
temporary and ineffective; but the embargo cut off the resources of
credit and capital, while war gave both an artificial expansion. The
result was that while embargo saved perhaps twenty millions of dollars
a year and some thousands of lives which war would have consumed, it
was still an expensive system, and in some respects more destructive
than war itself to national wealth.
The economical was less serious than the moral problem. The strongest
objection to war was not its waste of money or even of life; for money
and life in political economy were worth no more than they could be
made to produce. A worse evil was the lasting harm caused by war to
the morals of mankind, which no system of economy could calculate.
The reign of brute force and brutal methods corrupted and debauched
society, making it blind to its own vices and ambitious only for
mischief. Yet even on that ground the embargo had few advantages. The
peaceable coercion which Jefferson tried to substitute for war was
less brutal, but hardly less mischievous, than the evil it displaced.
The embargo opened the sluice-gates of social corruption. Every
citizen was tempted to evade or defy the laws. At every point along
the coast and frontier the civil, military, and naval services were
brought in contact with corruption; while every man in private life
was placed under strong motives to corrupt. Every article produced or
consumed in the country became an object of speculation; every form
of industry became a form of gambling. The rich could alone profit
in the end; while the poor must sacrifice at any loss the little they
could produce.
If war made men brutal, at least it made them strong; it called out
the qualities best fitted to survive in the struggle for existence.
To risk life for one’s country was no mean act even when done for
selfish motives; and to die that others might more happily live was
the highest act of self-sacrifice to be reached by man. War, with
all its horrors, could purify as well as debase; it dealt with high
motives and vast interests; taught courage, discipline, and stern
sense of duty. Jefferson must have asked himself in vain what lessons
of heroism or duty were taught by his system of peaceable coercion,
which turned every citizen into an enemy of the laws,--preaching the
fear of war and of self-sacrifice, making many smugglers and traitors,
but not a single hero.
If the cost of the embargo was extravagant in its effects on the
Constitution, the economy, and the morals of the nation, its political
cost to the party in power was ruinous. War could have worked no
more violent revolution. The trial was too severe for human nature
to endure. At a moment’s notice, without avowing his true reasons,
President Jefferson bade foreign commerce to cease. As the order
was carried along the seacoast, every artisan dropped his tools,
every merchant closed his doors, every ship was dismantled. American
produce--wheat, timber, cotton, tobacco, rice--dropped in value
or became unsalable; every imported article rose in price; wages
stopped; swarms of debtors became bankrupt; thousands of sailors hung
idle round the wharves trying to find employment on coasters, and
escape to the West Indies or Nova Scotia. A reign of idleness began;
and the men who were not already ruined felt that their ruin was only
a matter of time.
The British traveller, Lambert, who visited New York in 1808,
described it as resembling a place ravaged by pestilence:[231]--
“The port indeed was full of shipping, but they were dismantled and
laid up; their decks were cleared, their hatches fastened down,
and scarcely a sailor was to be found on board. Not a box, bale,
cask, barrel, or package was to be seen upon the wharves. Many of
the counting-houses were shut up, or advertised to be let; and the
few solitary merchants, clerks, porters, and laborers that were to
be seen were walking about with their hands in their pockets. The
coffee-houses were almost empty; the streets, near the water-side,
were almost deserted; the grass had begun to grow upon the wharves.”
In New England, where the struggle of existence was keenest, the
embargo struck like a thunderbolt, and society for a moment thought
itself at an end. Foreign commerce and shipping were the life of the
people,--the ocean, as Pickering said, was their farm. The outcry of
suffering interests became every day more violent, as the public
learned that this paralysis was not a matter of weeks, but of months
or years. New Englanders as a class were a law-abiding people; but
from the earliest moments of their history they had largely qualified
their obedience to the law by the violence with which they abused
and the ingenuity with which they evaded it. Against the embargo and
Jefferson they concentrated the clamor and passion of their keen and
earnest nature. Rich and poor, young and old, joined in the chorus;
and one lad, barely in his teens, published what he called “The
Embargo: a Satire,”--a boyish libel on Jefferson, which the famous
poet and Democrat would afterward have given much to recall:--
“And thou, the scorn of every patriot name,
Thy country’s ruin, and her councils’ shame.
* * * * *
Go, wretch! Resign the Presidential chair,
Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair;
Go search with curious eye for hornèd frogs
’Mid the wild waste of Louisiana bogs;
Or where Ohio rolls his turbid stream
Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme.”[232]
The belief that Jefferson, sold to France, wished to destroy American
commerce and to strike a deadly blow at New and Old England at once,
maddened the sensitive temper of the people. Immense losses, sweeping
away their savings and spreading bankruptcy through every village,
gave ample cause for their complaints. Yet in truth, New England
was better able to defy the embargo than she was willing to suppose.
She lost nothing except profits which the belligerents had in any
case confiscated; her timber would not harm for keeping, and her fish
were safe in the ocean. The embargo gave her almost a monopoly of the
American market for domestic manufactures; no part of the country
was so well situated or so well equipped for smuggling. Above all,
she could easily economize. The New Englander knew better than any
other American how to cut down his expenses to the uttermost point of
parsimony; and even when he became bankrupt he had but to begin anew.
His energy, shrewdness, and education were a capital which the embargo
could not destroy, but rather helped to improve.
The growers of wheat and live stock in the Middle States were more
hardly treated. Their wheat, reduced in value from two dollars to
seventy-five cents a bushel, became practically unsalable. Debarred a
market for their produce at a moment when every article of common use
tended to rise in cost, they were reduced to the necessity of living
on the produce of their farms; but the task was not then so difficult
as in later times, and the cities still furnished local markets not
to be despised. The manufacturers of Pennsylvania could not but feel
the stimulus of the new demand; so violent a system of protection
was never applied to them before or since. Probably for that reason
the embargo was not so unpopular in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, and
Jefferson had nothing to fear from political revolution in this calm
and plodding community.
The true burden of the embargo fell on the Southern States, but most
severely upon the great State of Virginia. Slowly decaying, but
still half patriarchal, Virginia society could neither economize
nor liquidate. Tobacco was worthless; but four hundred thousand
negro slaves must be clothed and fed, great establishments must be
kept up, the social scale of living could not be reduced, and even
bankruptcy could not clear a large landed estate without creating
new encumbrances in a country where land and negroes were the only
forms of property on which money could be raised. Stay-laws were
tried, but served only to prolong the agony. With astonishing rapidity
Virginia succumbed to ruin, while continuing to support the system
that was draining her strength. No episode in American history was
more touching than the generous devotion with which Virginia clung
to the embargo, and drained the poison which her own President held
obstinately to her lips. The cotton and rice States had less to lose,
and could more easily bear bankruptcy; ruin was to them--except in
Charleston--a word of little meaning; but the old society of Virginia
could never be restored. Amid the harsh warnings of John Randolph it
saw its agonies approach; and its last representative, heir to all its
honors and dignities, President Jefferson himself woke from his long
dream of power only to find his own fortunes buried in the ruin he
had made.
Except in a state of society verging on primitive civilization, the
stoppage of all foreign intercourse could not have been attempted by
peaceable means. The attempt to deprive the laborer of sugar, salt,
tea, coffee, molasses, and rum; to treble the price of every yard of
coarse cottons and woollens; to reduce by one half the wages of labor,
and to double its burdens,--this was a trial more severe than war;
and even when attempted by the whole continent of Europe, with all
the resources of manufactures and wealth which the civilization of
a thousand years had supplied, the experiment required the despotic
power of Napoleon and the united armies of France, Austria, and Russia
to carry it into effect. Even then it failed. Jefferson, Madison, and
the Southern Republicans had no idea of the economical difficulties
their system created, and were surprised to find American society
so complex even in their own Southern States that the failure of
two successive crops to find a sale threatened beggary to every
rich planter from the Delaware to the Sabine. During the first few
months, while ships continued to arrive from abroad and old stores
were consumed at home, the full pressure of the embargo was not felt;
but as the summer of 1808 passed, the outcry became violent. In the
Southern States, almost by common consent debts remained unpaid, and
few men ventured to oppose a political system which was peculiarly a
Southern invention; but in the Northern States, where the bankrupt
laws were enforced and the habits of business were comparatively
strict, the cost of the embargo was soon shown in the form of
political revolution.
The relapse of Massachusetts to Federalism and the overthrow of
Senator Adams in the spring of 1808 were the first signs of the
political price which President Jefferson must pay for his passion of
peace. In New York the prospect was little better. Governor Morgan
Lewis, elected in 1804 over Aaron Burr by a combination of Clintons
and Livingstons, was turned out of office in 1807 by the Clintons.
Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, his successor, was supposed to be a
representative of De Witt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer. To De Witt
Clinton the State of New York seemed in 1807 a mere appendage,--a
political property which he could control at will; and of all American
politicians next to Aaron Burr none had shown such indifference to
party as he. No one could predict his course, except that it would be
shaped according to what seemed to be the interests of his ambition.
He began by declaring himself against the embargo, and soon afterward
declared himself for it. In truth, he was for or against it as the
majority might decide; and in New York a majority could hardly fail
to decide against the embargo. At the spring election of 1808,
which took place about May 1, the Federalists made large gains in
the legislature. The summer greatly increased their strength, until
Madison’s friends trembled for the result, and their language became
despondent beyond reason. Gallatin, who knew best the difficulties
created by the embargo, began to despair. June 29 he wrote: “From
present appearances the Federalists will turn us out by 4th of March
next.” Ten days afterward he explained the reason of his fears: “I
think that Vermont is lost; New Hampshire is in a bad neighborhood;
and Pennsylvania is extremely doubtful.” In August he thought the
situation so serious that he warned the President:--
“There is almost an equal chance that if propositions from Great
Britain, or other events, do not put it in our power to raise the
embargo before the 1st of October, we will lose the Presidential
election. I think that at this moment the Western States, Virginia,
South Carolina, and perhaps Georgia are the only sound States, and
that we will have a doubtful contest in every other.”[233]
Two causes saved Madison. In the first place, the opposition failed
to concentrate its strength. Neither George Clinton nor James Monroe
could control the whole body of opponents to the embargo. After
waiting till the middle of August for some arrangement to be made,
leading Federalists held a conference at New York, where they found
themselves obliged, by the conduct of De Witt Clinton, to give up the
hope of a coalition. Clinton decided not to risk his fortunes for the
sake of his uncle the Vice-President; and this decision obliged the
Federalists to put a candidate of their own in the field. They named
C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina for President, and Rufus King of New
York for Vice-President, as in 1804.
From the moment his opponents divided themselves among three
candidates, Madison had nothing to fear; but even without this good
fortune he possessed an advantage that weighed decisively in his
favor. The State legislatures had been chosen chiefly in the spring
or summer, when the embargo was still comparatively popular; and
in most cases, but particularly in New York, the legislature still
chose Presidential electors. The people expressed no direct opinion
on national politics, except in regard to Congressmen. State after
State deserted to the Federalists without affecting the general
election. Early in September Vermont elected a Federalist governor,
but the swarm of rotten boroughs in the State secured a Republican
legislature, which immediately chose electors for Madison. The
revolution in Vermont surrendered all New England to the Federalists.
New Hampshire chose Presidential electors by popular vote; Rhode
Island did the same,--and both States, by fair majorities, rejected
Madison and voted for Pinckney. In Massachusetts and Connecticut the
legislatures chose Federalist electors. Thus all New England declared
against the Administration; and had Vermont been counted as she voted
in September, the opposition would have received forty-five electoral
votes from New England, where in 1804 it had received only nine. In
New York the opponents of the embargo were very strong, and the
nineteen electoral votes of that State might in a popular election
have been taken from Madison. In this case Pennsylvania would have
decided the result. Eighty-eight electoral votes were needed for a
choice. New England, New York, and Delaware represented sixty-seven.
Maryland and North Carolina were so doubtful that if Pennsylvania had
deserted Madison, they would probably have followed her, and would
have left the Republican party a wreck.
The choice of electors by the legislatures of Vermont and New York
defeated all chance of overthrowing Madison; but apart from these
accidents of management the result was already decided by the people
of Pennsylvania. The wave of Federalist success and political
revolution stopped short in New York, and once more the Democracy of
Pennsylvania steadied and saved the Administration. At the October
election of 1808,--old Governor McKean having at last retired,--Simon
Snyder was chosen governor by a majority of more than twenty thousand
votes. The new governor was the candidate of Duane and the extreme
Democrats; his triumph stopped the current of Federalist success,
and enabled Madison’s friends to drive hesitating Republicans back
to their party. In Virginia, Monroe was obliged to retire from the
contest, and his supporters dwindled in numbers until only two or
three thousand went to the polls. In New York, De Witt Clinton
contented himself with taking from Madison six of the nineteen
electoral votes and giving them to Vice-President Clinton. Thus the
result showed comparatively little sign of the true Republican loss;
yet in the electoral college where in 1804 Jefferson had received the
voices of one hundred and sixty-two electors, Madison in 1808 received
only one hundred and twenty-two votes. The Federalist minority rose
from fourteen to forty-seven.
In the elections to Congress the same effects were shown. The
Federalists doubled their number of Congressmen, but the huge
Republican majority could well bear reduction. The true character of
the Eleventh Congress could not be foretold by the party vote. Many
Northern Republicans chosen to Congress were as hostile to the embargo
as though they had been Federalists. Elected on the issue of embargo
or anti-embargo, the Congress which was to last till March 5, 1811,
was sure to be factious; but whether factious or united, it could have
neither policy nor leader. The election decided its own issue. The
true issue thenceforward was that of war; but on this point the people
had not been asked to speak, and their representatives would not dare
without their encouragement to act.
The Republican party by a supreme effort kept itself in office; but no
one could fail to see that if nine months of embargo had so shattered
Jefferson’s power, another such year would shake the Union itself. The
cost of this “engine for national purposes” exceeded all calculation.
Financially, it emptied the Treasury, bankrupted the mercantile
and agricultural class, and ground the poor beyond endurance.
Constitutionally, it overrode every specified limit on arbitrary power
and made Congress despotic, while it left no bounds to the authority
which might be vested by Congress in the President. Morally, it sapped
the nation’s vital force, lowering its courage, paralyzing its energy,
corrupting its principles, and arraying all the active elements of
society in factious opposition to government or in secret paths of
treason. Politically, it cost Jefferson the fruits of eight years
painful labor for popularity, and brought the Union to the edge of a
precipice.
Finally, frightful as the cost of this engine was, as a means of
coercion the embargo evidently failed. The President complained of
evasion, and declared that if the measure were faithfully executed
it would produce the desired effect; but the people knew better. In
truth, the law was faithfully executed. The price-lists of Liverpool
and London, the published returns from Jamaica and Havana, proved that
American produce was no longer to be bought abroad. On the continent
of Europe commerce had ceased before the embargo was laid, and its
coercive effects were far exceeded by Napoleon’s own restrictions;
yet not a sign came from Europe to show that Napoleon meant to give
way. From England came an answer to the embargo, but not such as
promised its success. On all sides evidence accumulated that the
embargo, as an engine of coercion, needed a long period of time to
produce a decided effect. The law of physics could easily be applied
to politics; force could be converted only into its equivalent force.
If the embargo--an exertion of force less violent than war--was to do
the work of war, it must extend over a longer time the development
of an equivalent energy. Wars lasted for many years, and the embargo
must be calculated to last much longer than any war; but meanwhile the
morals, courage, and political liberties of the American people must
be perverted or destroyed: agriculture and shipping must perish; the
Union itself could not be preserved.
Under the shock of these discoveries Jefferson’s vast popularity
vanished, and the labored fabric of his reputation fell in sudden
and general ruin. America began slowly to struggle, under the
consciousness of pain, toward a conviction that she must bear the
common burdens of humanity, and fight with the weapons of other races
in the same bloody arena; that she could not much longer delude
herself with hopes of evading laws of Nature and instincts of life;
and that her new statesmanship which made peace a passion could lead
to no better result than had been reached by the barbarous system
which made war a duty.
FOOTNOTES:
[228] Jefferson to Gallatin, July 12, 1808; Works, v. 307.
[229] Jefferson to Robert Smith, July 16, 1808; Works, v. 316.
[230] Speech of Josiah Quincy, Nov. 28, 1808; Annals of Congress,
1808, 1809, p. 543.
[231] Lambert’s Travels, ii. 64, 65.
[232] The Embargo; or Sketches of the Times. A Satire. By William
Cullen Bryant. 1808.
[233] Adams’s Gallatin, 373, 374.