Part 9 (1/2)
American commerce was now, indeed, between the hammer and the anvil. The Nicholson Non-Importation Act, which had been twice suspended and which had only just gone into effect (December 14), seemed wholly inadequate to meet this situation. It had been designed as a coercive measure, to be sure, but no one knew precisely to what extent it would affect English trade. The time had come for the blow which Jefferson and his advisers had held in reserve. On December 18, the President sent to Congress a message recommending ”an immediate inhibition of the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United States.” The Senate responded by pa.s.sing a bill (which Jefferson probably drafted) through its three stages in a single day; the House pa.s.sed the measure after only two days of debate; and on December 22, the Embargo Act received the President's signature.
The temper of those who supported the embargo was reflected by Senator Adams, of Ma.s.sachusetts, who was reported to have said: ”The President has recommended the measure on his high responsibility. I would not consider, I would not deliberate; I would act.” Yet there were members of Congress who were not prepared to accept the high authority of the President. The vote in the House of Representatives indicates that opinion was divided in Adams's own State. Boston with its environs and the interior counties were opposed to the embargo. New York was also divided, though here the commercial areas favored the measure. Maryland showed a like division of opinion. Connecticut was a unit in opposing the President's policy.
What was the measure which was accepted almost without discussion on ”the high responsibility” of the President? So far as it was defended at all, it was presented as a measure for the protection of American s.h.i.+ps, merchandise, and seamen. It forbade the departure of all s.h.i.+ps and vessels in the ports of the United States for any foreign port, except vessels under the immediate direction of the President. Foreign armed vessels were exempted as a matter of course from the operation of this act; so also were all vessels in ballast or already loaded with goods at the time when the act was pa.s.sed. Coasting vessels were to give bonds double the value of vessel and cargo to re-land their goods, wares, or merchandise in some port of the United States.
American s.h.i.+ppers were so little appreciative of the protection offered by a benevolent Government that they evaded the embargo from the very first. Foreign trade was lucrative in just the proportion that it was hazardous. If some skippers obeyed, the profits were so much the greater for the less conscientious. Under guise of engaging in the coasting trade, many a s.h.i.+p's captain with the connivance of the owner landed his cargo in a foreign port. A brisk traffic also sprang up by land across the Canadian border.
[Map: House Vote on the Embargo December 21, 1807]
All pretense that the embargo was designed to protect American commerce had now to be abandoned. Jefferson did not attempt to disguise his purpose to use the embargo as a great coercive weapon against France and Great Britain. Congress pa.s.sed supplementary acts and suffered the President to exercise a vast discretionary power which was strangely at variance with Republican traditions. ”When you are doubtful,” wrote the President with reference to coasting vessels, ”consider me as voting for detention.” ”We find it necessary,” he informed the governors of the States, ”to consider every vessel as suspicious which has on board any article of domestic produce in demand at foreign markets.” Governors of those States which consumed more wheat than they produced were to issue certificates to collectors of ports stating the amount desired. The collectors in turn were to authorize merchants in whom they had confidence to import the needed supplies. Nor did the President hesitate to put whole communities under the ban when individual s.h.i.+powners were suspected of engaging in illicit trade. He so far forgot his horror of a standing army that he asked Congress for an addition to the regular army of six thousand men. Congress had already made an appropriation of $850,000 to build gunboats. It now appropriated a million and a quarter for fortifications and for the equipment of the militia.
Through the long summer of 1808, President Jefferson waited anxiously for the effects of coercion to appear. The reports from abroad were not encouraging. The effects of the embargo upon English economy are even now a matter of conjecture. In the opinion of Mr. Henry Adams, the embargo only fattened the s.h.i.+powners and squires who devised the orders in council, and lowered the wages and moral standard of the laboring cla.s.ses by cutting off temporarily the importation of foodstuffs and the raw material for British manufacturers. When Pinkney approached Canning with the proposal that England should revoke her orders upon the withdrawal of the embargo, he was told, with biting sarcasm, that ”if it were possible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the embargo without appearing to deprecate it as a measure of hostility, he [His Majesty] would gladly have facilitated its removal as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people.” The blow aimed at Great Britain had missed its mark.
From the first Napoleon had welcomed the embargo as a measure likely to contribute to the success of his continental system. On April 17, 1808, he issued a decree from Bayonne ordering the seizure of all American vessels in French ports. It was argued ingeniously that since they were abroad in violation of the embargo, they were not _bona fide_ American vessels, but presumptively British, and therefore subject to capture. To accept the aid of the French Emperor in enforcing a policy which was intended to coerce his action, was humiliating to the last degree.
Armstrong wrote to Madison that in his opinion the coercive force of the embargo had been overrated. ”Here it is not felt, and in England ... it is forgotten.”
The importance of the embargo, Jefferson never tired of repeating, was not to be measured in money. If the brutalities of war and the corruption incident to war could be avoided by this alternative, the experiment was well worth trying. Yet Jefferson himself was startled by the deliberate and systematic evasions of the law. ”I did not expect,”
he confessed, ”a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force could have grown up in the United States.” Moreover, the cost of the embargo was very great. The value of exports fell from $108,000,000 in 1807 to $22,000,000 in the following year. The national revenue from import duties was cut down by one half.
The embargo bore down with crus.h.i.+ng weight upon New England, where nearly one third of the s.h.i.+ps engaged in the carrying trade were owned.
The s.h.i.+pbuilding industry languished, as well as all the industries subsidiary to commerce. Even the farmers suffered as the embargo continued. A temporary loss of their market could have been borne with some degree of equanimity, but not an indefinite loss, for imported goods now began to rise in price, adding to the general distress.
The economic distress of New England, however, cannot be measured by the volume of indignant protest. The Federalist machine never worked more effectively than when it directed this unrest and diverted it to partisan purposes. Thomas Jefferson's embargo was made to seem a vindictive a.s.sault upon New England. The Ess.e.x Junto, with Timothy Pickering as leader, spared no pains to convince the unthinking that Jefferson was the tool or the dupe of Napoleon, who was bent upon coercing the United States into war with Great Britain. The spring election of 1808 gave the measure of this reaction in Ma.s.sachusetts. The Federalists regained control of both houses of the state legislature, and forced the resignation of Senator John Quincy Adams, who had broken with his party by voting for the embargo, and who had incurred the undying enmity of of the Ess.e.x Junto by defending the policy of the Administration.
In the midst of what Jefferson called ”the general factiousness,”
following the embargo, occurred a presidential election. Jefferson was not a candidate for reelection. His fondest hope now was that he might be allowed to retire with honor to the bosom of his family. Upon whom would his mantle fall? Madison was his probable preference; and Madison had the doubtful advantage of a formal nomination by the regular congressional caucus of the party. But Monroe still considered his chances of election good; and Vice-President George Clinton also announced his candidacy. Both Monroe and Clinton represented those elements of opposition which hara.s.sed the closing months of the Administration. Contrary to expectation, the Federalists did not ally themselves with Clinton, but preferred to go down in defeat under their old leaders, Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King. With the opposition thus divided, Madison scored an easy victory; but against him was the almost solid vote of a section. All the New England States but Vermont cast their electoral votes for the Federalist candidates.
Before the end of the year the failure of the embargo was patent to every fair-minded observer. The alternatives, war or submission, were not pleasant to contemplate. From force of habit the party in power looked to Jefferson for leaders.h.i.+p; but since Madison's election, he had a.s.sumed the role of ”unmeddling listener,” not wis.h.i.+ng to commit his successor to any policy. The abdication of Jefferson thus left the party without a leader and without a program at a most critical moment.
Under the circ.u.mstances it was easier to continue the embargo than to face the probability of war. Gallatin had already urged the need of more stringent laws for the enforcement of the embargo,--laws which he admitted were both odious and dangerous. On January 9, 1809, Congress pa.s.sed the desired legislation. Thereafter coasting vessels were obliged to give bonds to six times the value of vessel and cargo before they were permitted to load. Collectors were authorized to refuse permission if in their opinion there was ”an intention to violate the embargo.”
Only loss at sea released a s.h.i.+powner from his bond. In suits at law neither capture nor any other accident could be pleaded. Collectors at the ports and on the frontiers were authorized to seize goods which were ”apparently on their way toward the territory of a foreign nation.” And for such seizures the collectors were not liable in courts of law. The army, the navy, and the militia were put at their disposal.
The ”Force Act” was the last straw for the Federalists of Ma.s.sachusetts.
Town after town adopted resolutions which ran through the whole gamut of partisan abuse. The General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts resolved that it would cooperate with other States in procuring such amendments to the Const.i.tution as were necessary to obtain protection for commerce and to give to the commercial States ”their fair and just consideration in the government of the Union.” Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, flatly declined to allow the militia to a.s.sist the collectors in the enforcement of the embargo, holding that the act to enforce the embargo was unconst.i.tutional, ”interfering with the state sovereignties, and subversive of the guaranteed rights, privileges, and immunities of the citizens of the United States.” The legislature rallied to the support of the governor with resolutions which breathe much the same spirit as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
The incessant bombardment by the New England towns was too much for Jefferson's equanimity. ”I felt the foundation of the government shaken under my feet by the New England towns.h.i.+ps,” he said in after years. His control over his own party was gone. Northern Republicans combined with Federalists to force the repeal of the embargo through Congress; and on March 1, 1809, with much bitterness of spirit, Jefferson signed the bill that terminated his great experiment. Instead of interdicting commerce altogether, Congress suspended intercourse with France and Great Britain after March 15 and until one or the other of the offenders repealed its obnoxious orders. Meantime, American vessels were free to pick up what trade they could with other nations.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The historical writings of Henry Adams are indispensable aids to an understanding of the foreign policy of Jefferson. On the effect of the embargo, Channing, _The Jeffersonian System_, takes sharp issue with Adams. There is a ma.s.s of valuable data on social history in the third volume of McMaster, _History of the People of the United States_. E. L. Bogart, _Economic History of the United States_ (1913); Katherine Coman, _Industrial History of the United States_ (1913); and C. D. Wright, _Industrial Evolution of the United States_ (1907), are manuals containing much valuable matter. The brief introductions to the chapters in G. S.
Callender, _Selections from the Economic History of the United Slates_ (1909), are always illuminating. The foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison is extensively reviewed in A. T. Mahan, _Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812_ (2 vols., 1905).
CHAPTER XI
THE APPROACH OF WAR
The Administration of James Madison began with what seemed like a diplomatic triumph. Negotiations with the new British minister, Erskine, led to a complete agreement on all the points in dispute. Full reparation was to be made for the Chesapeake affair. The offensive orders in council of 1807 were to be withdrawn on a fixed date.