As soon as Congress convened in November, 1808, New England opened the attack on Jefferson's retaliatory measures. Senator James Hillhouse of Connecticut offered a resolution for the repeal of the obnoxious statutes. "Great Britain was not to be threatened into compliance by a rod of coercion," he said.[44] Pickering made a speech which might well have been delivered in Parliament.[45] British maritime practices were right, the Embargo wrong, and principally injurious to America.[46] The Orders in Council had been issued only after Great Britain "had witnessed ... these atrocities" committed by Napoleon and his plundering armies, "and seen the deadly weapon aimed at her vitals." Yet Jefferson had acted very much as if the United States were a vassal of France.[47]
Again Pickering addressed the Senate, flatly charging that all Embargo measures were "in exact conformity with the views and wishes of the French Emperor, ... the most ruthless tyrant that has scourged the European world, since the Roman Empire fell!" Suppose the British Navy were destroyed and France triumphant over Great Britain—to the other titles of Bonaparte would then "be added that of Emperor of the Two Americas"; for what legions of soldiers "could he not send to the United States in the thousands of British ships, were they also at his command?"[48]
As soon as they were printed, Pickering sent copies of these and speeches of other Federalists to his close associate, the Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall's prompt answer shows how far he had gone in company with New England Federalist opinion.
"I thank you very sincerely," he wrote "for the excellent speeches lately delivered in the senate.... If sound argument & correct reasoning could save our country it would be saved. Nothing can be more completely demonstrated than the inefficacy of the embargo, yet that demonstration seems to be of no avail. I fear most seriously that the same spirit which so tenaciously maintains this measure will impel us to a war with the only power which protects any part of the civilized world from the despotism of that tyrant with whom we shall then be ravaged."[49]
Such was the change that nine years had wrought in the views of John Marshall. When Secretary of State he had arraigned Great Britain for her conduct toward neutrals, denounced the impressment of American sailors, and branded her admiralty courts as habitually unjust if not corrupt.[50] But his hatred of France had metamorphosed the man.
Before Marshall had written this letter, the Legislature of Massachusetts formally declared that the continuance of the Embargo would "endanger ... the union of these States."[51] Talk of secession was steadily growing in New England.[52] The National Government feared open rebellion.[53] Only one eminent Federalist dissented from these views of the party leaders which Marshall also held as fervently as they. That man was the one to whom he owed his place on the Supreme Bench. From his retirement in Quincy, John Adams watched the growing excitement with amused contempt.
"Our Gazettes and Pamphlets," he wrote, "tell us that Bonaparte ... will conquer England, and command all the British Navy, and send I know not how many hundred thousand soldiers here and conquer from New Orleans to Passamaquoddy. Though every one of these Bugbears is an empty Phantom, yet the People seem to believe every article of this bombastical Creed and tremble and shudder in Consequence. Who shall touch these blind eyes?"[54]
On January 9, 1809, Jefferson signed the "Force Act," which the Republican Congress had defiantly passed, and again Marshall beheld such an assertion of National power as the boldest Federalist of Alien and Sedition times never had suggested. Collectors of customs were authorized to seize any vessel or wagon if they suspected the owner of an intention to evade the Embargo laws; ships could be laden only in the presence of National officials, and sailing delayed or prohibited arbitrarily. Rich rewards were provided for informers who should put the Government on the track of any violation of the multitude of restrictions of these statutes or of the Treasury regulations interpretative of them. The militia, the army, the navy were to be employed to enforce obedience.[55]
Along the New England coasts popular wrath swept like a forest fire. Violent resolutions were passed.[56] The Collector of Boston, Benjamin Lincoln, refused to obey the law and resigned.[57] The Legislature of Massachusetts passed a bill denouncing the "Force Act" as unconstitutional, and declaring any officer entering a house in execution of it to be guilty of a high misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment.[58] The Governor of Connecticut declined the request of the Secretary of War to afford military aid and addressed the Legislature in a speech bristling with sedition.[59] The Embargo must go, said the Federalists, or New England would appeal to arms. Riots broke out in many towns. Withdrawal from the Union was openly advocated.[60] Nor was this sentiment confined to that section. "If the question were barely stirred in New England, some States would drop off the Union like fruit, rotten ripe," wrote A. C. Hanson of Baltimore.[61] Humphrey Marshall of Kentucky declared that he looked to "Boston ... the Cradle, and Salem, the nourse, of American Liberty," as "the source of reformation, or should that be unattainable, of disunion."[62]
Warmly as he sympathized with Federalist opinion of the absurd Republican retaliatory measures, and earnestly as he shared Federalist partisanship for Great Britain, John Marshall deplored all talk of secession and sternly rebuked resistance to National authority, as is shown in his opinion in Fletcher vs. Peck,[63] wherein he asserted the sovereignty of the Nation over a State.