The foreign relations of the United States were rapidly coming to a point which would terminate the predominance of European influence on American political parties. The struggle of the French people for liberty, which had appealed so powerfully to Jefferson and his followers, was now lost in the ambitions of Napoleon. "I had hoped," said Jefferson at a later time, "that he would have seen the difference between the example of a Cromwell and a Washington." Ten years before, Jefferson would willingly have seen his countrymen fighting side by side with the French patriots against monarchical England; but to be allied with Napoleon meant to further the ends of Napoleon. With the single exception of the Louisiana transaction, Jefferson's diplomatic administration is a story of European intrigue and imposition upon an impotent and helpless neutral. American commercial rights were lost sight of in the world-struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. The decrees of one belligerent were followed by checkmating orders in council of the other, and vice versa, with no regard for neutral rights, and no object save starving each other into submission.
It is true that the American traders sought every opportunity of evading these orders and decrees and continuing the most profitable trade America had ever known. For instance, Britain forbade all trading directly between France, Holland, Spain, and their colonies in order to cut off supplies. In order to evade this, an American captain would take a cargo in these colonies, sail to some American port, enter his cargo, and immediately clear with the same, without really unloading. He was entitled to a drawback of the duties he had paid. Having now broken his voyage, as he claimed, he sailed to a French or Spanish port without danger of violating the British orders. The British admiralty courts soon declared that this was an evasion; that there had been in reality no "broken voyage." Then American traders began the practice of really landing the goods in some American port, while the vessel was overhauled and repaired, then continuing the voyage, after reloading. The British courts conceded this to be a broken voyage.
In 1805, so ample were the supplies furnished France and Spain by this method of evading the law, that the British court reversed its former opinion. A large number of seizures followed. To cover the entire continental coast, a paper blockade was declared by Britain about the same time. The Administration could no longer continue its policy of forbearance. Negotiation had failed. Retaliation was the only method left. Jefferson, the father of his people, was a warrior neither by nature nor practice. A foreign war meant to him the disarrangement of domestic affairs, interference with domestic development, and the accumulation of a debt which must fall in the last analysis upon the common people, the least able to bear it. To a correspondent he expressed his desire to avoid war until the national debt was discharged, when the regular income would meet the expense of a war and so prevent a new debt and increased taxes. His policy of retrenchment, dictated by his love of the people, had reduced the army and navy and left the land without adequate means of defence. He further realised that war might bring undue national aggrandisement. The common defence must be undertaken by the Central Government. In the haste and the necessities of war, measures might be taken oppressive to the people and destructive of their individual rights, which would never be passed in the calm contemplations of peace. Reluctantly he was compelled to advise Congress to enter upon a system of total embargo on foreign trade, which might possibly avoid war and preserve the pattern of neutrality which had been set by the first President.
Notwithstanding the pacific motives which impelled Jefferson to choose that form of retaliation, the embargo was a part of the old colonial idea of restriction. To avoid the capture of American goods and sailors, keep them at home. Committing suicide is one way to avoid being killed by your enemy. A more modern way is to arm yourself. If the commercial interests, ruined by the embargo, as they claimed, had belonged to the individualistic rural States, or if Jefferson had been from the trading States, sectional differences might not have been so prominent during the continuation of this policy, and the reactionary laws leading to unification might not have been so apparent. The chief protestor against marching a Federal army into the sovereign State of Pennsylvania a score of years before was now stationing gunboats off the coast of the sovereign States of New England, and on Lake Champlain in the sovereign State of New York, for the purpose of coercing the people into an obedience to national laws. The section which at that time had supported so vigorously the repressive measures of Washington was now opposing as forcibly such actions when taken toward themselves. The people of Pennsylvania, a part of whom were then resisting the central authority, now offered an armed force to the President "to cram the embargo down the throats of the Yankees."
The paralysing effects of the embargo became apparent gradually during the fifteen months of its existence and brought the commercial States to the verge of rebellion. Nearly one-half the population of Salem, it was claimed, had been compelled to ask public aid. Prices on imported goods rose to a fabulous height, while surplus products, formerly exported, fell to ruinous rates. Inland commerce was equally affected, since there was no demand for carrying goods to or from the coast. Writers compared the embargo remedy to a snake biting itself with poisonous fang when surrounded by enemies; to a man cutting down his tree to rid it of caterpillars; or to the fool who cut off his head to rid himself of an aching tooth. The first anniversary of the embargo was observed throughout New England with tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and processions of unemployed seamen and artisans. The mayor of New York forbade riotous gatherings. When a number of men disguised as Indians retook a sloop caught by a man-of-war in forbidden trade, their action was compared to that of the patriots who threw overboard the East India tea.
It was claimed in the commercial States that the power "to regulate" commerce, bestowed by the Constitution, did not cover an embargo or prohibition of commerce. In advancing this argument, the New England people quoted the opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that "an unconstitutional law is not binding on the people." In reply to this point made by the loose constructionists, the strict constructionists could do nothing more than quote the implied power. "To regulate" meant to keep the enemy from seizing. Time had wrought a strange transfer of doctrines.
Rhymesters exercised their wit in ridiculing both Jefferson and the embargo. Said one:
"Our ships all in motion once whitened the ocean,
They sailed and returned with a cargo;
Now doomed to decay, they have fallen a prey
To Jefferson, worms, and embargo."
Another paid his respects to the President in stanzas, one of which will suffice:
"Like the Tyrant of fame, he embargoes his ports,
And to measures that ruin his subjects resorts;
By fools he is flattered—by wise men accursed,
For "No trade" is the maxim of Thomas the First."