This last recommendation may seem surprising and almost treasonable, but Jefferson lived in close contact with farmers and planters, and he still remembered their attitude during the Revolutionary War and knew that "to keep the war popular we must keep open the markets. As long as good prices can be had, the people will support the war cheerfully."
Later in the year he was able to report to the President:
Our farmers are cheerful in the expectation of a good price for wheat in Autumn. Their pulse will be regulated by this, and not by the successes or disasters of the war. To keep open sufficient markets is the very first object towards maintaining the popularity of the war, which is as great at present as could be desired.[496]
To be correctly understood, this attitude of Jefferson advocating trade with the enemy requires some further elucidation. As a matter of fact, the issue was not so clear-cut as it would seem. While England was to be considered as America's enemy on the continent, she was "fighting America's battles" in Europe, for the ultimate triumph of Bonaparte would have been pregnant with dangers for the Union. He consequently advocated the exportation of grain to Great Britain:
If she is to be fed at all events, why may not we have the benefit of it as well as others. I would not indeed, feed her armies landed on our territory, because the difficulty of inland communication subsistence is what will prevent their ever penetrating far into the country.... But this would be my only exception, and as to feeding her armies in the Peninsular, she is fighting our battles there, as Bonaparte is on the Baltic.[497]
But it must also be admitted that Jefferson considered that in war all is fair. He had not changed much since the remote days of the Revolution when he urged Washington to permit him to use measures of retaliation on the British prisoners. Once again he did not scruple to recommend measures sometimes used but seldom so frankly advocated. He would not have hesitated to bring the war home to Great Britain and to resort to retaliation. "Perhaps they will burn New York or Boston," he wrote to Duane. "If they do, we must burn the city of London, not by expensive fleets or congreve rockets, but by employing an hundred or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness, famine, desperation and hardened vice, will abundantly furnish among themselves."[498]
But the thing never to be lost sight of was the conquest of Canada and "the final expulsion of England from the American continent." It was to be a very simple expedition, "a mere matter of marching", and the weakness of the enemy was to make "our errors innocent." All these sanguine expectations were blasted to dust by the Hull disaster. Three frigates taken by "our gallant little navy" could not balance "three armies lost by treachery, cowardice, or incapacity of those to whom they were entrusted." The mediation of Russia was the only hope left, but the enemies were to remain "bedecked with the laurels of the land"—the reverse of what was to be expected and perhaps what was to be wished.[499]
Throughout the whole campaign Jefferson was unable to choose between France and England, or rather between Bonaparte and England's corrupted government. Strong as were his denunciations of English policies and crimes, he almost foamed at the mouth when he mentioned the abominable Corsican:
That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom, who does not see. There is no doubt as to the line we ought to wish drawn between his successes and those of Alexander. Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be just a breakfast.[500]