The paralysis came in a form that could not be disguised. While the House disputed over one Non-intercourse Bill, the Senate passed another; and February 22 the House laid aside its own measure in order to take up that of the Senate, which contained the disputed clause authorizing letters of marque and reprisal against nations that should continue their unlawful edicts after repeal of the embargo. In pursuance of its vote of February 7, the House in committee promptly struck out the reprisal clause. Next it rejected David R. Williams’s motion for discriminating duties. Ezekiel Bacon, perhaps somewhat scandalized at the legislation he had chiefly caused, suggested the Federalist plan of authorizing merchant-vessels to resist seizure; and February 25 a struggle occurred on the question of permitting forcible resistance by merchant-vessels. The minority was deeply agitated as the act of complete submission became imminent. David R. Williams cried that if the House could so abandon national rights, they deserved to be scoffed by all the world; John W. Eppes declared himself compelled to believe Josiah Quincy’s assertion that the majority could not be kicked into a war; even the peaceable Macon moved a warlike amendment. Vote after vote was taken; again and again the ayes and noes were called on dilatory motions of adjournment; but every motion looking toward war was steadily voted down, and in the end, February 27, the Non-intercourse Bill in its most unresisting shape received the approval of the House. Not a speaker defended it; at the last moment the charge was freely made that the bill had not a single friend. The members who voted for it declared in doing so that the measure was a weak and wretched expedient, that they detested it, and took it merely as a choice of evils; but eighty-one members voted in its favor, and only forty in the negative. More extraordinary still, this non-intercourse, which bound the South to the feet of New England, was supported by forty-one Southern members, while but twelve New England representatives recorded their names in its favor.
Three months afterward, at a moment when the danger of war seemed to have vanished, John Randolph recalled the memory of this confused struggle, and claimed for President Jefferson and himself the credit for having prevented a declaration of war. He had voted against the non-intercourse, he said, because he had believed that he could get rid of the embargo on still better terms; others had voted against it because they thought it absolute disgrace:[378]—
“The fact is that nobody would advocate it; that though it was carried by a majority of two to one, those who finally voted for it condemned it, and all parties seemed ashamed of it; and that ... all the high-toned men and high-toned presses in this country denounced the majority of this House for passing that law, as having utterly disgraced themselves.... If the great leaders could have been gratified, according to their own showing they would have dragged this country into a war with Great Britain.... Now to be sure, sir, those persons who undertook to stop their wild career were composed of heterogeneous materials; ... there were minority men, caucus men, protesters,—in fact, sir, all parties, Catholics, Protestants, Seceders,—and all were united in the effort to prevent the leaders of both Houses from plunging the nation into a war with one Power and knuckling to the other; from riveting the chains of French influence, perhaps of French alliance upon us. Thank God that their designs were proclaimed to the nation, that the President did not give his consent, which would have made us kick the beam. Yes, sir! Federalists, minority men, protesters, and all would have kicked the beam if it had ever emanated from the Cabinet that the President was for war.”
If Randolph was right, the “wand of the magician” had not been broken; and other observers besides Randolph held the same opinion. “Jefferson has triumphed,” wrote Josiah Quincy, February 27, immediately after the repeal; “his intrigues have prevailed.”[379]
In a spirit widely different from that of Randolph and Quincy, Nathaniel Macon, February 28, wrote to his friend Nicholson,—
“Otis, the Secretary of the Senate, has this moment informed the House of Representatives that the Senate have agreed to the amendments made by the House to the Bill to repeal the embargo.
“The Lord, the mighty Lord, must come to our assistance, or I fear we are undone as a nation!”[380]
FOOTNOTES:
[367] Story’s Life of Story, i. 187.
[368] Cf. J. Q. Adams to Ezekiel Bacon, Nov. 17 and Dec. 21, 1808; New England Federalism, pp. 127, 131.