To increase the President’s embarrassment, the Secretary of War Dearborn made a natural mistake. The original instructions to Monroe, decided in Cabinet meeting July 2,[125] did not connect the “Chesapeake” outrage with impressments of merchant seamen. Neither July 4 nor July 5, when full Cabinet meetings were held, did the subject come up.[126] The final instructions, dated July 6, changed the original demand by extending the required redress over all cases of impressment; but meanwhile General Dearborn had left Washington for New York, and was not told of the change.[127] So it happened that when in October the Federalist newspapers began to attack Jefferson, on the authority of the English press, for coupling the subject of general impressment with the attack on the “Chesapeake,” Dearborn, who chanced to be in Massachusetts, denied the charge; and on his authority the Republican newspapers asserted that the alleged instructions had not been given. This denial created no little confusion among Republicans, who could not understand why the instructions had been changed, or on what ground the Administration meant to defend them.
In truth, the change had been an afterthought, founded on the idea that as abandonment of impressments was a sine qua non in the commercial negotiation, and a point on which the Government meant inflexibly to insist, it should properly be made a sine qua non in this or any other agreement.[128] This decision had been made in July, with knowledge that England would rather fight than yield a point so vital to her supposed interests. In December, on hearing that Canning refused to yield, the President told Erskine that the sine qua non, so formally adopted, would be abandoned.
That conduct in appearance so vacillating should perplex Jefferson’s friends and irritate his enemies was natural; but in reality nothing vacillating was in the President’s mind. These negotiations were but outpost skirmishes, and covered his steady retreat to the fortress which he believed to be impregnable. He meant to coerce Canning, but his method of coercion needed neither armies nor negotiators. While telling Erskine that the sine qua non should not prevent a settlement of the “Chesapeake” affair, he set in motion the first of the series of measures which were intended to teach England to respect American rights.
December 14, against strong remonstrances from the merchants, the Non-importation Act of April 18, 1806, went into effect. The exact amount of British trade affected by that measure was not known. All articles of leather, silk, hemp, glass, silver, paper, woollen hosiery, ready-made clothing, millinery, malt liquors, pictures, prints, playing-cards, and so forth, if of English manufacture, were henceforward prohibited; and any person who had them in his possession incurred forfeiture and fine. The measure was in its nature coercive. The debates in Congress showed that no other object than that of coercion was in the mind of the American government; the history of the Republican party and the consistent language of Jefferson, Madison, and the Virginian school proclaimed that the policy of prohibition was their substitute for war. England was to be punished, by an annual fine of several million dollars, for interference with American trade to the continent of Europe.
Two days after this law went into effect Madison received from the British government a document which threw the Non-importation Act into the background, and made necessary some measure more energetic. The King’s proclamation of October 17, requiring all British naval officers to exercise the right of impressment to its full extent over neutral merchant-vessels, was printed in the “National Intelligencer” of December 17; and if Sir William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” required the Non-importation Act as its counterpoise, the Impressment Proclamation could be fairly balanced only by a total cessation of relations.
In rapid succession the ships which had sailed a month before from Europe arrived in American harbors, after unusually quick voyages. Monroe, in the “Augustus,” reached Norfolk December 13; the “Edward” arrived at Boston December 12; the “Brutus” got in at New York December 14, preceded December 12 by the “Revenge.” All these ships brought news to the same effect. Armstrong’s despatches by the “Revenge” announced Napoleon’s enforcement of the Berlin Decree. London newspapers of November 12 agreed in predicting some immediate and sweeping attack by the British government upon American commerce; and from Pinkney and Monroe came the official papers which put an end to all hope of a commercial treaty with England. Private letters bore out the worst public rumors. Among other persons who were best informed as to the intentions of the British government was Senator Pickering of Massachusetts, whose nephew Samuel Williams had been removed by Jefferson from the London consulate, and remained in that city as an American merchant, in connection with his brother Timothy Williams of Boston. December 12 Timothy Williams in Boston wrote to his uncle Senator Pickering at Washington,[129]—
“My brother writes me on the 9th of November ‘that he was informed the Government would in a few days declare Cuba, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in a state of blockade, and restrict still more the trade of neutrals with the Continent.’ The British no doubt had or would issue an Order above referred to, to counteract our friend Bonaparte’s decree of Nov. 21, 1806. I cannot however think the intercourse with the Continent will be entirely cut off. The influence of the West Indian planters will procure the blockading of the enemy’s islands, no doubt. What has not this country lost by the miserable policy of the Administration! Your prudence will know to whom you can or cannot communicate any of the above paragraphs.”
“With much solicitude respecting the present state of things,” Timothy Williams concluded this letter of warning; and his anxiety was shared by every one who read the newspapers which proclaimed the danger of war. At Washington the alarming news arrived December 17, at the heels of the Impressment Proclamation. The President instantly called his Cabinet together. Under less serious circumstances in 1794, Congress had imposed an embargo for thirty days, forbidding clearances to all foreign-bound vessels while the question of war or peace was deciding. By common consent an embargo was the proper measure to be taken in the face of an expected attack on commerce. On reading the news from France and England, every one assumed that an embargo would be imposed until the exact nature of the French and British aggressions should be learned; but safe precedent required that the law should restrict its own operation within some reasonable limit of time. An embargo for thirty or sixty days, or even for three months, might be required before reaching some decision as to peace or war.
On a loose sheet of letter-paper, which happened to bear the address of General Mason, the President wrote a hasty draft of an embargo message to Congress.[130] After referring to Armstrong’s despatch announcing the Emperor’s decision to enforce the Berlin Decree, Jefferson’s draft noticed the threatened orders of England:—
“The British regulations had before reduced us to a direct voyage to a single port of their enemies, and it is now believed they will interdict all commerce whatever with them. A proclamation, too, of that Government (not officially, indeed, communicated to us, yet so given out to the public as to become a rule of action with them) seems to have shut the door on all negotiation with us, except as to the single aggression on the ‘Chesapeake.’ The sum of these mutual enterprises on our national rights is that France and her allies, reserving for future consideration the prohibiting our carrying anything to the British territories, have virtually done it by restraining our bringing a return cargo from them; and Great Britain, after prohibiting a great proportion of our commerce with France and her allies, is now believed to have prohibited the whole. The whole world is thus laid under interdict by these two nations, and our vessels, their cargoes, and crews are to be taken by the one or the other for whatever place they may be destined out of our own limits. If, therefore, on leaving our harbors we are certainly to lose them, is it not better, as to vessels, cargoes, and seamen, to keep them at home? This is submitted to the wisdom of Congress, who alone are competent to provide a remedy.”