Jefferson resented Sullivan’s conduct. A few days afterward he wrote to General Dearborn, the Secretary of War, who was then in Maine, warning him to be ready to support the measure which Sullivan had declined to adopt.
“Yours of July 27 is received,” Jefferson said.[207] “It confirms the accounts we receive from others that the infractions of the embargo in Maine and Massachusetts are open. I have removed Pope, of New Bedford, for worse than negligence. The collector of Sullivan is on the totter. The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it. I fear your Governor [Sullivan] is not up to the tone of these parricides, and I hope on the first symptom of an open opposition of the law by force you will fly to the scene, and aid in suppressing any commotion.”
Blood was soon shed, but Jefferson did not shrink. The new army was stationed along the Canada frontier. The gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. On every side dangers and difficulties accumulated. “I did not expect a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force could have grown up in the United States.”[208] At Newburyport an armed mob on the wharf prevented the custom-house officers from detaining a vessel about to sail. The collectors and other officers were ill-disposed, or were harassed by suits at law for illegal detentions. Rebellion and disunion stared Jefferson in the face, but only caused him to challenge an outbreak and to invite violence.
“That the Federalists may attempt insurrection is possible,” he wrote to Gallatin,[209] “and also that the governor would sink before it; but the Republican part of the State, and that portion of the Federalists who approve the embargo in their judgments, and at any rate would not court mob law, would crush it in embryo. I have some time ago written to General Dearborn to be on the alert on such an occasion, and to take direction of the public authority on the spot. Such an incident will rally the whole body of Republicans of every shade to a single point,—that of supporting the public authority.”
The Federalists knew when to rebel. Jefferson could teach them little on that subject. They meant first to overthrow Jefferson himself, and were in a fair way to gratify their wish; for the people of New England—Republican and Federalist alike—were rapidly rallying to common hatred of the President. As winter approached, the struggle between Jefferson and Massachusetts became on both sides vindictive. He put whole communities under his ban. He stopped the voyage of every vessel “in which any person is concerned, either in interest or in navigating her, who has ever been concerned in interest or in the navigation of a vessel which has at any time before entered a foreign port contrary to the views of the embargo laws, and under any pretended distress or duress whatever.”[210] When a permit was asked for the schooner “Caroline,” of Buckstown on the Penobscot, Jefferson replied,—
“This is the first time that the character of the place has been brought under consideration as an objection. Yet a general disobedience to the laws in any place must have weight toward refusing to give them any facilities to evade. In such a case we may fairly require positive proof that the individual of a town tainted with a general spirit of disobedience has never said or done anything himself to countenance that spirit.”[211]
Jefferson went still further in his reply to a petition from the island of Nantucket for food. “Our opinion here is that that place has been so deeply concerned in smuggling, that if it wants it is because it has illegally sent away what it ought to have retained for its own consumption.”[212]
Of all the old Republican arguments for a policy of peace, the commonest was that a standing army would be dangerous, not to foreign enemies, but to popular liberties; yet the first use of the new army and gunboats was against fellow-citizens. New England was chiefly controlled by the navy; but in New York the army was needed and was employed. Open insurrection existed there. Besides forcible resistance offered to the law, no one was ignorant that the collectors shut their eyes to smuggling, and that juries, in defiance of court and President, refused to indict rioters. Governor Tompkins announced that Oswego was in active insurrection, and called on the President to issue a proclamation to that effect.[213] Jefferson replied by offering to take into the United States service the militia required to suppress the riots, and begged Governor Tompkins to lead his troops in person. “I think it so important in example to crush these audacious proceedings and to make the offenders feel the consequences of individuals daring to oppose a law by force, that no effort should be spared to compass this object.”[214]
When permission was asked to establish a packet on Lake Champlain, “I do not think this is a time,” replied Jefferson, “for opening new channels of intercourse with Canada and multiplying the means of smuggling.”[215] The people who lived on the shores of Lake Champlain might object to such interference in their affairs, but could not deny the force of Jefferson’s reasoning. Another application of a different kind was rejected on grounds that seemed to give to the President general supervision over the diet of the people:—
“The declaration of the bakers of New York that their citizens will be dissatisfied, under the present circumstances of their country, to eat bread of the flour of their own State, is equally a libel on the produce and citizens of the State.... If this prevails, the next application will be for vessels to go to New York for the pippins of that State, because they are higher flavored than the same species of apples growing in other States.”[216]