Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the [pg 140]difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.
In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain. That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo. Then followed Napoleon’s Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.
Such was the series of acts which assailed the foreign commerce of the United States, [pg 141]and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,—all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel. Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President’s influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.
Jefferson’s design, to use his own words, was “to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;” and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens [pg 142]of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this class would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States. Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,—wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur. “They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips.”
It was otherwise in New England. There the disastrous effect of the embargo was not only indirect but direct. The New England farmers, it is true, could at least exist upon the produce of their farms; but the mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of the industry by which they lived. New England evaded the embargo by smuggling, and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the Federal leaders in that section believing, or pretending to believe, that it was a pro-French measure, were in secret correspondence with the British government, and meditated a secession of the eastern States from the rest of the country. They went so far, in private conversation at least, as to maintain the British right of impressment; and even the Orders in Council were defended by Gardenier, a leading Federalist, and a member of Congress.
The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland, [pg 144]his attitude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.
Jefferson’s effort to enforce the embargo and his calm resistance to New England fury showed extraordinary firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of War, who was then in Maine: “The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it.”
Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it “was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the substitute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always [pg 145]brought in its train. In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests.” Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the “Edinburgh Review.”
Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson’s theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or [pg 146]at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.
The embargo was an academic policy,—the policy of a philosopher rather than that of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, in May, 1806, that the President “has little energy and still less of that audacity which is indispensable in a place so eminent, whatever may be the form of government. The slightest event makes him lose his balance, and he does not even know how to disguise the impression which he receives.... He has made himself ill, and has grown ten years older.”