These assurances did not satisfy the President. Without consulting the Senate, though Congress was in session when the treaty was received, and although the Senate had been previously informed that one had been agreed upon, the President rejected it. On several other points it was not acceptable; but, as Mr. Madison wrote to a friend, "the case of impressments particularly having been brought to a formal issue, and having been the primary object of an extraordinary mission, a treaty could not be closed which was silent on that subject." The commissioners, therefore, were ordered to renew negotiations. This they faithfully tried to do for a year, but were finally told by the British minister that a treaty once concluded and signed, but afterward rejected in part by one of the contracting powers, could not again be taken up for consideration. The opponents of the administration made the most of this action of Mr. Jefferson. The country was not permitted to forget, even were forgetfulness possible, that thousands of seamen had been taken from American vessels, and that the larger proportion of these were native-born citizens of the United States. Not that these opponents wanted war; that, they believed, would be ruinous without a navy, and therefore some reasonable compromise was all that could be hoped for. But what was to be thought of an administration that would not go to war because it was not prepared; would not prepare in the hope that some future conjunction of circumstances would stave off that last resort; and, meanwhile, would accept no terms which might at least mitigate the injuries visited upon the sea-faring people of the United States, and possibly relieve the nation from an insolent exercise of power which it was not strong enough to resent?
As England's need of seamen increased, the captains of her cruisers, encouraged by the failure of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling American ships and taking out as many men as they believed, or pretended to believe, were deserters. In the summer of 1807 an outrage was perpetrated on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize the contempt with which a nation must be looked upon which only screamed like a woman at wrongs which it wanted the courage and strength to resent, or the wisdom to compound for. The Chesapeake was followed out of the harbor of Norfolk by the British man-of-war Leopard, and when a few miles at sea, the Chesapeake being brought to under the pretense that the English captain wished to put some dispatches on board for Europe, a demand was made for certain deserters supposed to be on the American frigate. Commodore Barron replied that he knew of no deserters on his ship, and that he could permit no search to be made, even if there were. After some further altercation the Englishman fired a broadside, killing and wounding a number of the Chesapeake's crew. Commodore Barron could do nothing else but surrender, for he had only a single gun in readiness for use, and that was fired only once and then with a coal from the cook's galley. The ship was then boarded, the crew mustered, and four men arrested as deserters. Three of them were negroes,—two natives of the United States, the other of South America. The fourth man, probably, was an Englishman. They were all deserters from English men-of-war lying off Norfolk; but the three negroes declared that they had been kidnaped, and their right to escape could not be justly questioned; indeed, the English afterward took this view of it apparently, for the men were released on the arrival of the Leopard at Halifax. But the fourth man was hanged.
For this direct national insult, explanation, apology, and reparation were demanded, and at the same time the President put forth a proclamation forbidding all British ships of war to remain in American waters. Of how much use the latter was we learn from a letter of Madison to Monroe: "They continue to defy it," he wrote, "not only by remaining within our waters, but by chasing merchant vessels arriving and departing." Some preparation was made for war, but it was only to call upon the militia to be in readiness, and to order Mr. Jefferson's gunboats to the most exposed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed. The captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed from his command, as having exceeded his duty; but a proclamation on that side was also issued, requiring all ships of war to seize British seamen on board foreign merchantmen, to demand them from foreign ships of war, and if the demand was refused to report the fact to the admiral of the fleet. It was not till after four years of irritating controversy that any settlement was reached in regard to the affair of the Chesapeake.
New perils all the while were besetting American commerce. In November, 1806, Napoleon's Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the introduction into France of the products of Great Britain and her colonies, whether in her own ships or those of other nations. This was in violation of the convention between France and the United States, if it was meant that American vessels should come under the prohibition; but for a time there was some hope that they might be excepted. In the course of the year, however, it was officially declared in Paris that the treaty would not be allowed to weaken the force of a war measure aimed at Great Britain. Under this decision, cargoes already seized were confiscated and the trade of the United States faced a new calamity. The decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation of a British order in council of six months before, which had established a partial blockade of a portion of the French coast. In the kidnaping business, France could not, of course, compete with England; for there were few of her citizens to be found on board of American vessels, and to seize a Yankee sailor, under the pretense that he was a Frenchman, was an absurdity never thought of. But hundreds of Americans, the crews of ships seized for violation of the terms of the Berlin decree, were thrown into French prisons. So far, therefore, as the United States had good ground of complaint on any score against either power, there was little to choose between them. Mr. Jefferson's repugnance to war was sufficient to hold him back from one with England, though he might have had France for an ally; still more unwilling was he, by a war with France, to make a friend of England, whom he still looked upon as the natural enemy of the United States; for, notwithstanding all that had come and gone, he still regarded France with something of the old affection. In the autumn of 1807 he called a special session of Congress in consideration of the increasing aggressions of Great Britain, especially in the attack upon the Chesapeake, and the injury done by the interdiction of neutral trade with any country with which that power was at war. But he had no recommendations to offer of resistance nor even of defense, except that some additions be made to the gunboats, and that sailors on shore be enrolled as a sort of gunboat militia. The probable real purpose of calling the extra session, however, appeared in about two weeks, when he sent a special message to the Senate recommending an embargo.
An act was almost immediately passed which, if anything more was needed to complete the ruin of American commerce, supplied that deficiency. A month before this time the English ministry had issued a new order in council—the news of which reached Jefferson as he was about to send in his message—proclaiming a blockade of pretty much all Europe, and forbidding any trade in neutral vessels unless they had first gone into some British port and paid duties on their cargoes; and within twenty-four hours of the President's message recommending the embargo, Napoleon proclaimed a new decree from Milan, by which it was declared that any ship was lawful prize that had anything whatever to do with Great Britain,—that should pay it tribute, that should carry its merchandise, that should be bound either to or from any of its ports. All that these powers could do to shut every trading vessel out of all European ports was now done; and at this opportune moment Mr. Jefferson came to their aid by compelling all American vessels to stay at home. It is not easy in our time to conceive of a President proposing, or of a party accepting, or of the people submitting to, such a measure as this. But Mr. Jefferson's followers were very obedient, and there was, undoubtedly, a very general belief that trade with the United States was so important to the nations at war that for the sake of its renewal the obnoxious decrees and orders in council would soon be repealed. But, except upon certain manufacturers in England, little influence was visible. General Armstrong, the American minister in France, wrote: "Here it is not felt; and in England, amid the more recent and interesting events of the day, it is forgotten." When, however, the effect was evident at home of a law forbidding any American vessels from going to sea, even to catch fish, and prohibiting the export of any of the products of the United States, either in their own ships or those of any other country, then there arose a popular clamor for the abandonment of a policy so ruinous. Within four months of its enactment, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared, in a debate in Congress, that "an experiment such as is now making was never before—I will not say tried—it never before entered into the human imagination. There is nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of fiction. All the habits of a mighty nation are at once counteracted. All their property depreciated. All their external connections violated. Five millions of people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the limits of that once free country; now they are not even permitted to thrust their own property through the grates." While American ships at home were kept there, those which had remained abroad to escape the embargo were met by a new peril. Some of them were in French ports awaiting a turn in affairs; others ventured to load with English goods in English ports, to be landed in France under the pretense, supported by fraudulent papers, that they were direct from the United States or other neutral country. The fraud was too transparent to escape detection long, and Napoleon thereupon issued, in the spring of 1808, the Bayonne decree authorizing the seizure and confiscation of all American vessels. They were either English or American, he said; if the former, they were enemy's ships and liable to capture; but if the latter, they should be at home, and he was only enforcing the embargo law of the United States, which she ought to thank him for.
The prosperity and tranquillity which marked the earlier years of Jefferson's administration disappeared in its last year. Congress, both in its spring and winter sessions, could talk of little else but the disastrous embargo; proposing, on the one hand, to make it the more stringent by an enforcement act, and, on the other, to substitute for it non-intercourse with England and France, restoring trade with the rest of the world, and leaving the question of decrees and orders in council open for future consideration. The President no longer held his party under perfect control. The mischievous results of the embargo policy were evident enough to a sufficient number of Republicans to secure in February, 1809, the repeal of that measure, to take effect the next month as to all countries except England and France, and, with regard to them, at the adjournment of the next Congress. But the prohibition of importation from both these latter countries was continued till the obnoxious orders in council and the decrees should be repealed.