Under this intolerable grievance, the people of the oppressed regions rapidly lost their enthusiasm for the Democratic administration. Turning once more to the Federalist party, which had seemed practically extinct, they threw State after State into its hands, and actually threatened the Republican control in the Presidential election of 1808. Had a coalition been arranged between the disgusted Republican factions of New York and Pennsylvania and the Federalists of New England, Delaware, and Maryland, James Madison might well have been beaten for successor to Jefferson. But worse remained behind. The outraged New Englanders, led by Timothy Pickering and others, began to use again, in town-meetings and legislatures, the old-time language of 1774, once employed against the Five Intolerable Acts, and to threaten secession. As Jefferson said later, "I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New England townships."
By this time, it was definitely proved that as a means of coercion the embargo was worthless. English manufacturers and their {202} workmen complained, but English ship-owners profited, and crowds of British seamen returned perforce to their home, even at times into the royal navy. Canning, for the Portland Ministry, sarcastically declined to be moved, observing that the embargo, whatever its motives, was practically the same as Napoleon's system, and England could not submit to being driven to surrender to France even to regain the American market or relieve the Americans from their self-inflicted sufferings. Napoleon now gave an interesting taste of his peculiar methods, for on April 17, 1808, he issued the Bayonne Decree, ordering the confiscation of all American vessels found in French ports, on the ground that, since the embargo prohibited the exit of American ships, these must, in reality, be English! Thus he gathered in about eight million dollars' worth. The policy had to be abandoned, and in the utmost ill-humour Congress repealed the embargo, on March 1, 1809, substituting non-intercourse with England and France. Thus Jefferson left office under the shadow of a monumental failure. His theory of commercial coercion had completely broken down; and he had damaged his own and his party's prestige to such an extent that the moribund Federalist organization had sprung to life and threatened the existence of the Union.
{203}
From this time onward, the New Englanders assumed the character of ultra-admirers of Great Britain. True, their vessels suffered from British seizures; but no British confiscations had done them such harm as the embargo, or taken such discreditable advantage of a transparent pretext as the Bayonne Decree. Belonging to the wealthy classes, they admired and respected England as defender of the world's civilization against Napoleon, and they detested Jefferson and Madison as tools of the enemy of mankind. They justified impressments, spoke respectfully of the British doctrines of trade, and corresponded freely with British public men. They stood, in short, exactly where the Republicans had stood in 1793, supporters of a foreign power with which the Federal administration was in controversy. In Congress and outside, they made steady, bitter menacing attacks on the integrity and honesty of the Republicans.
Under Jefferson's successor, the policy of commercial pressure was carried to its impotent conclusion. At first the action of the British government seemed to crown Madison with triumph. In the winter of 1809, the majority in Congress had talked freely of substituting war for the embargo; and at the same time the Whigs in Parliament, led by Grenville, had attacked Canning for his {204} insolence toward the United States as likely to cause war. Whitbread called attention to the similarity between the conditions in 1809 and 1774, when "the same infatuation seemed to prevail," the same certainty existed that the Americans would not fight, and the same confident assertions were made that they could not do without England. The comparison possessed much truth, for the Tories of 1809 were as indifferent to American feelings as those of 1774, and pushed their commercial policy just as North had done his political system, in the same contemptuous certainty that the Americans would never fight. Yet Canning showed sufficient deference to his assailants to instruct Erskine, British Minister at Washington, to notify Madison that the Orders would be withdrawn in case the United States kept its non-intercourse with France, recognized the Rule of 1756, and authorized British men-of-war to enforce the Non-intercourse Act.
The immediate result was surprising, for Erskine, eager to restore harmony, did not disclose or carry out his instructions, but accepted the continuance by the United States of non-intercourse against France as a sufficient concession. He announced that the Orders in Council would be withdrawn on June 10; Madison in turn promptly issued a proclamation reopening trade, and {205} swarms of American vessels rushed across the Atlantic. But Canning, in harsh language, repudiated the arrangement of his over-sanguine agent, and Madison was forced to the mortifying step of reimposing non-intercourse by a second proclamation. Still worse remained, for when F. J. Jackson, the next British Minister, arrived, the President had to undergo the insult of being told that he had connived with Erskine in violating his instructions. The refusal to hold further relations with the blunt emissary was a poor satisfaction. All this time, moreover, reparation for the Chesapeake affair was blocked, since it had been coupled with a demand for the renunciation of impressments, something that no British Ministry would have dared to yield.
On the part of Napoleon, the Non-intercourse Act offered another opportunity for plunder. When he first heard of Erskine's concessions, he was on the point of meeting them, but on learning of their failure he changed about, commanded the sequestration of all American vessels entering European ports, and in May, 1810, by the Rambouillet Decree, he ordered their confiscation and sale. The ground assigned was that the Non-intercourse Act forbade any French or English vessel to enter American ports under penalty of confiscation. {206} None had been confiscated, but they might be. Hence he acted. Incidentally he helped to fill his treasury, and seized about ten millions of American property.
By this time it was clear to most Americans that, however unfriendly the British policy, it was honesty itself compared to that of the Emperor, whose sole aim seemed to be to ensnare American vessels for the purpose of seizing them. The Federalists in Congress expatiated on his perfidy and bare-faced plunder, but nothing could shake the intention of Madison to stick to commercial bargaining. Congress now passed another Act, destined to be the last effort at peaceful coercion. Trade was opened, but the President was authorized to reimpose non-intercourse with either nation if the other would withdraw its decrees. This Act, known always as the Macon Bill No. 2, became law in May, 1810, and Napoleon immediately seized the occasion for further sharp practice. He caused an unofficial, unsigned letter to be shown to the American Minister at Paris stating that the French decrees would be withdrawn on November 2, 1810, "it being understood that the English should withdraw theirs by that time or the United States should cause its rights to be respected by England." Madison accordingly reimposed non-intercourse with {207} England on the date named, and considered the French decrees withdrawn. The situation was regarded by him as though he had entered into a contract with Napoleon, which compelled him to assert that the decrees were at an end, although he had no other evidence than the existence of the situation arising from the Macon Bill.
There followed a period during which the American Minister at London, William Pinkney, endeavoured without success to convince the British government that the decrees actually were withdrawn. The Portland Ministry had fallen in 1809, and the sharp-tongued Canning was replaced in the Foreign Office by the courteous Marquess Wellesley; but Spencer Perceval, author of the Orders in Council, was Prime Minister and stiffly determined to adhere to his policy. James Stephen and George Rose, in Parliament, stood ready to defend them, and the Tory party as a whole accepted their necessity. When, therefore, Pinkney presented his request to Wellesley, the latter naturally demanded something official from Napoleon, which neither Pinkney nor Madison could supply. Finally, in February, 1811, Pinkney broke off diplomatic relations and returned home, having played his difficult part with dignity. To aggravate the situation Napoleon's cruisers continued, {208} whenever they had a chance, to seize and burn American vessels bound for England, and his port authorities to sequester vessels arriving from England. The decrees were not in fact repealed.
Madison had committed himself, however, to upholding the honour of Napoleon—a task from which any other man would have recoiled—and the United States continued to insist on a fiction. Madison's conduct in this affair was that of a shrewd lawyer-like man who tried to carry on diplomacy between two nations fighting to the death as though it were a matter of contracts, words and phrases of legal meaning. To Napoleon, legality was an incomprehensible idea. To the Tory ministries, struggling to maintain their country against severe economic pressure, facts, not words, counted, and facts based on naval force. Upon the Jeffersonian and Madisonian attempts at peaceful coercion they looked with mingled annoyance and contempt, believing, as they did, that the whole American policy was that of a weak and cowardly nation trying by pettifogging means to secure favourable trade conditions. The situation had reached a point where the United States had nothing to hope from either contestant, by continuing this policy.