Jefferson and his Colleagues

arded as a self-confessed pacifist, with all the derogatory implications that lurk in that epithet. The circumstances which made him a revolutionist in 1776 and a passionate advocate of peace in

ull-blooded men who find self-expression in adventurous activity. Mere physical effort without conscious purpose never appealed to him. He was at the opposite pole of life from a man like Aaron Burr. He never, so far as history records, had an affair of honor; he neve

tion; to coerce by war was to enslave a community; and to enslave a community was to provoke revolution. Jefferson's thought gravitated inevitably to the center of his rational universe-to the principle of enlightened self-interest. Men and women are not to be permanently moved by force but by appeals to their inte

erged in twelve years of almost continuous war. Yet with amazing self-assurance President Jefferson believed that he held in his hand a master-key which would

we ask is to do us justice. I believe that we have in our hands the means of peaceable coercion; and that the moment they s

British admiralty courts threatened to cut off the lucrative commerce between Europe and the West Indies. With this theory in view, the President and his Secretary of State advocated the NonImportation Bill of April 18, 1806, which forbade the entry of certain specified goods of British manufacture. The opposition found a leader in Randolph, who now broke once and for all with the Administration. "Never in the course of my life," he exclaimed, "have I witnessed s

es made since the Essex decision, and express repudiation of the right of impressment. In return for these concessions, they might hold out the possible repeal of the Non-Importation Act! Only confirmed optimists could believe that the mistress of the seas, flushed with the victory of Trafalgar, would consent to yield these points for so slight a compensation. The mission was, indeed, doomed from the outset, and nothing more need be said of it than that in the end, to secure any treaty at all, Monroe and Pinkney broke their instructions and set aside the three ultimata. What they obtained in return seemed so insignificant

n the Chesapeake and the restoration of the American seamen, but also as "an indispensable part of the satisfaction" "an entire abolition of impressments." If the Secretary of State had deliberately contrived to deliver Monroe into the hands of George Canning, he could not have been more successful, for Monroe had already protested against the Chesapeake outrage as an act of aggression which should be promptly disavowed without reference to the larger question of impressment. He was now obliged to eat his own words and inject into the discussion, as Canning put it, the irrelevant matters which they had agreed to separate from the present controversy. Canning was quick to see his opportunity. Mr. Monroe must be aware, said he, that on several recent occasions His Majesty had firmly declined to waive "the

of the President of the United States for proceeding to negotiate anew upon the basis of a treaty already solemnly concluded and signed, is a proposal wholly inadmissible." His Majesty could therefore only acquiesce in the refusal of the President to ratify the treaty. One week later, James Monroe departed from London, never again to set foot on British soil, leaving Pinkney to assume the duties of Minister at the Court of St. James

the system of international law universally observed by all civilized nations-so the preamble read-but by a monstrous abuse of the right of blockade has determined to destroy neutral trade and to raise her commerce and industry upon the ruins of that of the continent, and since "whoever deals on the continent in English goods thereby favors and renders himself an accomplice of her designs," therefore the British Isles are declared to be in a state of blockade. Henceforth all English goods were to be lawful prize in any territory held by the troops of France or her allies; and all vessels which had come from English ports or from English colonies were to be confiscated, together with their cargoes. This challenge was too much for the

ies." The peculiar hardship of this order for American shipowners is revealed by the papers of Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose shrewdness and enterprise were making him one of the merchant princes of his time. One of his ships, the Liberty, of some 250 tons, was sent to Lisbon with a cargo of 2052 barrels and 220 half-barrels of flour

between an enemy country and its colony. The British prize court condemned the cargo but released the ship. The unlucky Horizon then loaded with an English cargo and sailed again to Lisbon, but misfortune overtook her and she was wrecked off the French coast. Her cargo was salvaged, however, and what was not of English origin was restored to her owners by decree of a French prize court; the rest of her cargo was confiscated under the terms of the Berlin decree. When the American Minister protested at this decision, he was told that "since America suffers her ships to be searched, she adopts the principle that the flag does not

tory of the United

o neutrals all European ports under French control, "as if the same were actually blockaded," but permitted vessels which first entered a British port and obtained a British license to sail to any continental port. It was an order which, as Henry Adams has

an decree of December 17, 1807. Henceforth any vessel which submitted to search by English cruisers, or paid any tonnage duty or tax to the English Government, or sailed to or from any English port, wo

nd Gates! He proposed the construction of two hundred of these gunboats, which would be distributed among the various exposed harbors, where in time of peace they would be hauled up on shore under sheds, for protection against sun and storm. As emergency arose these floating batteries were to be manned by the seamen and militia of the port. What appealed particularly to the President in this programme was the immunity it offered from "an excitement to engage in offensive maritime war." Gallatin would have modified even this plan for economy's sake. He would have constructed only one-half of the proposed fleet since the large seaports could probably build thirty gunboats in as many days, if an emergency arose. In extenuation of Gallatin's short

n immediately called his Cabinet together. All were of one mind. The impending order-in-council, it was agreed, left but one alternative. Commerce must be totally suspended until the full scope of these new aggressions could be ascertained. The President took a loose sheet of paper and drafted hastily a message to Congress, recommending an embargo in anticipation of the offensive British order. But the prudent Madison urged that it was better not to refer explicitly to the order and proposed a substitute which simply recommended "an immediate inhibition of the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United States," on

lue of vessel and cargo to reland their freight in some port of the United States. Historians have discovered a degree of duplicity in the alleged motives for this act. How, it is asked, could protection of ships and seamen be the motive when all of Jefferson's private letters disclose his determination to put his theory of peaceable coercion to a practical test by this measure? The criticism is not altogether fair, for, as Jefferson would himse

e World War, Thomas Jefferson might have proved that peaceable coercion is an effective alternative to war; but he overestimated the magnitude and importance of the carrying trade of the United States, and erred still more grievously in assuming that a public conscience existed which would prove superior to the temptation to evade the law. Jefferson dreaded war quite as much because of its concomitants a

e day on which all differences should be adjusted. Rose consented to this course and the proclamation was delivered into his hands. He then divulged little by little his further instructions, which were such as no self-respecting administration could listen to with composure. Canning demanded a formal disavowal of Commodore Barron's conduct in encouraging deserters from His Majesty's service and harboring them on board his ship. "You will state," read Rose's instructions, "that such disavowals, solemnly expressed, would afford to His Majesty a satisfactory pledge on the part of the American Government that the recurrence of similar causes will not on any occasion impose on His Majesty the necessity of authorizing those means of force to which Admiral Berkeley has resorted without authority, but which the continued repetition of such

aded the exactions of the law in every conceivable way. Under guise of engaging in the coasting trade, many a ship landed her cargo in a foreign port; a brisk traffic also sprang up across the Canadian border; and Amelia Island in St. Mary's River, Florida, became a notorious mart for illicit commerce. Almost at once Congress was forced to pass supplementary acts, conferring upon collectors of ports powers of inspection and regulation which Gallatin unhesitatingly pronounced both odious

its removal AS A MEASURE OF INCONVENIENT RESTRICTION UPON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE." By licensing American vessels, indeed, which had either slipped out of port before the embargo or evaded the collectors, the British Government was even profiting by this measure of restriction. It was these vagrant vessels which gave Napoleon his excuse for the Bayonne decree of April 17, 1808, when with a stroke of the pen he ordered the seizure of all American ships in French ports and swept proper

ships in the carrying trade were owned, pointed to the schooners "rotting at their wharves," to the empty shipyards and warehouses, to the idle sailors wandering in the streets of port towns, and asked passionately how long they must be sacrificed to the theories of this charlatan in the White House. Even Southern Republicans were asking uneasily w

rship at a critical moment. Madison and Gallatin tried to persuade their party associates to continue the embargo until June, and then, if concessions were not forthcoming, to declare war; but they were powerless to hold the Republican majority together on this programme. Setting aside the embargo and returning to the earlier policy of non-intercourse, Congress adopted a measure which excluded all English and French vessels and imports, but which authorized the Pre