The United States of America Part 13

"I well remember," said Jefferson, on one occasion to Gallatin, under whose care these agencies of commerce must come, "the opposition on this very ground to the first act for building a light house. The utility of the thing has sanctioned the infraction."

But it was not possible to restrict the demand to lighthouses. Presently an appropriation was necessary for a dry dock to accommodate the little gunboats which the thrifty Administration had subst.i.tuted for the Federal men-of-war. Jefferson got out of this in a way which would have done credit to his great rival. "Although the power to regulate commerce," said he, "does not give a power to build piers, wharves, open ports, clear the beds of rivers, dig ca.n.a.ls, build warehouses, build manufacturing machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the earth, to all of which the power would go if it went to the first, yet a power to provide and maintain a navy is a power to provide receptacles for it and places to cover and preserve it." Here Jefferson had made out a list of proscribed actions, which the National Government dared not enter upon. But soon Gallatin reported a vessel sunk in the Delaware River, a menace to navigation, which neighbouring States showed no inclination to remove. Reluctantly the President gave permission to have the United States open the river. In quoting the powers of the National Government over commerce to justify the action, he added, "But we must take care not to go ahead of them and strain the meaning of the terms still further to the clearing out of the channels of all rivers, etc., of the United States. The removing of a sunken vessel is not the repairing of a pier." Nevertheless, soon after, an appropriation was made for erecting public piers in the Delaware River.

It is needless to continue citing the steps by which the Administration a.s.sumed a fostering care of these public improvements. To sum up during the last year of Jefferson's administration, appropriations aggregating almost one hundred thousand dollars were made, without opposition, for constructing lighthouses, for removing bars and shoals, and making safe the ways of ocean commerce. The extension of this paternalistic principle to internal commerce would come in time with the movement of the people inland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTERN ARKS AT NEW ORLEANS. From Hall's "Etchings in America." In the foreground appear the flat boats which have brought down the produce of the western people and beyond the s.h.i.+pping, which is to carry the stuff to foreign markets. The sketch furnishes an Ill.u.s.tration of the compulsion which caused the purchase of New Orleans.]

It may be said truthfully that these various measures, so inconsistent with the early avowed principles of the party, were inherited from the Federalists. But responsibility for the supreme act, the addition of foreign territory to the national domain, must be a.s.sumed solely by the Administration. Perhaps no action, until the decision to prevent certain States from leaving the Union, contributed so much to the central authority as the purchase of the Louisiana country by the Jeffersonians. If the decision had been negative, if conscientious scruples had been allowed to prevail, one hesitates to predict what would have been the fate of this "pent-up Utica." For forty years the owners.h.i.+p of Louisiana had been s.h.i.+fting and uncertain. For twenty years its possession had been a matter of scheming and intrigue by both Great Britain and France. Permanently in the hand of any foreign power, it would have completely blocked the path of progress. To possess one-half the drainage basin of the valley would have led to constant conflict with the owners of the other half. The insularity upon which the United States has depended so largely, the freedom from annoying neighbours, room for the westward expansion of the people, the unification of the Mississippi valley--all would have been lost if the original strict-construction theory had prevailed. Securing a domain extending to the Mississippi in the Peace of 1783 had been simply retaining what had been won largely by the colonists twenty years before when the French were driven from the valley. In the Louisiana question, the nation faced for the first time a national expansion.

To p.r.o.nounce this the paramount action of the century in Union-making, one need only think of the precedent for acquiring new territory thus formed and which has been followed in no less than seven instances and confirmed by a decision of the Supreme Court. It seems strange that the framers of the Const.i.tution did not foresee and provide for such an emergency. Perhaps the omission was due to the intuitive feeling that no nation in all history had hesitated to enlarge its domain when advantage offered or necessity demanded. Necessity was here the moving principle and it scattered to the winds party objection to using the implied powers, and forced the friends of government to take refuge in the preamble to the Const.i.tution and in "all laws which are just and necessary," a position from which they had tried in vain to drive the Hamiltonians a few years before.

It was ordained by fate that the Jeffersonians should father a policy of national expansion which covered every addition of territory to that of Alaska. By nature they were opposed to giving such advantage to the central power. After the acquisition had been made, Jefferson was loud in his declaration that he would not "give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation"; but neither by nature nor party was he an expansionist. He would have been satisfied with the acquisition of the east bank of the river, including New Orleans.

During the negotiations he confessed his doubts of success. He thought trade would soon make Natchez a second New Orleans. Hamilton, on the contrary, was an expansionist by principle and party. Three years before the purchase of Louisiana he said of that country and the Floridas, "I have been long in the habit of considering the acquisition of those countries as essential to the permanency of the Union, which I consider as very important to the welfare of the whole."

Holding such aggressive opinions, Hamilton and his party, had they been in control during this long period, might have rashly entered upon an offensive policy which would have precipitated frequent wars and have endangered the Republic before its home strength had been developed. Looking to the happiness of the ma.s.s rather than the individual and devoid of scruples about the divine rights of man, the Federalists would not have hesitated to hold as subjects the inhabitants of acquired territory longer than the principle of self-government, for which a republic stands, would have permitted. On the other hand, by the time the "porcupine policy" of dealing with other nations on territorial questions, as the Federalists contemptuously called the early att.i.tude of their opponents, had grown gradually into an aggressive policy, the Republic had become sufficiently strong to maintain whatever position might be taken.

It was not alone fear that the ambitious Napoleon might obtain a foothold in neighbouring territory which moved the Jeffersonians to this inconsistent step. Neither was the action due entirely to fear lest Britain might obtain possession of it in the renewed war with France. The law of compulsion showed in other particulars. The advance of the American pioneers across the continent could not be checked.

They had compelled the Atlantic-coast majority into making the Pinckney Treaty which opened the mouth of the Mississippi in 1795. Remembrance of their threatened secession compelled Jefferson to try to quiet their fears freshly aroused by the transfer of Louisiana to France, and the closing of the Mississippi. Ex-Governor Monroe, of Virginia, was chosen to a.s.sist Livingston, because his former executive position had put him in touch with the Western people.

In several ways Louisiana played havoc with strict-construction theories. So regardful of the rights of the individual had the Jeffersonians been in the early days that many had hesitated about creating Territories in the western vacant lands, lest the people migrating to them should not enjoy equal rights with their fellows in the States. When the inhabitants of the Mississippi Territory in 1799 pet.i.tioned for promotion to the second grade of territorial government, Jefferson denounced the first grade, which had been given to them by Congress a few years before, as "a despotic oligarchy without a rational object." Within five years, he and his party were facing the problem of establis.h.i.+ng a status for some forty thousand white people, whom the United States had acquired with the Louisiana country. The problem was whether to violate the doctrine of the rights of man as well as the treaty and hold these people perpetually as colonists, or, by providing for their erection into States, further imperil the sectional balance of power, further endanger the sovereignty of the individual States, and contribute to the growing strength of the Central Government.

In his Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson had provided for eventual and not immediate statehood for the inhabitants of the Western territory.

Manifestly a State could not be made out of vacant land; it must await a sufficient number of inhabitants. But this excuse for holding citizens temporarily in a subordinate position was not valid in Louisiana, where the southern point of the great triangle already contained a sufficient number of inhabitants for statehood. Moreover, Napoleon had sufficient thought for these p.a.w.ns in the game of diplomacy to insert in the treaty of cession a provision that statehood should be given them "as soon as possible." The Jeffersonians were compelled to resort to loose construction in interpreting this phrase. Louisiana contained a large non-English-speaking population, unaccustomed to the privileges and obligations of free government. Their deficiency was only partly supplied by a sprinkling of Americans, who always precede and bring about a demand for expansion of territory. "All men are created equal,"

was the doctrine of the Jeffersonian Declaration. But even the doctrinaire would not insist that it gave to each individual immediate and equal share in all government both national and local, whether or not he was prepared by inheritance or environment. During nine years the people of the Louisiana territory had to serve in preparation under the rule of the rights-of-man party, before the first portion was erected to statehood on an equality with the older States.

Being unable to admit the people of Louisiana to immediate statehood, and unwilling to hold them purely as colonists, the Jeffersonians divided the land into a territory and a district. This action prolonged for years the possibility that the people reside in territories, deprived of the privileges and protection of a State government. Suppose the "monarchists" should again come into national control and pa.s.s new Alien and Sedition laws? Where could these inhabitants of a territory find a protector? Under such conditions, the prestige of State citizens.h.i.+p was rapidly disappearing. The very fact that certain inhabitants of the United States were living solely under the protection of the national authority inspired a greater respect for that authority.

Likewise, when these people were admitted to statehood at the end of their period of probation, it would be done by an act of Congress, and not by the States.

Among the many const.i.tutional dilemmas into which the party had been brought by this compulsory action, was a provision of the treaty that the port of New Orleans should enjoy certain favours for a number of years. To reconcile this exception with the Const.i.tution, which says that "all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the states," it was declared that the territory had been purchased by the States in their confederated capacity and they could hold it like a colony. Therefore, the Congress could regulate it as a territory under the Const.i.tution without reference to the provisions affecting the States. Thus did fate compel a virtual acknowledgment from the sticklers for individual rights, within four years after their accession to national control, that the Const.i.tution did not follow in all its provisions the extension of sovereignty over new soil.

From a broad point of view, the placing of sixty years of territorial expansion in the hands of the party opposed to the practice by birth and nature is a strong evidence of the checks and balances which have made the nation. Under strict construction, territorial expansion became a potent factor in loosening the bonds in which the Government might have been confined. Under loose construction, expansion might have become a centrifugal force through foreign conquest and colonial holding which would have destroyed the free system it was intended to build up. The Jeffersonians were moved in later expansions by a desire to extend an economic system and to make party capital. They never sought national aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, as their opponents might have done had they been in power. Proud of the territorial growth of the Union as we now are, and seeing so clearly the wisdom of the final consummation, we forget that the domain might have been increased too rapidly or too extensively in more sympathetic hands.

In still another way was the fallacy of strict construction laid bare by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the Const.i.tution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this const.i.tutional preventive against central usurpation. But time was wanting. "From the moment that France takes possession of the mouth of the Mississippi,"

said Jefferson, "she becomes our mortal enemy." Amendment-making is necessarily a slow process. Months if not years are required. Jefferson was obliged reluctantly to abandon his first thought of an amendment to cover both the present case of Louisiana and the future affair of the Floridas, if they were not included in Louisiana. He was forced to suggest to members of Congress that the less said about any const.i.tutional difficulty the better, and that it would be desirable for that body to do what was necessary in silence.

If the Jeffersonians had been driven from their first ground by this territorial acquisition, the Federalists had fared no better. They had first called into being the genii of the "implied powers," and now had the mortification of seeing it serve their enemies. Having swung in the change of 1801 from the "ins" to the "outs," they became the opposition party and were compelled to resist many measures and principles which they had formerly advocated. They had gradually lost State after State until they were confined to New England. The former great national party, the party of Hamilton, Jay, and Adams, the party to which Was.h.i.+ngton had leaned, was shrinking into a sectional faction.

Where it had once wished to give the Union every means of aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, it was now compelled to oppose almost doubling its domain, lest the balance of power between the different parts be lost.

It feared the ascendency which Louisiana would give to the Southern interests, never foreseeing from the shape of the addition that the advantage would in time lie with the North. Professing devotion to the Union, they would now deprive it of the advantages resulting from prolonging indefinitely its holding of colonies. They must have seen the result if the domain had never extended beyond the Mississippi.

The territory both north and south of the Ohio would speedily be made into States according to existing arrangements. The great prestige inuring to the Union from territorial control would thereby cease. But with the addition of new provinces from time to time, the holding of territories preliminary to statehood must be indefinitely prolonged.

The functions of the Union would be multiplied instead of diminished.

By the acquisition of Louisiana, Jefferson effectually settled the twenty years of internal dispute over the navigation of the lower Mississippi. From source to mouth, it flowed presumably through American territory. Americans were to be found on both sides the great water highway. Those west of the river had crossed upon invitation of Spain, who hoped in this way to people her province without loss to her other possessions. The colonists taken across the river by Colonel Morgan and others had caused no little alarm to statesmen in the Confederation days, lest the population of the United States be drawn off to people a Spanish possession and so weaken the Republic. Among the thirty-five thousand or more people to be found about the city of New Orleans and along the lower Mississippi and the Red rivers was a small percentage of Americans; but a much larger proportion was to be found in the six thousand inhabitants of St. Louis and the small villages near by.

This leaven of Americans affected the whole. They had been accustomed to the fostering hand of the National Government in the matter of improving means of transportation and communication in the older States from which they had migrated, and they did not hesitate to demand such aid for their new localities. Thus the people in their westward movement, carrying with them remembrances of the benefits of government a.s.sistance enjoyed in their former homes, have extended the system of national improvements across the continent.

There was a pressing demand for a.s.sistance in the Louisiana country.

The province had been long neglected because of the frequent changes in owners.h.i.+p and the Latin method of colony holding. The task of Americanising this foreign element was imperative. The extent of territory to be brought under harmonious rule was extensive and varied.

It was impossible for the Administration, in providing for the welfare and defence of the acquisition, not to be drawn into measure after measure of that paternalistic nature for which the party had so roundly criticised the Federalists. The sole management of Territories was vested in the National Government. The individual States could have no part in providing for the inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. Occupying presumably the same balcony in which Laussat, Wilkinson, and Claiborne stood on the front of the Spanish _cabildo_ at New Orleans, in December, 1803, witnessing the replacing of the French flag by the American flag in the public square below, there stand, in the ill.u.s.tration, the Governor of Louisiana, with a descendant of Claiborne, the Archbishop and the Mayor of New Orleans, enacting the scene in December, 1903.]

Federalist precedent had paved the way for Republican action. Since the Revolutionary days, Congress had been accustomed to maintain troops on the border for the protection of settlers. The establishment of forts in distant parts made necessary the construction of roads between the posts and their connection with the settled parts for the conveyance of troops and supplies. The addition of the vast tract of Louisiana demanded an immediate extension of military posts and military roads.

The Federalists had been accustomed, as previously described, to construct new post-roads instead of confining the mails to roads already built by State or private funds. Some of these post-roads were nothing more than a "trace" cut through the woods, which permitted a man on horseback to pa.s.s, carrying a post-bag. Even this could not be done without some expenditure. Occasionally the expense was met by a donation of public lands through which the trace pa.s.sed. In other instances, payment was made from the postal receipts and appropriations. The const.i.tutionality of such action had been attacked occasionally by the Republicans before they came into power. But having a.s.sumed the national control, they were compelled to continue the construction of military and post-roads. Even the fear of a standing army and the desire to economise could not warrant a neglect of the inhabitants scattered through the new possession. Congress owed protection to them not only as an implied power, but as an implied duty.

Thus it came about that Jefferson, who a few years before was taking Madison to task for thinking that the power to establish post-roads meant to construct new ones rather than to establish post-routes on those already made, was engaged with his Cabinet in planning a vast system of new highways to and through Louisiana. Among other enterprises, they contemplated a great post-road to New Orleans through Georgia, instead of the long water route heretofore used by way of Nashville and Natchez. The new way, it was estimated, would shorten the journey five hundred miles. Branches were planned to St. Louis and to Detroit. The difficulties of frontier travel may be imagined from the fact that the surveyor-general, who was despatched to examine the feasibility of the Georgia route, was nearly three months in reaching New Orleans from Was.h.i.+ngton.

Interested in scientific knowledge and exploration, and desirous of keeping American s.h.i.+ps off the seas by developing internal trade, Jefferson had antic.i.p.ated the purchase of Louisiana by proposing confidentially to Congress the despatch of a few men on an investigating trip up the Missouri River. Trade with the Indians needed to be cultivated in this manner, but no State was sufficiently concerned to undertake it. Jefferson found an easy way to warrant national action.

"The interests of commerce," said he, "place the princ.i.p.al object within the const.i.tutional powers and care of Congress." Not even Randolph, who deplored every departure from old policies, could ever regret the expenditure of the $2500 which sent the Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent and laid the claims for national addition nearly a half-century later. After this precedent, it was easy to send Lieutenant Pike to ascertain the true source of the Mississippi and to explore the vast plains on the south-west toward the Spanish possessions. Many expeditions for scientific purposes and for exploration have been sent by the National Government since that day; but it must be remembered that the practice was inaugurated under the strict constructionists, with no other warrant than "to regulate commerce."

The Lewis and Clark expedition called fresh attention to the possibilities of the great West, and justified the urgent demand of the Western people for national aid. The danger of Western secession had long since disappeared; but many plotters had shown a tendency to use the frontiersmen as allies in the European wars. Genet, over ten years before the Lewis and Clark expedition, contemplated the use of an American force against British Canada. Miranda proposed to use the same recruiting-ground for his movements on Spanish South America, and even Hamilton consented to the scheme, if he could be commander of the expedition. Now came Burr, planning an expedition of these hardy trans-Alleghenians into New Orleans and thence into the disintegrating Spanish possessions of the South-west. Napoleon's success seemed to have turned the heads of all ambitious men of the day toward foreign conquest and they proposed to use the Mississippi valley as a rallying-ground. To invade the territory of a nation with whom the United States was at peace was contrary to Federal law. Jefferson turned his attention toward punis.h.i.+ng Burr on even more serious grounds; but Gallatin was keen enough to discover the cause for selecting the Western people as tools. It was not a novel idea to suggest better means of communication between the East and the West; but it was novel to attribute Western disaffection to a lack of touch and sympathy between the people of the two sections. Trade and intrigue with foreign neighbours, so Gallatin thought, could be suppressed more easily by kindness than by punishment. It was true that the National Government had permanently opened the Mississippi River as an outlet for the West.

But the journey down was long and tedious, delays might be encountered at New Orleans because of the limited number of ocean vessels on which produce could be transs.h.i.+pped, and only a limited cargo if any was possible on the return journey up-stream. The increase in population and the consequent increase in the size of crops to be transported to a market would speedily bring a demand for some means of taking the products directly to the Atlantic seaboard and of bringing manufactured goods in return.

Gallatin embodied some of these thoughts in his celebrated report on the topography of the United States, which he submitted to Congress in 1808. He first described the few attempts which had thus far been made by States and private companies toward constructing ca.n.a.ls and turnpikes. Then he threw party theories to the wind and, with a constructive statesmans.h.i.+p second only to that of Hamilton, he suggested a vast system of national improvements on a worthy scale to be undertaken and carried to completion by the central authority. It would require not less than twenty million dollars. Since there would be an annual surplus of five million dollars because of the unredeemable form of the national debt, he would appropriate large sums to these "national objects." Not only would the distant parts be bound together, the mail better accommodated, and internal trade a.s.sisted, but, as Gallatin pointed out, it would be possible to transport troops hurriedly from place to place, adding to the national defence. Nature had interposed mountains, falls, and sandbars in the pathways of interstate communication. "The General Government alone," said he, "can remove these obstacles."

Gallatin was compelled to acknowledge, however, that the execution of his plan would be hampered because the National Government could not, under the limits of the Const.i.tution, undertake the construction of a road or ca.n.a.l through a State without the express permission of that State. In the Territories alone would it be possible. State consent might be difficult to obtain, because so many States had inaugurated similar enterprises, which would be obliged to compete with the national roads and ca.n.a.ls. Jefferson, in accord with his general theory, suggested an amendment to the Const.i.tution, removing this objection.

He overlooked the fact that national post-roads and military roads had been already constructed within States. With such an amendment, he was willing to use the national income accruing above the national expenses for "the improvement of roads, ca.n.a.ls, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union," as he said in his last annual message.

Gallatin said in his report that the only work undertaken by the United States at their sole expense, and to which the consent of the States had been obtained, was the road from c.u.mberland to Brownsville. Further appropriations for that object were const.i.tutional. As to other projects, he thought the National Government was empowered to do nothing more at present than to a.s.sist those undertaken by giving them loans or subscribing to their stock. Also the Federal engineers might be employed in making surveys for proposed improvements. It seems strange, in the light of modern Government initiative, to see statesmen blocked in a desired undertaking by const.i.tutional quibbling. Having embarked in the work in the case of military and post-roads and in the c.u.mberland Road, they hesitated to go on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WRITTEN LAW OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY. A law pa.s.sed at Vincennes, now in Indiana, against gambling. In the absence of printing-presses it is said the judges were accustomed to nail up copies of the laws on trees for the information of the public.]

This c.u.mberland National Turnpike is an excellent example of the constant menace to individualism and the irresistible tendency toward unionism resulting from the advance of population, the topography of the country, and the cupidity of the people. The portage across the watershed from the streams of the Atlantic plain to those of the Ohio valley had been a matter of concern from colonial times. Artificial waterways were impossible from lack of water-supply on the high levels.

The Union inherited this problem when the policy of creating national Territories out of the back lands was inaugurated. Lack of funds prevented any extensive attempt to solve the problem.

The State of Ohio was the first to be created out of the public domain.

The unsold public lands lying within its boundaries remained in the possession of the United States, although sovereignty over them pa.s.sed to the State. By an agreement between the two powers, the State refrained from taxing the lands for five years, in return for which the Federal Government promised to spend five per cent, of the proceeds of the land sales within the State in the construction of public roads.

A portion of this was to be devoted to building a highway over the Allegheny Mountains to the State. Strict-construction scruples were satisfied by securing the consent of the States through which the road was to be built.

Consent having been given by the State Legislatures of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, work was begun in 1808 at the eastern terminus of the portage, Fort c.u.mberland, Maryland, a name eventually given to the entire road. Grants of money were made from the land sales; but the proceeds acc.u.mulated so slowly that they were inadequate for carrying on the work. The demand for the completion of the road increased with growth of travel to the West. A way out of the difficulty was found by making appropriations directly from the national treasury "to be repaid out of the fund reserved for laying out and making roads to the state of Ohio." When this condition would be dropped and appropriations made openly for the road, the same as for the army, the navy, and other specified obligations of the National Government, would depend entirely upon the demands of the people. Every appropriation simply whetted the appet.i.te for more.

As Gallatin said, the c.u.mberland Road is unique. It is a solitary example. It did not mean the adoption by the Jeffersonians of a party policy on such liberal principles. But it made easier the adoption of such a policy after the War of 1812 had demonstrated in a most unpleasant manner the absolute necessity for such action on the part of the General Government.

Jefferson had a most delightful manner of satisfying his conscience and adjusting himself to the inevitable by likening national to individual actions. In the case of the Louisiana purchase he had compared the National Administration to a guardian who adds a desirable bit of property to his ward's farm and then throws himself on the mercy of the ward for approval. He pardoned the a.s.sumption of a const.i.tutional right to build the c.u.mberland Road by likening the Administration to a farmer who wishes to sell some distant and inaccessible portion of his land, and is compelled to spend part of the proceeds in constructing roads to it in order to sell the remainder. Regardless of the soundness or folly of such philosophy, the mischief was done. Insidiously the internal-improvement precedent had been allowed to creep into the strict-construction fold. How it grew until one veto after another was required to bring the people back to their senses remains to be described later.

During the latter portion of Jefferson's eight years of administration, the party was saved from being driven into more Union-making actions, because domestic matters were overshadowed by the hostile aspect of foreign affairs. Measures looking to the improvement of internal communication, development of interstate commerce, interior exploration and discovery, and the spread of intelligence had to be postponed from session to session to consider retaliation on the European foes to American commerce. Such aggressive acts as the attack of the _Leopard_ on the _Chesapeake_ could brook no delay. But it was inevitable that when the engrossing foreign questions should cease, the demand for paternalistic measures would be renewed with a zeal doubled by delay and by the new spirit of nationality. The important fact to be noted at this time is that the movement of the people across the continent went on steadily, whatever might be the aspect of affairs on the Atlantic coast.

The foreign relations of the United States were rapidly coming to a point which would terminate the predominance of European influence on American political parties. The struggle of the French people for liberty, which had appealed so powerfully to Jefferson and his followers, was now lost in the ambitions of Napoleon. "I had hoped,"

said Jefferson at a later time, "that he would have seen the difference between the example of a Cromwell and a Was.h.i.+ngton." Ten years before, Jefferson would willingly have seen his countrymen fighting side by side with the French patriots against monarchical England; but to be allied with Napoleon meant to further the ends of Napoleon. With the single exception of the Louisiana transaction, Jefferson's diplomatic administration is a story of European intrigue and imposition upon an impotent and helpless neutral. American commercial rights were lost sight of in the world-struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. The decrees of one belligerent were followed by checkmating orders in council of the other, and _vice versa_, with no regard for neutral rights, and no object save starving each other into submission.

It is true that the American traders sought every opportunity of evading these orders and decrees and continuing the most profitable trade America had ever known. For instance, Britain forbade all trading directly between France, Holland, Spain, and their colonies in order to cut off supplies. In order to evade this, an American captain would take a cargo in these colonies, sail to some American port, enter his cargo, and immediately clear with the same, without really unloading.

He was ent.i.tled to a drawback of the duties he had paid. Having now broken his voyage, as he claimed, he sailed to a French or Spanish port without danger of violating the British orders. The British admiralty courts soon declared that this was an evasion; that there had been in reality no "broken voyage." Then American traders began the practice of really landing the goods in some American port, while the vessel was overhauled and repaired, then continuing the voyage, after reloading. The British courts conceded this to be a broken voyage.

In 1805, so ample were the supplies furnished France and Spain by this method of evading the law, that the British court reversed its former opinion. A large number of seizures followed. To cover the entire continental coast, a paper blockade was declared by Britain about the same time. The Administration could no longer continue its policy of forbearance. Negotiation had failed. Retaliation was the only method left. Jefferson, the father of his people, was a warrior neither by nature nor practice. A foreign war meant to him the disarrangement of domestic affairs, interference with domestic development, and the acc.u.mulation of a debt which must fall in the last a.n.a.lysis upon the common people, the least able to bear it. To a correspondent he expressed his desire to avoid war until the national debt was discharged, when the regular income would meet the expense of a war and so prevent a new debt and increased taxes. His policy of retrenchment, dictated by his love of the people, had reduced the army and navy and left the land without adequate means of defence. He further realised that war might bring undue national aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. The common defence must be undertaken by the Central Government. In the haste and the necessities of war, measures might be taken oppressive to the people and destructive of their individual rights, which would never be pa.s.sed in the calm contemplations of peace. Reluctantly he was compelled to advise Congress to enter upon a system of total embargo on foreign trade, which might possibly avoid war and preserve the pattern of neutrality which had been set by the first President.

Notwithstanding the pacific motives which impelled Jefferson to choose that form of retaliation, the embargo was a part of the old colonial idea of restriction. To avoid the capture of American goods and sailors, keep them at home. Committing suicide is one way to avoid being killed by your enemy. A more modern way is to arm yourself. If the commercial interests, ruined by the embargo, as they claimed, had belonged to the individualistic rural States, or if Jefferson had been from the trading States, sectional differences might not have been so prominent during the continuation of this policy, and the reactionary laws leading to unification might not have been so apparent. The chief protestor against marching a Federal army into the sovereign State of Pennsylvania a score of years before was now stationing gunboats off the coast of the sovereign States of New England, and on Lake Champlain in the sovereign State of New York, for the purpose of coercing the people into an obedience to national laws. The section which at that time had supported so vigorously the repressive measures of Was.h.i.+ngton was now opposing as forcibly such actions when taken toward themselves. The people of Pennsylvania, a part of whom were then resisting the central authority, now offered an armed force to the President "to cram the embargo down the throats of the Yankees."

The paralysing effects of the embargo became apparent gradually during the fifteen months of its existence and brought the commercial States to the verge of rebellion. Nearly one-half the population of Salem, it was claimed, had been compelled to ask public aid. Prices on imported goods rose to a fabulous height, while surplus products, formerly exported, fell to ruinous rates. Inland commerce was equally affected, since there was no demand for carrying goods to or from the coast.

Writers compared the embargo remedy to a snake biting itself with poisonous fang when surrounded by enemies; to a man cutting down his tree to rid it of caterpillars; or to the fool who cut off his head to rid himself of an aching tooth. The first anniversary of the embargo was observed throughout New England with tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and processions of unemployed seamen and artisans. The mayor of New York forbade riotous gatherings. When a number of men disguised as Indians retook a sloop caught by a man-of-war in forbidden trade, their action was compared to that of the patriots who threw overboard the East India tea.