CH. V.]

friend and leader. Personal influence, and the influence of adherents, newspaper articles, and all the approved appliances for such warfare, were brought into requisition; and caucus meetings for nominating the candidates of the party were held without any scruples whatever.

The most important of these meetings was one attended by nearly a hundred Senators and Representatives of the democratic party, John Quincy Adams, who had now quite deserted his former principles, being amongst them. Eighty-three votes were given in favor of Madison, and only three each for Monroe and George Clinton, for the presidency; and for the latter, seventynine votes were given for the vice-presidency; Madison and Clinton were therefore announced as the candidates by the party. On the same night, two caucuses were held by members of the Assembly of Virginia, at Richmond; one by the friends of Monroe, in the Capitol, the other by the supporters of Madison, in a hotel. One hundred and thirty-four at the latter meeting voted for Madison, without an opposing voice; but at the former, out of fifty-seven, ten voted for Madison.

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warned by a hint that another candidate for the vice-presidency might be put in his place by the party, if he did not withdraw from the competition for the higher office, persevered in his hopeless attempt to be the successor of Jef| ferson.*

As for the federalists, they were as much divided as a party could be which had no chance of success. They did, indeed, propose General C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King as their candidates; but in many parts they relied rather on the chance of embarrassing the election, by voting for one or other of the unpopular candidates of the republicans, than on any expectation of being able to place any of their own men in offices of power and trust.

Congress, as we have stated, adjourned on the 25th of April; and during the summer the country was kept in a constant ferment by the preparations for the change in the person of the presi dent, and by the measures which were as surely the forerunners of war, as negotiations, and amicable interventions, and arbitrations, are presages of the conclusion of hostilities.

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*The third president, as above stated, though urged to do otherwise, refused to be a candidate for a second

re-election. "Never," said he, "did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a

the loss of the high honor almost within his reach. His friends, unaffected by the in favor of his array opponent, carried on their canvass with untiring zeal. And Clinton, until

boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation. I leave every thing in the hands of men so able to take care of them, that if we are destined to meet misfortunes, it will be because no human wisdom could avert them."

And then came the election; but before the issue was certainly known, the closing session of Congress had begun. As the effects of the embargo began to be felt more seriously, the strength and earnestness of complaints against it rose higher and louder; and the federalists took occasion to note as consequences of it, such lamentable things as "vindictive prosecutions," "the multiplications of spies and informers," "a tyranny of officers, great and small, which would hardly have been endured in Algiers," "smuggling," and the mere mockery of justice, in trials arising out of embargo bonds. At the same time foreign trade began to find its way through the British colonies, and the coasting trade was carried on by means of wagons! And, deprived of occupation, numbers of seamen, native Americans as well as Britons in the American merchant-service, made their way through Canada to England, and to the means of obtaining a livelihood.

Our limits do not admit of details respecting the acts, supplementary, suspensory, and explanatory, by which the embargo was made more rigid, or alleviated, as occasion seemed to require: or respecting the violence of the debates in Congress, and the duels which arose out of expressions which appeared to apply to persons, rather than to principles, or politics. An examination into the particulars,* and the various steps taken by the president and the ruling

* For the debate in the House, during the month of April, on the suspension of the embargo, see Benton's "Abridgement of the Debates of Congress," vol. iii., pp. 678-707.

party, will well repay the student who has the time and the patience to enter fully into the questions at issue.

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All the evils produced by the embargo were, of course, aggravated as time wore away, without bringing any change in the policy of the administra tion. Mr. Tucker, in his remarks on this point, states, that "the inconve nience felt by the people of the United States from their own remedy was extreme, and put their patriotism and firmness to a severe test. Dependent as we were on foreign markets for the sale of our redundant products, now that we were not permitted to export them, they fell to half their wonted price, and even less. To many of the producers they did not repay the cost of production. The sup ply of foreign merchandise, too, which habit had made necessary, and of which there was no domestic supply, or an insufficient one, being cut off, its price rose proportionally high; and thus the expenses of the agricultural classes increased, in the same proportion that their means of defraying them diminished. It bore still harder on the sailors and ship owners, who were thrown entirely out of employment, and here the pressure was most severely felt in the states that were most addicted to navigation, for while it deprived the agricultural states of foreign merchandise, it deprived the navigating states of the means of making a livelihood. It is true, it operated as a bounty on manufactures, by making them scarcer and dearer; but this at first benefited but a small proportion of the community, both because men cannot suddenly

CH. V.J

change their habits, and because, for many of the most essential manufactures, we had, as yet, neither the skill nor the materials; and years of priva tion were to be endured before this could be supplied. It is true also, that the embargo was of great temporary advantage in preserving the vast amount of American property then afloat on the ocean from the licensed freebooters of England and France, until the country could decide on its course of policy and provide for it."

The biographer of the president further points out how the embargo act bore with great severity upon England as well as the United States, and as each country was aware of the suffering and injury of the other, it became in fact, "a trial between the two nations who could suffer longest. In this contest, however, we lay under a disadvantage, which did not seem to be fully appreciated, either by the government or the people; for, in the first place, we deprived Great Britain of the trade of only one nation, while we deprived ourselves of the trade of all; and in the next, in consequence of the trade remaining to Great Britain, she was able to find substitutes for the articles formerly furnished her by the United States, but we deprived ourselves of the means of finding substitutes for theirs. Thus, our adversaries could procure cotton from Brazil, Egypt and the East Indies; tobacco from South America; naval stores from Sweden; lumber from Nova Scotia; grain from the Baltic, though at a greater cost: but we, exporting nothing, were unable to import the woolens, lin

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ens, silks, hardware, and pottery, to which we were accustomed, and which we had not yet learnt to make."

In this way the embargo was permanently injurious to the commerce of the United States; and as trade, when shut out from its accustomed outlets will create new channels for itself, so it happened to a considerable extent in the instance of the West Indies; consequently, as Mr. Tucker concludes, "if the effect of the embargo, as a measure of coercion, or as a means of appealing to the interests of Great Britain, was doubtful, it was clearly the most injurious expedient as a mere question of profit and loss." The merchants, it was urged, were the best judges of the question where their interests were concerned; if they chose to run the risk of capture on the sea, they should not have been cut off from the chances of profitable trade. In fine, all that could be said in defence of the embargo was, that it was better to endure the evils of it than to go to war, for it was hoped that the belligerents would abandon their lawless pretensions; if they did not, war was the final result. Mr. Jefferson's words are to this effect: writing to Levi Lincoln, in March, 1808, he says: "The embargo appears to be approved, even by the federalists of every quarter except yours. The alternative was between that and war, and in fact it is the last card we have to play, short of war. But if peace does not take place in Europe, and if France and England will not consent to withdraw the operation of their decrees and orders from us, when Congress shall meet in December, they will have to

consider at what point of time the embargo, continued, becomes a greater evil than war." To the same effect, he wrote to Charles Pinckney; and to Dr. Leib, in the following June.*

The American minister at Paris endeavored, by repeated remonstrances, to effect a change in the unjust course pursued by France in respect to American commerce; but to no purpose. Mr. Pinkney also, at London, proposed to Mr. Canning the rescinding the orders in council, on condition that the embargo should be raised. The British minister rejected the overture, and took occasion in his letters to Mr. Pinkney to indulge in witty sarcasms, not particularly calculated to please or to profit those whom they were intended to reach.

In accordance with a resolution of the preceding session, Congress assembled on the 7th of November. The president's message was sent in on the following day; it is a long and able

1808.

document, and it is worthy of careful examination, in consequence of its being the last occasion on which Thomas Jefferson was called upon to address the national legislature as the president of the United States. The message is mainly important in respect to the foreign relations of the country, growing out of the injustice and outrage of the belligerents upon neutral commerce, and the operation of the embargo. The president's language is laudatory of the course thus far pursued, and he commends to Congress the question of such further steps as may

* Tucker's "Life of Jefferson," vol. ii., p. 268.

be necessary in the then position of affairs, being confident that "whatever alternative may be chosen, it will be maintained with all the fortitude and patriotism which the crisis ought to inspire." The message also refers to the Chesapeake affair, and to fortifications and gunboats, and administered to the paralyzed commerce of the country the consolation, such as it was, that some of the capital which had been so profitably invested in mercantile ventures was beginning to be applied to internal manufactures and improvements; and that "little doubt remained that the establishments formed and forming, would, under the auspices of cheaper materials and subsistence, the freedom of labor from taxation with us, and of protecting duties and prohibitions, become permanent."

With respect to the Indians, the president stated, that "the public peace had been steadily maintained," and that there were such signs of advancing civilization as that it was already debated amongst the Cherokees, whether or not "to solicit the citizenship of the United States." He stated, that on Congress must rest the securing of a uniform condition of defensive preparation amongst the states; "the interest which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their de liberation." Of the finances he was able to offer a flourishing account,$2,300,000 paid out of the principal of the debt, since the last report, and nearly $14,000,000 in the treasury. Respecting which, and also respecting the accumulated surplus, he was in the