demanded tribute to be lawful prizes to the French marine, (December 17.) Such was the series of acts thundering like broadsides against the interests of America. It transformed commerce from a peaceful pursuit into a warlike one full of peril, of loss, of strife. It did more. It wounded the national honor, by attempting to prostrate the United States at the mercy of the European powers. The ad tion war. There was but one of two courses for the United ministra- States to take- peace or preparation for war. against War itself was impossible in the unprovided state of the country; but to assume a defensive, and if need were, to get ready for an offensive position, was perfectly practicable. Jefferson thought it enough to order an additional number of gunboats - very different from the gunboats of our time, and yet considered by the administration and its supporters to constitute a navy by themselves. The president did not favor any thing that looked like war. He had come into office with denunciations of the proceedings of the Adams administration against France; nor did the circumstances in which the nation was now situated smooth the way to hostilities with any foreign power. “ In the present maniac state of Europe," he wrote a little later, "I should not estimate the point of honor by the ordinary scale. I believe we shall, on the contrary, have credit with the world for having made the avoidance of being engaged in the present unexampled war our first object. War, however, may become a less losing business than unresisted depredation." There remained the alternative of peace. To preserve it, the president hit upon the most Embargo. self-denying of plans. The aggressions of the European powers were directed against the commerce of America, the rights of owners and of crews. That these might be secured, the president recommended, and Congress adopted, an embargo upon all United States vessels, and upon all foreign vessels with cargoes shipped after the passage of the act in United States ports, (December 22, 1807.) * In other words, as commerce led to injuries from foreign nations, commerce was to be abandoned. There was also the idea that the foreign nations themselves would suffer from the loss of American supplies and American prizes. It was a singular way, one must allow, of preserving peace, to adopt a measure at once provoking to the stranger, and destructive to the citizen. The latter eluded it, and it was again and again enforced by severe and even arbitrary statutes. The former laughed it to scorn. France, on whose side the violent federalists declared the embargo to be, answered by a decree of Napoleon's from Bayonne, ordering the confiscation of all American vessels in French ports, (April 17, 1808.) Great Britain soon after made her response, by an order prohibiting the exportation of American produce, whether paying tribute or not, to the European continent, (December 21.) So ineffective abroad, so productive of discontent at home, even amongst the supporters of the administration, did the embargo prove, that it was repealed, (March, 1809.) Succeed Thus neither preserving peace nor preparing ing acts. for war, Jefferson gave up the conduct of affairs to his successor, Madison, who kept on the same course. In place of the embargo were non-intercourse or non-importation acts in relation to Great Britain and France, as restrictive as the embargo, so far as the designated nations were concerned, but leaving free the trade with other countries. These successors of the embargo, however, were nowise more effectual than that had been. They were reviled and violated in America; they were contemned in Europe. *The date shows that the embargo was laid before the news of the last violent decrees of France and Great Britain. The administration amused itself with suspending the restrictions, now in favor of Great Britain, (1809,) and now in favor of France, (1810,) hoping to induce those powers to reciprocate the compliment by a suspension of their own aggressive orders. There was a show of doing so. Napoleon had recently issued a decree from Rambouillet, ordering the sale of more than a hundred American vessels as condemned prizes, (March 23, 1810.) But on the news from America, willing to involve the young nation in hostilities with Great Britain, he intimated his readiness to retract the decrees of which the United States complained. But he would not do so, he made known, except on one of two conditions; either the British orders must be recalled, or else, in case of their not being recalled, the claims of the United States must be enforced against them. To all this, Great Britain replied, that when the French decrees were actually, and not conditionally, revoked, her orders should be revoked likewise. It was but a mockery on both sides; and America, mortified, but not yet enlightened, returned to her prohibitions. They were scoffed at by her own people. Opposition. It is not so difficult to describe as to conceive the hue and cry, on the part of the opposition, against the embargo and the subsequent acts. Whatever discontent, whatever nullification had been expressed by the republicans against the war measures of Adams, was rivalled, if not outrivalled by the federalists against the so-called peace measures of Jefferson and Madison. Town meetings, state legislatures, even the courts in some places, declared against the constitutionality and the validity of the embargo statutes. The federalists of Massachusetts were charged with the design of dissolving the Union. It was not their intention, but their language had warranted its being imputed to them. "Choose, then, fellow-citizens," their legislature exclaimed, "between the condition of a free state, possessing its equal weight and influence in the general government, or that of a colony, free in name, but in fact enslaved by sister states." Indian hostilities. While affairs, domestic and foreign, were thus agitated, there came a fresh outbreak of Indian hostilities. It was under Jefferson that the plan of removing the Indians to the west was begun, (1804.) Of this the main object was to secure the continuance of peace, it being at that time comparatively unimportant to extend the national domains. But it was this very plan, though as yet imperfectly developed, that led, at least in part, to renewed warfare. Two chiefs of the Shawanoes, Tecumseh and his twin brother, styled the Prophet, for some time settled on the Tippecanoe River, in the Indiana Territory, had set themselves at the head of a sort of confederacy amongst the western races. But for the profane pretensions of the Prophet, and the unscrupulous intrigues of Tecumseh, the principles of the league would have deserved success. One great point was the title of the Indians, as a whole, to the lands of which the whites were getting possession, by bargains with individuals or with individual tribes. Another was the prohibition of the ardent spirits with which the traders were destroying the Indians, body and soul. But to support these principles, the confederates, or their leaders, relied upon treachery and terror, superstition and blasphemy. The governor of Indiana Territory, William H. Harrison, marched against them with a force of a few hundred. Tecumseh was absent at the time, but his brother and his confederates were overtaken. To the last, they professed peace, then fell upon the camp of the Americans. They were expected, however, and were routed, (November 7, 1811.) The steel was glistening upon the southern frontier. An Louisi Florida. insurrection against the Spanish authority in West ana and Florida had been followed by a presidential proclamation declaring the territory on the east bank of the Mississippi a portion of Louisiana, (October, 1810.) Soon after, (January, 1811,) Congress authorized the acquisition of the entire province of Florida, provided either that Spain consented to it, or that any other power attempted to take possession. Without any actual collision, the Spanish garrisons and the American troops were too near one another to favor peace. It did not lessen the excitement in that quarter, when Louisiana, with a large portion of Florida, according to the Spanish claim, was admitted a state, (April 8, 1812.) The District of Louisiana in the north then took the name of Missouri. Another slice of Florida was annexed to the Mississippi Territory, while an insurrection within the remaining Florida limits was stimulated by an American functionary; a demonstration being made against St. Augustine. This was promptly disavowed by the government at Washington; but the troops from the states were not withdrawn until the following year, nor then entirely, Mobile being retained by way of compensation for what was surrendered, (1813.) Warlike preparations against Great In both the Florida and the Indian difficulties, British agency was suspected and inveighed against by the excited Americans. The angry feelings between the two nations had received a further stimulus from an encounter of the American frigate President with the British sloop of war Little Belt, in which the latter suffered severely; the only reason alleged by either of the vessels for firing being an informality in hailing, (May, 1811.) It was plain that war was becoming popular in the United States. As for that, it had always been so; when Washington opposed it, he was abused; when Adams favored it, he was extolled; when Jefferson |