Legislature oversteps the bounds prescribed by the Constitution, it becomes the duty of the States to interpose and protect the rights of the people from the assumed powers of Congress. His refusal to afford military aid was severely felt, for it was now apparent that, if the embargo was to be enforced, it must be enforced with the bayonet. In town after town in New England acts of violence took place. At Plymouth a schooner laden with seven hundred quintals of dry codfish defied the Collector and put to sea.* The Wasp captured her off Race Point and sent her into Provincetown on Cape Cod. There forty men, disguised as Indians, boarded her, put the crew of the Wasp on shore, and again she went to sea.t At Providence, the Custom-House authorities having seized a schooner, the sailors loudly declared they would set her free. The Governor, in obedience to the Force Act, called out four companies of militia. They met, but met only to assert their hatred of the Force Act and their determination not to serve. Emboldened by this, some three hundred men gathered at the wharf, took the sloop, bent her sails, cut a way through the ice, and sent her to sea. For obeying the circular order of the President and detaching the militia, Lincoln was censured by the Legislature, and his acts declared irregular, illegal, and inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution. At New Haven the people in town-meeting voted that the enormous bonds required by sections two and four of the Force Act, the powers bestowed on collectors by section nine, and on the President by section eleven, violated the constitutional guarantees that excessive bonds should not be required, that excessive fines should not be imposed, and that the people should be secure in their persons and papers, and called for a meeting of the General Court.# Not content with appeals to their legislatures, the people had also memorialized Congress. All through January petitions came in day after day from towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, from the counties of Dutchess and Suffolk * Boston Gazette, January 5, 1809. Boston Gazette, January 12, 1809. Gazette of the United States, January 28, 1809. 1809. THE EMBARGO LIFTED. 333 and Ontario in the State of New York, from the city of Albany, from three wards in the city of New York, and from the county of Westmoreland in Pennsylvania. The language was much the same in each. As a measure of coercion, the embargo was pronounced a failure; as a commercial restriction, it was unnecessary and ruinous; as a law, the act to enforce it was oppressive, tyrannical and unconstitutional, and ought to be repealed. Made bold by this show of popular wrath, the Federal representatives determined to attack the embargo once more, and, before the month ended, formally moved the repeal. The motion laid down two separate propositions: that provisions ought to be made by law for repealing the embargo laws before a certain day of a certain month; and that American citizens ought to be suffered to fit out privateers to prey on the commerce of England and France. But the Republicans divided the motion, and the debate began on the question, What shall be the day and what shall be the month for repealing the embargo? Three dates were moved. Some were for June first; some for March fourth; some for February fifteenth, 1809. Those who urged the fifteenth of February as the day declared that they did so because, in their opinion, if the embargo came off at all, it ought to come off at once. Every honest merchant and farmer had undoubtedly been a great sufferer by the laying of the restriction. Every honest merchant and farmer ought, therefore, to be benefited as much as possible by lifting the restriction, and he would be much benefited by lifting it at once. For months past the embargo-breakers had been hurrying wagon-loads and boatloads and sleigh-loads of produce over the border to Canada. This had been paid for in British gold, and, stored at Montreal, was waiting till the ice broke up in the St. Lawrence to be sent abroad. But the St. Lawrence was frozen long after the waters of the rivers and harbors of the United States were free. If, therefore, the embargo was taken off in February, the men who had obeyed the law could bring their flour, their potashes, their bacon to market, and load their ships and have them in the ports of Europe and the West Indies while the waters of the St. Lawrence were still covered thick with ice. Keep on the embargo till June, and the merchants would find the foreign market glutted with the produce the law-breakers had carried into Canada and which was then icebound at Montreal. Those who favored March fourth as the day did so because on that day the new administration would begin; because the natural embargo laid by winter on the rivers and ports of the North would then be over and no unfair advantage given to the ports of the South; because if war followed the repeal, and there was good reason to believe it would, the summer would be needed to seek on the Plains of Abraham, and in the fisheries of Newfoundland, indemnity for the hurt we had suffered on the ocean. This prospect of war, it was answered, is a good reason of itself for keeping the embargo till the first of June. What is now our condition? Our seaports are undefended; our gun-boats are unmanned; our treasury is nearly empty; our army is not yet raised; and must we not have an army? Does anybody think we can make war on Canada with militia? Does not everybody know that it is a question whether under the Constitution militia can be sent out of the country? Our army must be a regular army and well drilled. Keep on the embargo, and time will be secured for all these things. Then, when we are ready to strike, our enemy will perhaps listen to our last offers of peace and repeal his or ders. If not, we shall at least be armed, and armed in a just cause. To this must be added a fourth class, who insisted that the embargo must not be repealed at all. Was Congress a parcel of boys that it should pass an act to enforce the embargo in January and repeal both Force Act and embargo in February? Was the Government of the United States going to yield obedience to the demands of factious men goaded on by avarice and British gold? Better see the country spill its best blood. What a precedent it would be for all time to come if a handful of rebellious citizens are suffered to rise. in opposition to laws fairly and constitutionally enacted! At last, after a rambling debate of four days, the motion to fill the blank in the resolution with the words June first 1809. THE EMBARGO LIFTED. 335 was lost by seventy votes to forty-three. By precisely the same vote it was then carried to put in the words March fourth. The blank being thus filled, the question of repealing the embargo came up and was carried, the ayes being seventy-six. At this stage of the debate a caucus of the Republican members was held and three things decided: The embargo should be repealed; letters of marque and reprisal should not be issued; and non-intercourse should be used instead. All the resolutions before the Committee of the Whole, the resolution to repeal the embargo, that to arm merchant ships, that to establish non-intercourse, that to exclude armed vessels from American waters, were sent to the Committee on Foreign Affairs with instructions to report a bill. The bill came in on the eleventh of February, and after a few changes passed each house. The act shut the ports of the United States to the public ships of France and England on the day of its passage, closed them to private ships of those two nations on the twentieth of May, and repealed many of the embargo laws on the fifteenth of March. On that day it ceased to be necessary for captains of coasters to load their ships under the eye of an officer of the revenue, and to give bonds that their cargoes would really be landed in the United States. On that day the fishing boats that went out of the Narrows for bluefish and haddock, or down the Delaware in search of shad; the market boats that supplied the stalls in New York and Philadelphia; the craft that sailed the waters of bays and rivers, sounds and lakes not adjacent to foreign soil, were free to do so without a clearance. On that day trade was again revived with every foreign port save those of France and England, their colonies, their dependencies, and places actually under their flags. With such ports there was to be non-intercourse. Nothing could be carried to them. Nothing could be brought away. To go to them was indeed a great temptation. The law therefore provided that no vessel should clear for any port, foreign or domestic, till a bond had been given that it would not be engaged during the voyage in trade, direct or indirect, with the forbidden places. Should France revoke her decrees, or Great Britain her orders in council, the law might be suspended and trade renewed by proclamation of the President. The law was to continue in force till the end of the next session of Congress and no longer. At that time, too, the act laying the embargo, the three supplementary acts, and the Force Act, were all to expire. The day for beginning the next session had just been fixed as the fourth Monday in May. To the hopeful, therefore, it seemed not unlikely that, before the leaves were again falling, the streets of the great seaports would once more be noisy with the rumble of loaded carts; that the exchanges would once more resound with the hum of busy merchants; that the books of the coffee-houses, so long unused, would once more be opened for the reports of captains and supercargoes; and that the neutral flag of the United States would once more be seen in the ports of every civilized nation on the globe. Mr. Jefferson signed the bill on March first. Three days later he ceased to be President of the United States, and James Madison and George Clinton took the oath of office in the new Hall of Representatives. The idle pomp, the foolish waste of time and money, which now make memorable each inauguration-day were not even then wanting. All the militia, we are told, came over from Georgetown and Alexandria to escort the new President from his home to the Capitol. Ten thousand people, it was boastfully said, gathered to see the procession pass by. At night Jefferson and Madison and a distinguished company attended an inauguration-ball. Beyond the confines of the capital the day was little noticed. In a few towns the Federalists assembled at dinners and drank to the hour that ended the career of Thomas Jefferson and his General Embargo. A few journals thanked God that the rule of the philosophic President was over, and that no worse man than Madison was in his place. But, in general, the event was looked on as no cause for rejoicing. The succession of one Republican President by another Republican President was no victory for the Federalists. Their victory was the lifting of the embargo, brought about by nothing so much as by the firm. stand taken by New England and the stout fight made by the minority in Congress. The leaders of this minority were ac |