CHAPTER XXI. THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE. As the newspapers, one after another, copied the procla mation calling Congress together in November, the belief spread far and wide that the country was to be made ready for war. Federalists were convinced that war was imminent, because Foster had been a month in Washington, yet had accomplished nothing; because, on the very day the proclamation was issued, the French Minister had been long closeted with Monroe; and because Barlow after so long a delay had been ordered to set out for Paris. Republicans held to the belief, because war with England was just what they wanted. Their conversion from the peaceful ways of Jefferson and the men they now began to call the Fathers had been slow; but it had at last been accomplished, and had been accomplished by nothing so much as by the distress produced by the restriction they themselves had laid on commerce. the early days of the embargo it had been the custom of these men to predict great benefits to the country from the stoppage of foreign trade. Capital, they would argue, once locked up in sea-ventures, in ship-building, in importing, has been turned loose, and, forced to find investment somewhere, will go into enterprises too long neglected. Manufactures will begin to flourish. Unable to bring in goods from abroad, our people will soon make such as are absolutely necessary at home, and sell them at a handsome profit. Is this to be regretted? Commerce has drawn us into entangling alliances, has exposed us to insult, to robbery, to abuse, has bred a taste for finery which is fast breaking down the simplicity and independence of the American character, and has spread among us foreign In 1811. ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF EMBARGO. 413 atheism, foreign sympathies, foreign political ideas. Embargo has stopped all this, and will show the people that they can be utterly independent of Europe, and that, if they wish to be great, free, prosperous, and happy, they must depend solely on themselves. Is this nothing to be thankful for? But commercial independence of Europe was not to be had without price, and, before the embargo had been on many months, the fine things it was to produce in the future were forgotten in the distress it produced in the present. Had ruin been the end and aim of the law, a better time for its application could not have been chosen. In March, 1807, Jefferson, by proclamation,* had put off the operation of the Non-intercourse Law till the second Monday in December. The belief was general that it would then be again suspended or repealed, and no preparations of any kind were made to meet it. Never had the acreage been so great. Never had the movement of the crops to the seaboard been so steady. Even when the Non-intercourse Act did take effect, the shipments went on without diminution, for it was the fixed determination of the merchants to evade it. The exchanges and the coffeehouses were as noisy as ever with the hum of buyers and sellers. Never had the underwriters been so beset for insurance. Never had the ports been more crowded with shipping. Never had the columns of the newspapers exhibited such competition among the merchants and shippers for cargoes. Suddenly, without assigning a single reason, without giving a moment's warning, the embargo was in force. Every stagecoach that rumbled out of Washington, every post-rider, carried bundles of orders from the Secretary of the Treasury to the collectors of the ports, and all foreign trade was stopped. In January the coasting trade was restricted, and what was well named a paralysis seized on the business of the coast towns and began to spread inward. Ships were dismantled and left half loaded at the wharves. Crews were discharged. The sound of the caulking hammer was no longer heard in the ship-yards. The sail-lofts were deserted, the rope-walks were closed; the cartmen had nothing to do. In a twinkling * March 24, 1807. the price of every domestic product went down, and the price of every foreign commodity went up. But no wages were earned, no business was done, and money almost ceased to circulate. Men who had contracted obligations could not meet them, and, as the summer wore on and the embargo was made more and more severe, failures and bankruptcies began. To form an accurate conception of the enormous monetary loss inflicted on the people by the embargo would not now be possible, yet it is not impossible, from such statistics as can be gathered, to form a rude idea of what this loss must have been. The Federal revenues fell from sixteen millions to a few thousands. The records of the custom-houses show that more than thirty-five thousand sailors had taken out protection papers in evidence of citizenship. As thousands more did not, it is reasonable to believe that more than forty thousand citizens of the United States were serving as sailors on merchant ships. Some had been pressed into the service of Great Britain. Some, when the embargo was laid, were in foreign ports and did not return to the United States. Yet, when all due allowance is made, upward of thirty thousand seamen must have been thrown out of employment. To these are to be added twenty-five thousand foreigners attracted to the American service by high wages. Sailors' wages were thirty dollars per month. They earned at least three hundred per year, and lost during the fifteen months of embargo twen ty millions of dollars. The value of the shipping embargoed has been estimated at fifty millions, and, as the net earnings were twenty-five per cent., twelve and a half millions more were lost to the country through the enforced idleness of the vessels. From an estimate made at the time, it appears that one hundred thousand men were believed to have been out of work for one year. They earned from forty cents to one dollar and thirty-three cents per day. Assuming a dollar as the average rate of daily wages, the loss to the laboring class was in round numbers thirty-six millions of dollars. On an average, thirty millions had been invested annually in the purchase of foreign and domestic produce. As this great sum was now seeking investment which could not be found, its owners were deprived not only of their profits, but of two millions of inter 1809. COST OF EMBARGO. 415 est besides. There were in New England, another computer asserts, eighty thousand families each poorer in 1809 by just so much as in previous years they had derived from the sale of grain, corn, potash, or fish. This loss, he avers, was, on an average, one hundred dollars each, or eight millions for all. The people of Portland declared, in an address adopted in town-meeting, that the embargo had cost them seven hundred thousand dollars. Statistics of this sort are indeed to be received with the greatest caution, yet, crude and hasty though they be, they afford some conception of the financial distress the embargo brought on the poor and needy, and even on the well-to-do. Unable to bear the strain, thousands on thousands went to the wall. The newspapers were full of insolvent-debtor notices. All over the country the court-house doors, the tavern doors, the post-offices, the cross-road posts, were covered with advertisements of sheriffs sales. In the cities the jails were not large enough to hold the debtors. At New York during 1809* thirteen hundred men were imprisoned for no other crime than being ruined by the embargo. A traveller who saw the city in this day of distress assures us that it looked like a town ravaged by pestilence. The counting-houses were shut or advertised to let. The coffee-houses were almost empty. The streets along the water-side were almost deserted. The ships were dismantled; their decks were cleared, their hatches were battened down. Not a box, not a cask, not a barrel, not a bale was to be seen on the wharves, where the grass had begun to grow luxuriantly. A year later, in this same city, eleven hundred and fifty men were confined for debts under twenty-five dollars, and were clothed by the Humane Society.‡ While the poor and destitute were thus languishing in the jails of the great Northern cities, the planters of the Southern *December 11, 1808, to November 30, 1809. 326 persons for debts between 15 and 25 dollars. States were saved from immediate ruin by stay laws. No command in the Federal Constitution is more clearly expressed than that which forbids the States to pass laws impairing the obligations of contracts. Yet this was precisely what the States south and west of Pennsylvania proceeded to do. Five months after the embargo was laid, Georgia commanded her courts and justices of the peace to issue no executions, and her sheriffs to sell no property levied on, if the defendant would give security for the judgment and the costs. The law was to expire on the Christmas day following. But when Christmas, 1808, came, debtors were enabled by another law to stay execution for another year by paying one third of the judgment and one third of the costs and giving security for the rest.* In Maryland no judgment could be issued against the body, goods, chattels, lands, or tenements of any of her citizens so long as the embargo continued and for six months after it was repealed. Virginia revived her Replevin Law of 1793, with amendments, and the provision that it should be in force till thirty days after the lifting of the embargo. Before that day she replaced it by another to stay in force till 1810.# When an execution issued in Ohio the sheriff was required to summon three men to view and appraise the property about to be seized. He might then advertise and attempt to sell it. But if no bidder offered at least one half the appraised value, the property must be returned to the owner and the execution was stayed one year. North Carolina debtors could stay proceedings against them for a few months if two freeholders would give security for the debt. In Tennessee writs could be stayed by the defendant offering security for the delivery when wanted of goods seized.◊ *Laws of Georgia, May 24 and December 23, 1808. This Stay Law was afterward extended till 1810. Laws of Maryland. Laws of Virginia, session 1807-1808, chap. vi. # Laws of Virginia, session 1808-1809, chap. v. Laws of Ohio, chap. xxv, February 20, 1809. A Laws of North Carolina, December 23, 1809. days; $20 to $50, To be in force till ◊ The time of stay varied with the amount involved. For debts under $5 the term was 60 days; from $5 to $10, 90 days; $10 to $20, 120 9 months. Laws of Tennessee, chap. 1, November 23, 1809. October 1, 1811. |