Stopping trade with other countries by ships
Impressment was one of two major problems the United States was having with Britain in the early s. The other problem was trade. Britain wanted to stop the United States from trading with France and its colonies. British warships blocked the port of New York all through the year No American ship could leave without being searched. When goods for France were discovered, the ship was taken to Halifax on the coast of Canada. There, a British court had the power to seize the goods and force the ship's owners to pay a large amount of money.
President Jefferson protested this interference in American trade. He sent James Monroe to London to negotiate a treaty. Jefferson wanted Britain to stop taking sailors from American ships, and to stop interfering in the trade of neutral nations. Monroe tried many times to discuss such an agreement. But the British foreign minister was always too busy to see him.
In Washington, Congress decided to act and not wait for a treaty. The House of Representatives debated two proposals. One proposal would stop all goods from being imported into the United States from Britain and its colonies. Imports would be permitted only after Britain had answered America's protests. The representative who offered the proposal said: To prevent this, we want an agreement that will satisfy both the United States and Britain.
But if Britain continues its hostile acts, then we must loosen these ties of friendship. They believed it might lead to war with Britain.
The second proposal was more moderate. It would ban only those British goods which could be gotten from other places. The House of Representatives debated the two proposals. After four months, it finally approved a ban on the import of some British goods. President Jefferson did not want the trade ban to last long. He pressed for an agreement with Britain. The two diplomats were told to make clear to Britain what it must do to end the limited ban on British imports. Britain was to stop taking sailors from American ships.
It was to stop interfering with trade between the United States and the colonies of France. And it was to pay for all property seized from American ships. Monroe and Pinkney knew they could never reach an agreement if they obeyed their orders. So they decided to negotiate on their own as best they could. They dropped the demand for payment for seized property. And they accepted a note -- separate from the agreement — about impressment.
The note promised that Britain would be careful not to seize any more American sailors. At the end of December, , Monroe and Pinkney sent word to Washington that the treaty was ready. But from the way their note was written, it seemed the treaty might not be satisfactory.
Secretary of State James Madison wrote back. He said if the two diplomats could get no clear agreement on the question of impressment, then the talks should end without a treaty. But it was too late. Monroe and Pinkney had signed the agreement. President Jefferson was angry. His negotiators had disobeyed his orders. He refused to send the treaty to the Senate for approval. And he said he would tell Monroe and Pinkney to re-open negotiations. Before that could happen, an incident added more fuel to the diplomatic fire.
A British navy ship attacked the American Navy ship Chesapeake while looking for deserters. Britain believed that some of the deserters were on the American ship. The United States said the men were American citizens who had been forced to serve in the British navy.
It refused to return them. When the Chesapeake sailed out of American waters, the British ship tried to stop it and search it. Rich southern farmers and planters suddenly found themselves poor.
Tobacco was one of their major crops. And Britain bought more American tobacco than any other country. Its price fell so low because of the embargo that it had almost no value.
The price of wheat fell from two dollars a bushel to seven cents a bushel. Good farmland dropped in value until it was worth almost nothing. Opposition to the embargo was growing. Opposition was strongest in the Northeast.
Ship owners and traders there believed that the embargo was wrong. They continued to export goods secretly. Some traders began sending goods over land to Canada. From there, the goods were sent on to Britain.
Congress passed a law against this kind of trade. But the shipments did not stop. Too many people were willing to violate the law for the large amounts of money they could make by trading secretly with Britain. By August, , Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin had lost all hope that the embargo would be successful.
Gallatin told President Jefferson: Another of Jefferson's supporters gave the president this advice: But if it cannot be enforced completely, and if the people will not accept it, then it will not answer its purpose.
And it should not be continued. Jefferson, however, was not ready to give up his plan. In his last State of the Union message to Congress, he painted a bright picture of the nation.
He reported that American industry was making progress. Many goods which had been imported before the embargo were now being made at home. He said almost all of the national debt had been paid. And he said more than one hundred gunboats had been built -- enough, he declared, to defend the country. Jefferson said nothing about opposition to the embargo. Nor did he talk of the serious economic problems caused by it. He said only that Britain and France still refused to honor American neutrality, and so the embargo must continue.
The rest of the nation was not so sure. Congress began debating a number of proposals to either lift or amend the embargo. And the opposition Federalist Party used the issue to increase its strength in northeastern states. Eighteen-oh-eight was, after all, a presidential election year. Thomas Jefferson had served two four-year terms as president.
No law prevented him from running again. But Jefferson had decided years before that a man should be limited to two terms as president. Without such a limit, Jefferson believed, a powerful man might be able to keep the position for as long as he wished. George Washington had served two terms, and then retired.
Jefferson would do the same. Three members of Jefferson's Republican Party wanted to be president. One was James Madison, the secretary of state. The second was James Monroe, who had served as a special assistant to the president. The third was George Clinton, who was vice president during Jefferson's second term.
The Republican Party chose Madison as its candidate for president. It chose Clinton as its candidate for vice president. The Federalist Party named the same candidates it had chosen four years earlier: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for president, and Rufus King for vice president. The Federalists were sure of victory in the election. They thought that Jefferson's embargo on trade had angered the people and turned them away from the Republican Party.
Even some Republicans felt the election could go very badly for their party. But Jefferson remained calm. He believed that most Americans understood what he was trying to do with the embargo.