was sustained in the agricultural States, though under its operation wheat had fallen from two dollars a bushel to seventy

cents.

On the 7th of November, 1808, Congress assembled, the time being appointed at the last session. On the next day Jefferson transmitted to both Houses his Eighth and last Annual Message.

Congress had convened under that state of excitement which had begun to pervade and agitate the public mind to the very highest grade. The Message of the President related chiefly to the foreign affairs of the country in connection with the belligerent nations of Europe, whose disregard of neutral rights had been so destructive to our commerce. France and England had exhibited a disposition to have the American ports opened to their commerce, having pledged their readiness to renounce the destructive policy they had been pursuing; whereupon the President, under the authority vested by the act laying an embargo, would have immediately suspended it. The President informs Congress of the failure of the arrangement, and submits to its wisdom and discretion the proper steps to be taken which the crisis demanded.

Whilst the Message regrets the injury done our commerce by the restrictive system, it also makes allusion to the benefits likely to become permanent, resulting from domestic manufactories.

The accounts from the Treasury though not fully made up, exhibit, up to the year ending the 30th of September, the receipt of nearly eighteen millions of dollars, which, with eight millions and a half at the beginning of the year, enabled the Government, after meeting the expenses of the current year, to pay two million three hundred thousand dollars of the funded debt, with a balance of fourteen millions in the Treasury. The reader will observe in referring to this Message, that Thomas Jefferson, the very embodiment of strict construction,-recommends that the surplus revenue, instead of being reduced to the standard wants of the Government, should be retained and expended in "the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union, under the powers which Congress may already possess, or such amendments to the Constitution as may be approved by the States."

On the 11th of November, so much of the Pre- 1808. sident's Message as respected our foreign relations

was referred to the appropriate committee of the House, of which Campbell was chairman. This report, which was said to bear the impress of the combined talent of Jefferson and Madison, was received by the House as a reflection of the Executive will. It is an able, manly, and efficient review of the protracted and multiplied injuries which had been inflicted upon us; but at the same time it clearly acknowledges that a permanent suspension of commerce, after frequent and unavailing efforts to obtain peace, would not properly be resistance. It would be an abandonment of our indisputable right to navigate the ocean. It was advised to maintain the embargo a while longer with the hope of inducing the belligerents to abandon their policy; but, after all, the true and real means of resistance was war. Yet it was not compatible with our condition or inclination to encounter both England and France.

The report recommended,―

1st. That the United States could not, without a sacrifice of their rights, honor, and independence, submit to the late edicts of France and Great Britain.

2d. That it was expedient to prohibit the admission of either the ships or merchandise of those belligerents into the ports of the United States.

3d. That the country ought immediately to be placed in a state of defence.

It was on the same day that Campbell's report and resolutions were introduced into the House that an animated and able debate occurred in the Senate on a resolution offered by Hillhouse for a repeal of the embargo, which was sustained by Lloyd and Pickering from Massachusetts, as well 1808. as by White, the Senator from Delaware. The Administration was sustained by Giles and Moore, of Virginia, Mitchell, of New York, Smith, of Maryland, Pope, of Kentucky, and Crawford, of Georgia. After ten days' debate, the resolution offered by Hillhouse was rejected by a vote of 25 to 6. On the 28th of November, the discussion in the House was opened by a speech from Campbell, which was very much a rehearsal from his report as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations.

* Hild. Hist. of the U. S., second series, vol. iii. p. 96; Stat. Man., vol. i. p. 261.

Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Nov. 22, 1808; Amer. Stat. Papers, vol. vii. p. 75.

The embargo encountered an able opposition from the Federalists, whose leader on this occasion was that distinguished debater Josiah Quincy; the champion of the opposition, though not of the Federal party, was John Randolph, who delivered several speeches which rank among the ablest and most brilliant of his life.

The reader may easily apprehend the spirit which moved the Administration, as well as the ground upon which the Federal party stood, enlisting in opposition to the embargo some coadjutors who despised in other respects all affiliation with them, and most conspicuously among whom will be found the undying name of Randolph, of Roanoke.

As was contended by Quincy, the decrees of France prohibited our trading with Great Britain; whilst the orders of the latter would prevent our trading with France, and our embargo, in direct subserviency to both, prohibited our trading with either. It was an effort on the part of England and France to destroy the trade of each, and we were sustaining either the oppressive policy of Napoleon or the avarice of England, and in doing so it was the destruction of the trade of our countrymen. It was chiefly opposed by New England men, because commerce was (as it is now) not only associated with all their feelings, and habits, and interests, but the nature of their soil, of their coasts, the state of their population, and the mode of its distribution over their territory rendered it indispensable to their well-being. In the language of Quincy, they possessed five hundred miles of sea-coast, all furnished with harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, basins, with every variety of invitation to the sea, with every species of facility to violate the embargo laws, with a people not scattered over an immense territory, at a solemn distance from each other, in lordly retirement, in the midst of extended plantations and intervening waste, but collected on the margin of the ocean, by the sides of rivers, at the heads of bays, looking into the water or on the surface of it, for the incitement and the reward of their interest. Among such a people, deprived of their daily avocation as well as their daily bread, it was impossible for them to remain unexcited beneath such pressure and hardship.

It was contemplated to add twelve additional revenue cutters to enforce the embargo laws. "Multiply the number by twelve, multiply it by a hundred, join all your ships of war, all your gun-boats, and all your militia,-in spite of them

all, such laws as these are of no avail when they become odious to public sentiment. Continue these laws any considerable time longer, and it is very doubtful if you will have officers to execute, juries to convict, or purchasers to bid for your confiscations."*

The friends of the embargo were chiefly from the South, and it must be attributable to the influence of Jefferson and Madison, added to the fact that the South being an agricultural people, did not feel the pressure so soon or so sensibly as the people of the North.

The New Englanders were taunted with avarice, in not being willing to endure the privations which the embargo created, when honor demanded retaliation. "We have done everything for commerce," said a distinguished member from the South; "we have negotiated for it; we have jeoparded the peace of the country for it; we have passed an embargo to protect it, and commerce is now the first to abandon us. Suppose the embargo raised, none would trade but men of bankrupt character and desperate fortunes. Permission to arm is tantamount to a declaration of war; and do you think we are ready to plunge headlong into a ruinous war, naked and unarmed, to gratify a few bankrupt commercial speculators? The embargo would always have had its effect as a measure of retaliation, but for the anti-embargo men of Massachusetts."+

Giles, of Virginia, then a member of the United States Senate, occupied the same position with Troup, a member of the House from Georgia, and contended that opposition to the embargo in New England was the work of demagogues, anxious to reinstate themselves in power.

To whom Pinckney replied, in bold and animated defence, citing, as among those who opposed it, the immortal Ames, and others of equal patriotism, though of less talent. Ames wrote as long as he had strength to hold a pen, and died on the anniversary morning of the nation's birthday, the 4th of July, 1808, with the prayer on his lips, "God save my country."

The charge of demagogism, avaricious policy, and such violent epithets and abuse as were heaped upon the New

*Speech of Josiah Quincy, delivered in the House of Representatives, Nov. 28, 1808.

†Troup's Speech in the House of Representatives.

England men, was violently and bitterly hurled back upon the Southern members of Congress, as well as the Administration, by ascribing the embargo to French influence, operating on Jefferson and his cabinet, and through them upon the members.*

It is strange, indeed, that a policy so suicidal, working injury and devastation throughout the land, should have been so well sustained. It was felt at the South in a diminished extent to what it was at the North, yet it contained the seed of that policy (the manufacturing interest) which, when fostered by the very men who opposed the embargo, has thrown the South far and lamentably in the rear of our national progress as compared with the North. The report and resolutions of the Committee of Foreign Relations were carried,the two first by a vote of 84 to 30, the last unanimously. The resolution offered in the Senate by Hillhouse, of Connecticut, to repeal the embargo law, was voted 1808. down by 25 to 6.

Dec. 2,

It was in pursuance of the third resolution that the House voted an appropriation of four hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, which was applied to fortifications, principally at New York; four additional frigates were ordered to be equipped, and three thousand six hundred additional seamen to be enlisted.

As a matter of the first importance, the attention of Congress was directed to the financial condition of the Govern

It was the sanguine expectation of the opponents of the embargo, that its existence would be speedily closed by the wants of the Treasury; yet they were mistaken; the effect on the finances was not seriously felt, on account of the large surplus of seventeen millions of dollars, beyond the annual expenses of the Government, which was on hand when the embargo was established. The new year (1809) would commence with money and bonds to the amount of sixteen millions of dollars. This amount was required to be set aside to meet the annual expenses, which, according to the existing rate, was thirteen millions, including eight millions for the interest and reimbursement of the public debt.

If the country was to be put in a state of defence, in the just apprehension of an approaching war, it would absorb

*It was calculated in the fall of 1808, that the supension of exports had imposed a loss of nearly thirty millions of dollars on the maritime interest. VOL. L.-21