1812: The Navy's War by George Daughan Read Free Book Online Page B

from New England. By the winter of 1809 a civil war was brewing over the domestic distress caused by the stoppage of trade. “The evils which are menaced by the continuance of this policy,” the Massachusetts legislature informed Congress, “. . . must soon become intolerable, and endanger our domestic peace, and the union of these states.” Finally, on March 1, 1809, just three days before Jefferson left office, Congress repealed the hated embargo. The president, with great reluctance, signed the bill, bequeathing to his successor the problem of what to do about British and French provocations.
    It was not a legacy President Madison coveted. Despite his strong support for the unpopular embargo, he had been elected handily in 1808 with 122 electoral votes to 47. He was furious with the New England Federalists for doing everything they could to thwart a policy he believed could have achieved American goals without war or submission. Like Jefferson, Madison was convinced that if the country had persevered with the embargo just a while longer, the British would have relented. That may have been true, but politically the embargo was dead.
    On March 15, 1809, immediately after Madison took office, Congress replaced the embargo with the Non-Intercourse Act, which permitted trade with all nations except Britain and France. The legislation unintentionally favored the British. Despite the law, goods flowed freely to Britain through a number of channels, while the Royal Navy enforced the blockade of Napoleonic Europe.
    The British, of course, did not feel favored by the new law, and their ambassador in Washington, David Erskine (the only British ambassador who genuinely liked America), sought ways to prevent Anglo-American relations from deteriorating further. He approached Madison in April 1809 for talks about easing tensions between the two countries. The president was receptive, and in a short six weeks he and Erskine negotiated an agreement whereby Britain would revoke the Orders in Council if the United States would end non-intercourse against Great Britain. Both Erskine and Madison felt they had achieved a genuine breakthrough. In the end, however, Canning rejected the agreement, recalling Erskine and replacing him with a hard-line, anti-American Tory, Francis J. Jackson, who went out of his way to sour relations between the two countries. Federalists, particularly in Massachusetts, supported Jackson against their own government, which only encouraged Perceval and Canning, to suppose that with the United States so hopelessly divided, Madison could never act effectively against them. With the end of the Embargo Act, American ships reappeared on the high seas, and the British again went right after them, exacerbating relations between the two countries. Perceval and Canning were showing no restraint whatever.
    On May 1, 1810, in order to revive the revenue stream flowing to the cashstarved Treasury, Congress replaced the Non-Intercourse Act with Macon’s Bill #2, which restored trade with the entire world, including Britain and France. Moreover, the bill stipulated that if either Britain or France ceased interfering with neutral trade, the United States would stop trading with the other nation. This provision moved Napoleon to notify the United States that he was removing his Berlin and Milan decrees, although, in truth, he had no intention of doing so. Madison, choosing to believe him, asked Britain to rescind the Orders in Council, or be faced with the prospect of having trade with America cut off. London was quick to point out that Napoleon had not actually done what he said and so refused.
    On February 11, 1811, Madison, having given Perceval three months’ warning, imposed nonimportation against Great Britain, and as 1811 progressed, relations between the two governments further deteriorated. The Royal Navy appeared again off New York, stopping and seizing American ships, and aggressively impressing American seamen.