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JEFFERSON

AND THE EMBARGO

BY

LOUIS MARTIN SEARS, Ph.D.

Professor of History in Purdue University

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

COPYRIGHT IN 1927 BY DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

9

PRINTED BY

THE SEEM AN PRESS, INC. DURHAM, N. C.

1,1)0

TO THE MEMORY OF

LOUISE HAWLEY MARTIN

WHOSE BEAUTIFUL LIFE OF DEVOTION TO DUTY WAS AN INSPIRATION TO ALL WHO KNEW HER THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH THE COMPLETE AFFECTION OF HER GRANDSON

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PREFACE

Some years ago, the author prepared for the Chicago Literary Club a study of Jefferson as a pacifist. In the course of his work, he became so interested in the philosophy of Jefferson that he set himself the larger task of indicating the practical working out of the pacific theories which Jeffer¬ son so inspiringly enunciated. This carried him through Jefferson’s contribution to the foreign policy of Washing¬ ton and the theories of international law which governed his own administration, to a review of the embargo as the practical culmination of Jeffersonian pacifism, and led him to certain conclusions, which, while not revolutionary in their character, seem to indicate a somewhat different Jeffer¬ son from the model so ably set by Henry Adams.

First, it would seem that in urging the embargo Jeffer¬ son was pursuing not a hasty opportunism, but rather the [ logic of his entire philosophy of life. Secondly, the exigen-* cies of the situation revealed Jefferson as an administrator of a high order, a phase of Jefferson’s ability which has been generally slighted, perhaps from an instinctive assumption that philosophers and practical men do not inhabit the same body.

A fresh examination of the Jefferson Papers, especially of the letters to Jefferson, reveals a more generous support for the embargo than it has been customary to represent,! and shows, besides, in certain localities a remarkable pros¬ perity, fostered by the opportunity of a closed market, and inviting the investment of capital formerly tied up in^ shipping. In its aggressive aspect, the embargo must be judged by its material and moral effect upon Great Britain and France. And the present study suggests with respect to Great Britain what the elaborate examination by Dr. Frank

viii JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

Edgar Melvin of “Napoleon’s Continental System” confirms for France, that the actual pressure was severe, and came far nearer to producing the desired result than the enemies of Jefferson, or even his friends, perceived. Like many a more martial conflict, this warfare of self-denial brought success much nearer to the vanquished than was comfortable for the victors.

To the members of the staff of the Division of Manu¬ scripts in the Library of Congress, as well as to Dr. C. O. Paullin of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, I desire to express my thanks for many courtesies in the prosecution of my researches. To the editors of The Ameri¬ can Political Science Review, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The South Atlantic Quarterly, and the Ameri¬ can Historical Association, Annual Reports, are due my grateful acknowledgment of their kind permission to reprint chapters and parts of chapters which originally appeared under their auspices. Chapter II, Jefferson and the Law of Nations, appeared originally in the American Political Science Review for August, 1919, and has subsequently been translated into Spanish for Inter- America. Chapter VII, The Middle States and the Embargo, appeared in part under that title in the South Atlantic Quarterly for April, 1922. Other portions of this chapter may be found in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1921, under notes on Philadelphia and the Embargo of 1808. Some of this same material is covered also in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1920, under the same caption as above. Chapter VIII, The South and the Embargo, appeared originally in the South Atlantic Quarterly for July, 1921. Chapter X, British Industry and the American Embargo first appeared in the Quarterly Jour¬ nal of Economics of November, 1919.

PREFACE

IX

I take this opportunity to express my gratitude for help¬ ful criticism to Professor William E. Dodd of the Univer¬ sity of Chicago, whose learning has been an inspiration and whose friendship an encouragement for many years. To Professors Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Conyers Read, I am also much indebted for a reading of the manu¬ script, and for numerous suggestions of value to the work in its earlier form as a doctoral dissertation at the Univer¬ sity of Chicago. Professor William K. Boyd, and William T. Laprade, of Duke University, and Professor Arthur H. Hirsch, of Ohio Wesleyan University, have placed me under deep obligation by their further and careful examination of the manuscript and by their helpful suggestions toward its progress through the press.

Also, I wish to call attention to the excellent monograph on “The American Embargo 1807-1809,” by Walter Wilson Jennings, Ph.D., in the “University of Iowa Studies in the Social Sciences.”

I cannot conclude these words of preface without tribute to the letters of Jefferson. They are more than masterpieces of epistolary art. They are source material for what Mr. Gamaliel Bradford calls psychography. They are the delinea¬ tion of a great soul, whose struggles for the welfare of man¬ kind should never cease to interest the humanity he sought to serve.

L. M. S.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW 3

II. JEFFERSON AND THE LAW OF NATIONS 32

III. THE ADOPTION OF THE EMBARGO TO APRIL 30, 1808 55

IV. SUCCESS AND FAILURE 73

V. FAILURE AND SUCCESS 124

NEW ENGLAND AND THE EMBARGO 143

VII. THE MIDDLE STATES AND THE EMBARGO 197

^VIII. THE SOUTH AND THE EMBARGO 228

(fx) BRITISH POLITICS AND THE AMERICAN EMBARGO 253

X. BRITISH INDUSTRY AND THE AMERICAN EMBARGO 276

(Xp FRANCE AND THE EMBARGO 302

^xn. CONCLUSION 318,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 321

INDEX 325

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

CHAPTER I

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW

When Thomas Jefferson, in December, 1807, gave execu¬ tive approval to the embargo on American ships and goods, ne carried theory into practice and put to the test perhaps the most perfect substitute for war up to that time devised. There was abundant provocation for war itself. The Euro¬ pean belligerents, Great Britain and France, locked in a death grapple for world power, recognized no neutral right they felt bound to respect, and the bankrupt diplomacy of each spurned with utter fatuity a good will which should have been invaluable. What between the tightening blockade by Great Britain on the one hand and the impotent but exasper¬ ating retaliations of Napoleon on the other, America, as the hief of neutral carriers, either must fight the mistress of the eas and the foremost of land tyrants in a triangular combi- ation, or else she must submit to outrages intolerable for a sovereign state, however modest its position in the world concert. To Jefferson the former course appeared quixotic; the latter, unthinkable. The alternative was to stay at home nd preserve our flag from the insults it was certain to meet on the high seas or in French ports. In the nature of a com- romise measure, the embargo contained features common to oth war and submission. An embargo, to he satisfactory. cad not merely to safeguard nnr nwn gh;pp'ng f-;t a1gr> to awaken European consumers to the folly of their govern¬

ments in rutting them off jfcom needed supplier, In this ifngp ^ ptnhRT'g'Q was (coercive*. a close_ kinsman to the blockade as aJnrm of actualwarfare. In another sense, the mbargOAva^ submissive, a twin brother tp surriamEr, t'^r Lt.

■vas idle to irnagme-ffrat those righD Wprp r1efenHed_whose_

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

AC

possessor dared not even assert thpm But, as the world was situated in 1807, this intermediate position seemed to its sponsor his country’s only outlet from a sea of difficulties. It was the matured policy of a lifelong hatred for waO One cannot understand Jefferson’s initiation of the embargo and his subsequent relation to its enforcement_witfrout examin¬ ing his point of view as it ripened into pacifism. For the embargo was the practical outcome of a philosophy long ma¬ turing. It was the projection into foreign affairs of the peace ideals of a democracy, the contribution to interna¬ tional polity of one of the world’s greatest democrats.

The clew to Jefferson’s sentiments on war and peace alike is his democracy, his confidence in the innate virtue and in¬ telligence of mankind and its potentiality for self-govern¬ ment. He believed in the power of self-government and education to uplift the common man and waged a lifelong warfare with the strait-jacket ideal designed to enthrall and exploit him. But the very intensity of his democratic convic¬ tion proclaimed Jefferson a thinker rather than a man of , - a philosopher and~theori6t -rather-than-aa executive. And if the embargo appears more plausible in theory than successful in practice, it merely shares the characteristics of its sponsor. To understand the measure, one must needs know the man. Only asHusllemdcracy and his^aclfism are' revealed can we explain the embargo as their outcome.

Jefferson’s early reputation in Virginia rested upon public spirit and reform policies rather than upon proved capacity for leadership. His contribution to the Revolution was the Declaration of Independence, not his rather helpless career as war governor of the State. The Federal Union employed him to best advantage as the messenger of liberty to its friends beyond the sea. His principal service after his re¬ turn was to organize democratic opposition to the privileged

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW

5

orders in eastern cities into a political victory in 1800, which saved the Union from western secession. Executive detail interested him little, and his presidency was distinguished rather by a grasp of future needs and restraint under provo¬ cation than by brilliancy of administration. In retirement, he was the Sage of Monticello, an oracle, but chiefly a spec¬ tator, devoting his last strength to the cause of education, the foundation stone in his scheme of democracy. But among the interests of his long and varied career, the cause of peace held permanent place.

The truth of this appears in the midst of the Revolution. Although one does not look to Thomas Jefferson for a mili¬ tary history of the American Revolution, yet his references to its operation are surprisingly few. He understood that final success would depend largely upon sea power, and, in the ab¬ sence of this element of victory, as early as July, 1774, when the Boston Port Bill was agitating the colonies, (he advocated a non-importation agreement against all goods subject to British entry duties. ^Again, when the Continental currency commenced to depreciate, partly for lack of a foreign market, Jefferson favored either free trade, supported by alliance with a strong naval power,2 or else complete non-importa¬ tion.3 In this recommendation of non-importation, Jefferson was already promulgating the great pacific formula of his presidential term, while naval power, though anathema to his ideals, was, ironically enough, to claim him as its father. V Of interest, in the light of the recent disposition to attrib¬ ute French intervention after Saratoga to the fear that Great Britain and America were about to conclude a peace

1 The Works of Thomas Jefferson. Federal Edition, II. 42-44. “Reso¬ lutions of Albemarle County.”

2 Ibid., II. 307. See also III. 249, Jefferson to DeLaLuzerne on the utility of sea power.

‘Ibid., II. 307. S'ee also II. 491, 502, which foreshadow his later embargo policy.

6

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

and wage joint war upon the French West Indies,4 is a letter from Jefferson to Franklin intimating such a possibility unless Franklin exerted himself to prevent it.5 Franklin did his part, and France intervened, but two years later (1779) Jefferson was so weary of war, though as yet its fury had not touched Virginia, that he preferred “a ten years’ war sometime hence” to one unnecessary moment of the present.6

Bitterly as he detested the war, upon occasion he could commend to Washington the honorable conduct of the foe.7 Nor was he indifferent to British prisoners in de¬ tention camps. His appeal to Governor Henry not to sacri¬ fice the comfort and happiness of prisoners to petty whims of economy — a shaft at his excellency’s principal vice — was in keeping with a plan to encourage Hessian settlements within the state. (^Toward this end, during his own term as governor, he proclaimed a grant of two cows and exemp¬ tion from taxes and militia duty to such Hessians and other foreigners as would abandon the British cause and take up land in Virginia. This consideration for enemy mercen¬ aries is evidence of Jefferson’s broad humanity."')

Indeed, fair treatment to the enemy was parcel of the humanitarianism which Jefferson accounted the dignity of civilized warfare. He congratulated himself in the early days of the war that the refinements of civilization were ameliorating the lot of prisoners, “so that an enemy is an object of vengeance, in arms and in the field only.”8 But war proved less an exchange of knightly courtesies than he had anticipated, and British atrocities soon led him to jus¬ tify American retaliation as the sole means of stopping the

4 C. H. Van Tyne, “Influences which Determined the French Govern¬ ment to Make the Treaty with America, 1778,” American Historical Review, XXI. No. 3. April, 1916.

’ The Works of Thomas Jefferson, II. 307.

•Ibid., II. 375.

7 Ibid., III. 84.

'Ibid., II. 145-146.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW

7

progress of human butchery.9 In his role of casuist, Jeffer¬ son represented a twentieth-century type. But it was, in truth, difficult to preserve generous ideals against an enemy like Tarleton, and, in his term as governor, Jefferson was compelled to threaten retaliation against prisoners and to justify his case by depositions from Virginia captives, whose tales of horror influenced their hearer to an analysis of British civilization which would edify its most irrecon¬ cilable opponents of today:

The present war having so long cut off all communication with Great Britain, we are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in that country. The spirit in which she wages war, is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not seem the legiti¬ mate offspring either of science or of civilization. The sun of her glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her Philosophy has crossed the channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.10

In his executive capacity, Jefferson came into intimate contact with military discouragements11 through his nomi¬ nal command of the militia. He found it a poor tool, yet all his life he remained an advocate of voluntary in prefer¬ ence to professional military service. That the militia of the Revolution was a poor reliance appeared to Jefferson no justification for the curse of standing armies, and no excuse to the citizen for the evasion of his highest duty. His solu¬ tion was to improve the existing system.

It was in character that an individualist and demo¬ crat should shun excess of military discipline, so that one is not surprised to find that Jefferson’s “Draft of a Bill for Providing against Invasions and Insurrections” provided no heavier military punishment than degrading, cashiering, drumming out of the army, and whipping not to exceed

8 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, II. 147.

10 Ibid., III. 461.

u Ibid., II. 487.

8

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

twenty lashes, even for the most serious offences.12 Yet even these rules were more rigorous than Virginians were disciplined to obey,13 and, at a critical juncture in 1781, Jef¬ ferson was under the humiliating necessity of admitting to La Fayette that it was not in his power “to do any thing more than to represent to the General Assembly that unless they can provide more effectually for the Execution of the Laws it will be vain to call on Militia.”14

The service was, in truth, no object lesson in efficiency. Jefferson complained that it was easy to evade, expensive to the public, distressing and disgusting to individuals,15 and not reliable for long campaigns or for use in distant coun¬ ties.16 Militiamen were too proud to work on the fortifica¬ tions17 but not ashamed to steal the arms and ammunition which the state had provided.18

The whole militia system threatened to collapse before a British device for disarming entire regions under tempor¬ ary occupation by placing the inhabitants under parole. This general parole afforded a favorite evasion of military duty to pusillanimous Colonists, who even courted the oath as a conscientious excuse for shirking their duty to the state. Jefferson combatted the evil in a circular letter to the county lieutenants, urging all whose consciences forbade their taking up arms to take refuge behind the British lines.19 If, how¬ ever, any chose to break parole and to aid their countrymen, Jefferson made it clear that he would not send them back to the British.20 He took the proper ground of Americanism

u The Works of Thomas Jefferson, II. 301. V. S. A. May 10, 1777. u Ibid., III. 214.

14 Ibid., III. 280.

"Ibid., III. 192.

” Ibid., III. 200.

” Ibid., III. 277. u Ibid ., III. 231.

"Ibid., III. 145. xIbid„ III. 152.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW

9

and common sense, that “He is a bad citizen who can enter¬ tain a doubt whether the Law will justify him in saving his country or who will scruple to risk himself in support of the spirit of a Law where unavoidable Accidents have prevented a literal compliance with it.”21

Notwithstanding the tribulations of unpreparedness, Jef¬ ferson was not easily discouraged by his countrymen, even if at times he was compelled to reduce his expectations of their immediate achievements. He refused to sacrifice the ideals of his life to momentary exigencies, and, in 1779, while the war was pressing on, he found time for the more congenial task of drafting “A Bill for the Amending of the Constitution of the College of William and Mary,” in which he recited the great need of a training school for “the future guardians of the rights and liberties of their coun¬ try.”22

It was no part of Jefferson’s plan, one is assured, to sub¬ ject those liberties to military despotism. An old complaint against George III was his quartering of British troops in America without consent.23 The constitutions which Jeff¬ erson proposed for Virginia in 177 624 and in 178325 guarded against executive tyranny by intrusting military prerogative to the legislative branch. A decidedly acrimon¬ ious letter from Jefferson to Steuben26 complains of a self- important quartermaster to whom “We did not think it proper to resign ourselves and our Country implicity — but thought we had some right of judgment left to us,” while one of the most spirited passages in the Notes on Virginia 27 protests against the infamy of even the suggestion to betray

21 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, III. 147.

22 Ibid., II. 432.

23 Ibid., II. 86.

24 Ibid., II. 171.

25 Ibid., IV. 147-166.

xIbid., III. 212, 213.

27 Ibid., IV. 34.

10

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

the cause of liberty throughout the world by summoning a dictator to the rescue of a free people. “What clause in our constitution,” demands Jefferson, “has substituted that of Rome, by way of residuary provision, for all cases not otherwise provided for?”28

Peculiarly congenial to such a spirit as Jefferson’s, there¬ fore, must have been the task of drawing up rules of eti¬ quette for Washington’s Farewell to Congress upon surren¬ dering his military commission. Great as were the General’s merits, he must subordinate himself to civil law. In the brief formula of Jefferson, “When the General rises to make his address, and also when he retires, he is to bow to Congress, which they are to return by uncovering without bowing.”29

As was to be expected, Jefferson welcomed peace in a hearty spirit of conciliation30 and was solicitous that it exist among as well as within the states.31 But the real signifi¬ cance of the Revolution for Jefferson’s later pacificism lies in a philosophical residuum best defined in a celebrated pas¬ sage from the Notes on Virginia ( 1782). Though he asserts that the military resources of Virginia and of the Federa¬ tion are considerable, he deprecates their employment against any European power, England not excepted, preferring that American energies be devoted to the development of a conti¬ nent. He is a prose Hamlet pitting in argument the incre- 'ment of production against the false arithmetic of war. And, although he advocates an open door and perfect freedom ^for necessary commerce, he would cheerfully abandon the ocean altogether for the sake of a universal agriculture. Nevertheless, since America had already chosen the path of commerce, in which occasional wars would be inevitable,

28 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, IV. 36.

20 Ibid., IV. 202.

30 Ibid., IV. 184.

31 Ibid.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW 11

preparedness was a duty. Without provoking war, Amer¬ ica should resist its shocks. Here the sea, even as it invited war, offered its own security. Land armies would be useless for offence, inadequate for defence. Security depended upon sea power, but not upon naval supremacy. In Jefferson’s words :

To aim at such a navy as the greater nations of Europe possess,' would be a foolish and wicked waste of the energies of our country¬ men. It would be to pull on our own heads that load of military expense which makes the European labourer go supperless to bed, and moistens his bread with the sweat of his brows. It will be enough if we enable ourselves to prevent insults from those nations of Europe which are weak on the sea, because circumstances exist, which render even the stronger ones weak as to us.32

Naval powers of the first rank could not risk their entire forces in distant waters. America would be her own base of supplies, from which detached territories might readily be seized. Moreover, present resources equal to equipping annually a navy of eighteen hundred guns at a cost of $2,304,000 could be counted upon to double every twenty years, as the country grew in wealth and population. In brief, Jefferson had already molded the ideals and policies of his post-Revolutionary career. An ideal pacifism under¬ lay a pragmatism and opportunism by no means blind to the continental and even international role which America might yet be called to play.

Jefferson was himself to be an empire builder in the great destiny awaiting his country. The interval between the Revolution and his own presidency was for him an indis¬ pensable apprenticeship in statecraft. His mission to France and the portfolio of state under Washington, though they necessarily destroyed some illusions of international comity, introduced the needful leaven to convert a Virginia farmer into a patriotic cosmopolitan. If the note of idealism

82 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, IV. 100-102.

12

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

seems less pronounced in these years of the new tutelage, the breadth of interest widens as the philosopher of democ¬ racy accommodates his theory to the exigencies of an unre¬ generate world.

In naught was the conflict sharper than between his views of an ideal agricultural state and the needs of an aggressive, commercial people. In this Jefferson made a vir¬ tue of necessity. Discarding Chinese exclusiveness as admirable but not practicable, and condemning even free trade as unattainable,33 though all the world would be the .gainer from a free exercise of this “natural right,”34 Jef¬ ferson was concerned to secure commercial treaties favorable I to the new nation, even at the bayonet point of a protective 4 tariff.35

Closely allied with this strong commercial policy was a scheme for internal improvements, linking the West with the Potomac in order to break the New York and Phila¬ delphia monopoly of trans-Alleghany trade.36 The cause lay near to his heart, and in 1784 he was urging George Washington to devote to it the years of his retirement. Thus, in the tariff and internal improvements, Jefferson, • though by no means the apologist of protection, and though unequivocally opposed to Federal activity where state re¬ sources were sufficient, was in some sense anticipating the “American Plan” of a later statesman.

But if he sacrificed something to principle in the field of commercial intercourse, he could inveigh against undem¬ ocratic manifestations at home with the full approval of his conscience. The Order of the Cincinnati was his particular detestation. He condemned it as contrary to the Federa¬ tion, unconstitutional in several states, and foreign to the

/

53 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, IV. 469. “Ibid., IV. 445; VI. 64.

36 Ibid., IV. 469-470.

“Ibid., IV. 267.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW 13

spirit of them all.37 He feared its concentration of power and honor as a menace to the government itself, not only through its own patronage in the development of a military aristocracy, but through the corrupt agency of European powers as well. He beheld in the Order the seed of a divis¬ ion between the civil and the military authority.38 Even its social and eleemosynary features found no favor with Jef¬ ferson. He foresaw dissensions at its meetings39 and pro¬ fessed to lament the spirit of dependence which its treas¬ ury would ingraft in succeeding generations of loungers and snobs, “too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men’s labour which is the sacred fund of the helpless poor.”40 The horrible object lesson of the French aristocracy, among whom Jeffer¬ son moved as the minister from his country, rendered him almost a fanatic in demanding the total extinction of the Order as the only hope for the republic.41

Jefferson’s residence at Paris cost the democratic ele¬ ments in the Constitutional Convention a powerful champion. But his interpretation to Frenchmen of American political trends was of value to both countries,42 while his correspon¬ dence with American leaders permitted a silent presentation of his own views upon the greatest political achievement of his time. His admiration for this achievement was great but not unqualified. The mildness of the old Congress in coercing the several states warranted the strengthening of the Federal arm.43 But the absence of a bill of rights44 boded ill for liberty, particularly in the failure to provide against

37 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, IV. 325.

33 Ibid., IV. 347.

39 Ibid., IV. 323-329.

40 Ibid., V. 59.

41 Ibid., V. 221-223.

“Ibid., V. 16 ff.

43 Ibid., V. 319.

44 Ibid., V. 385.

14

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

standing armies and suspension of habeas corpus. Notwith¬ standing these imperfections, already subject to popular cen¬ sure,45 he paid tribute to the Constitution as a triumph of reason over passion, which unhappily the world was too far oppressed to imitate.46

(<- His mission to France brought Jefferson into early touch with the Algerine question, a sore spot of European diplo¬ macy, and converted him, free trader and pacifist though he was, into the altogether surprising role of a propagandist of sea power. Yet acceptance of commerce as a legitimate field of American endeavor inevitably dictated an acquiescence in naval power as its indispensable concomitant, and the Alger¬ ine nuisance merely focused the issue. “Can we begin it [a navy] on a more honorable occasion,” Jefferson repeatedly asks, “or with a weaker foe?”47 Nearer to the scenes of in¬ sult than his countrymen at home, he tells us that his facul¬ ties were “absolutely suspended between indignation and im¬ potence,”48 and he assured his American correspondent, with characteristic scope of vision, that “The motives pleading for war rather than tribute are numerous and honorable, those opposing them are mean and short sighted.”49 He held that power could alone insure the maintenance of peace,50 and in its absence he advised Americans to keep out of the Mediterranean.51 Until the United States should be strong ' enough for independent action, he recommended a league with other nations for a perpetual cruise against the Alger¬ ines, eight months. out of twelve.52 And he advised Wash- ’ington to sound Spain for a possible subsidy in return for

45 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, V. 426.

46 Ibid., V. 423.

47 Ibid., IV. 376-377, 390-391, 398.

48 Ibid., IV. 392.

48 Ibid., IV. 398. To James Monroe. Paris. February, 1785. "Ibid., V. 106-107. Paris. May 10. 1786.

51 Ibid., V. 345-346. September 25, 1787.

°3 Ibid., VI. 86. New York. July 4, 1790.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW 15

fighting her battle against the pirates.53 Nor did he relinquish this idea of a subsidized cruise,54 even though Congress preferred to toy with a $40,000 ransom for American cap¬ tives.55

So pronounced a stand against the Algerines wrought its logical reflex in a general belligerency of spirit quite out of plumb with Jefiferson’s prevailing temper. In 1788 he was predicting the Great War so soon to burst over Europe,56 and, in sundry aphorisms on the perils of a “want of respect¬ ability in the national character,”57 he warned the nation to hold itself in readiness for rich plums ripe for the shaking. A strong front could demand as the price of our neutrality the opening of much territory then closed to American ship¬ pers.58 _ sxle»si'cr

But no prospects of national aggrandizement swerve Jefferson from his hostility to standing armies, rejoiced that the new Constitution had muzzled the dog war “by transferring the power of letting him loose from the executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”59 In 1792 he opposed increasing the regular army to five thousand men, holding that fifteen hundred woodsmen would easily end the Indian war.60 And he looked upon the encouragement which In¬ dian uprisings afforded to the war party as their chief incon¬ venience.61

Quite otherwise with sea power, the national specific against insult,62 particularly useful against nations with

63 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VI. 397. “Ibid., VI. 439-440. March 18, 1792.

55 Ibid., VI. 473. April 10, 1792. sa Ibid., V. 398-399.

" Ibid., V. 79.

58 Ibid., V. 438.

“Ibid. VI., 11.

00 Ibid., VI. 407.

“ Ibid., VI. 243.

“Ibid., IV. 450-51.

l§ JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

stakes in the West Indies.63 He welcomed (1785) a packet service between Havre and New York as the nucleus of a navy,64 and deprecated (1788) the failure of Congress to secure Paul Jones for a rear admiral, in order that he might gain experience for that time “when we shall be more popu¬ lous than the whole British dominions and able to fight them ship to ship,”65 — a delectable prospect pending solely upon the success of the land office in first ridding us of debt,66 and not to be compromised by premature forfeiture of legalized piracy in the fitting out of privateers.67

Adjusting naval expenditures to the income from land sales was characteristically Jeffersonian. He abhorred nat¬ ional debts,68 and regarded the license to pile them up as a prime cause of war. The best safeguard against such accu¬ mulations of debt seemed to him a limit upon their legal existence. He held that no generation should be permitted to bind its successor by obligations in the incurring of which the latter was not consulted. And he believed that the world’s peace would be immeasureably advanced if all loans expired at the end of the nineteen years during which any one generation remained dominant.69

On the other hand, it is not surprising that this economic point of view should have led Jefferson to a smug compla¬ cency over those world disasters which might profit the Uni¬ ted States as a neutral. His moralizings, in 1790, on the prospective war between England and Spain are the calcula¬ tions of a shop-keeper with a sharp ear for trade. Human¬ ity is subordinated to lucre in dicta like the following: “I

63 The Works of Thomas Jefferson , IV. 451, 400.

“ Ibid., IV. 435.

“Ibid., V. 403.

M Ibid., IV. 451.

'7 Ibid., VI. 439.

68 Ibid., V. 348.

09 Ibid., VI. 8.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW 17

hope peace and profit will be our share.”70 “Our object is to feed and theirs to fight. If we are not forced by England, we shall have a gainful time of it.”71 “If there be war, France will probably take part in it. This we cannot help, and therefore we must console ourselves with the good price of wheat which it will bring us.”72 “Since it is so decreed by fate, we have only to pray their souldiers may eat a great deal.”73

But cynical cash balances are no measure for the many- sided Jefferson. Side by side with petty calculations of nat¬ ional loss and gain,74 he is capable of arguing for observ¬ ance of treaty obligations, even when contrary to imme¬ diate interests,75 “under a conviction that . . . stipula¬

tions by Treaty are irrevocable but by joint consent, let a change of circumstances render them ever so burthensome.”76 He rejoices that the treaty with Prussia sets a precedent for fair dealing among the nations.77 Nor does he exclude even the Indians from the number of those entitled to honorable treatment.78 On the contrary, he would exert the power of government to restrain greedy land grabbers from forcing America into war merely to serve their own wicked pur¬ poses.70

The military arm should be wielded not in behalf of speculators in Indian lands, but only for high national ends. Of these latter, one appeared very early in the Western question. Even as the Louisiana Purchase was to strain the Jeffersonian theory of strict interpretation, so the long train

70 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VI. 84.

71 Ibid., VI. 89.

Ibid., VI. 106.

73 Ibid., VI. 145, 108.

"Ibid., V. 101-102.

75 Ibid., VI. 40.

73 Ibid., VI. 184.

77 Ibid., V. 184.

78 Ibid., VI. 302, passim.

78 Ibid., VI. 224, 455.

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

of preliminary negotiation taxed whatever of pacific sur¬ vived in Jefferson the diplomat and cabinet minister Al¬ ready, in 1790, the imminence of war between Spain and England brought the Louisiana question into the limelight. Our growing West needed a Mississippi port and outlet. This, Jefferson set himself the task of securing. Yet his. policy was distinctly that of waiting watchfully. Western allegiance to the new republic hinged ultimately upon our control of New Orleans,80 but, in attaining this goal, tem¬ perament and necessity alike urged Jefferson to caution. In controversies between Spain and Great Britain, he in¬ stinctively chose neutrality81 as the wisest course, so long at least as the belligerents kept their treaty obligations,82 from a perception that American strength would count more effectively in swaying the balance of power than if used on one side or the other. He would even submit to the passage of foreign troops across American territory83 rather than, by refusal, provoke insults and war, which we were not pre¬ pared to resist. In the critical posture of European affairs, he believed that American interests might be conserved without the costs and dangers of war.84

More immediately threatening than a western problem, quite certain in the final event to yield to diplomatic nego-, tiation, was the question of American rights at sea, an ele¬ ment on which our independence of England was as yet far from being acknowledged. What Jefferson counted a nat¬ ural right was by no means easy to uphold, and the British decision, in 1791, to restrict American trade to vessels built in the United States, put a decided crimp in those profits which a European war would naturally hold out for any

80 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VI. 116.

81 Ibid., VI. 142.

82 Ibid., VI. 123. New York, August 12, 1790.

83 Ibid., VI. 142, 144.

84 Ibid., VI. 444, March 18, 1792.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW '19-

neutral nation prepared for sudden accessions to its ship¬ ping. As Washington’s prime minister, Jefferson was al¬ ready confronting the great foreign problem of his own ad¬ ministration.

Professional duty required Jefferson to make diplomatic representations against British seizure of American sailors off the African coast.85 But his interest was far keener in the blockade of France projected in 1793, which threatened to exclude our goods from much of continental Europe. Such a contingency presented, according to Jefferson, a casus belli, and he took the constitutional ground that, even as the executive could not in a positive sense declare war, so, in a negative sense, it should not compel peace by a failure to summon the legislature for deliberation upon the issues in¬ volved.86 Yet he trusted that the sovereign legislature, when duly assembled, would seize the golden opportunity of teach¬ ing humanity the lesson of an appeal, not to the sword, but to enlightened self-interest by a retaliation in kind, which should exclude European goods and vessels from our own ports.87

A blockade of continental Europe presaged disaster to neutral commerce in direct violation of one of Jefferson’s favorite concepts, that of a law of nature which guaranteed to nations at peace the rights of uninterrupted intercourse.88 Even regulations of contraband chafed this militant free" trader, who asserted that “in the present improved state of the arts when every country has such ample means of pro¬ curing arms within and without itself, the regulations of contraband answer no other end than to draw other nations into the war.”89 His chief consolation was that the treaty

86 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VII. 157, October 12, 1792.

"Ibid., VII. 250. March, 1793.

81 Ibid.

"Ibid., VII. 314-315, 386, 387, May 7, 1793.

89 Ibid., VII. 314-315. May 7, 1793.

20

JEFFERSON AND THE EMBARGO

with Prussia already recognized the futility of contraband and thereby erected a new milestone in international rela¬ tions.90

He perceived the gains which might be ours as the great neutral carrying nation and protested against any British discrimination respecting foreign-built vessels flying our flag,91 especially since it was no part of our intention to allow foreigners to participate in the war profits through owner¬ ship of our shipping shares. The troubled state of the times induced him to comment upon the Lusitania case more than a century before its occurrence. He asked :

Can it be necessary to say that a merchant vessel is not a privateer ? That tho’ she has arms to defend herself in time of war, in the course of her regular commerce, this no more makes her a privateer, than a husbandman following his plough, in time of war, with a knife or pistol in his pocket, is thereby made a soldier? The occupation of a privateer is attack and plunder, that of a merchant-vessel is com¬ merce & self preservation.92

He particularly condemned the British definition of grain as contraband, and held that British action in restricting our grain market made us unneutral by disenabling us from dealing equally with both belligerents.93 He was wholly out of sympathy with Great Britain’s attempt to starve an enemy nation94 at our expense. All in 'all, the times furnished new arguments, not only for naval preparedness, but also for a protective tariff and non-intercourse.95 “It is not to the moderation and justice of others,” Jefferson regretfully con¬ cedes, “we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with our productions, or for our due share in the transpor¬ tation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.”96

90 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VII, 314-315.

"Ibid., VII. 386-387. June 13, 1793.

"Ibid., VII. 494. August 16, 1793.

"Ibid., VIII 24-31. September 7, 1793.

94 Ibid., VII. 28. September 7, 1793.

"Ibid., VIII. 114-118. December 16, 1793.

"Ibid., VIII. 117.

THE UNDERLYING POINT OF VIEW

21

It is evident that, in 1793, Jefferson was not the leading pacifist in President Washington’s cabinet. And a four ears’ trial of the Hamiltonian policy of truckling to Great Britain justified his complacent reflections on what might have been had America only followed his advice in a strong assertion of neutral rights. “A little time will unfold these things, and show which class of opinions would have been most friendly to the firmness of our government, and to the nterests of those for whom it was made.”97 Quite a con- rast, this, to his more characteristic wish that we give it all ip, — commerce, and the carrying trade, even a diplomatic establishment — and live by agriculture alone.98

His militant neutrality and advanced definition of contra¬ band point to Jefferson as an original thinker and a path¬ finder in pacifism. His philosophy of a national morality is equally creditable. “For a nation as a society forms a moral person,” declares Jefferson, “and every member of it is per¬ sonally responsible for his society.”99 He believed that true reformation of this body politic was attainable only by per¬ suasion, not at all by force.100 A practical expression of this code of ethics is Jefferson’s contribution to the fourth an¬ nual message of Washington. “The interests of a nation, when well understood,” affirms the secretary of state, “will be found to coincide with their moral duties.”101 This doc¬ trine was well in harmony with its expounder’s belief in peace as the true law of nature,102 though he was obliged to make exception of man, whose boasted civilization merely enabled him “to pursue the principle of helium omnium in omnia on a larger scale, and in place of the little contests of

97 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, VIII. 277 '. January 22, 1797.

98 Ibid., IX. 65-66. April 22, 1799.

09 Ibid., VII. 84-5. 1792.

100 Ibid., VII. 122. To Thomas Paine, June 19, 1792.

101 Ibid., VII. 160-161. October 15, 1793.

102 Ibid., VII. 400. To Genet, June 17, 1793.