It now became necessary for the United States either to engage in a war, or to withdraw her commerce from the ocean.  The popular voice demanded the former course.  Though France was, in the abstract, as unjust as England, her oppressive measures did not affect American commerce, and hence the indignation of the people was directed chiefly against Great Britain; but with the president it was different.  Though his sympathies were with.  France, his judgment was against her as well as England.  In his maturer wisdom, he could now appreciate the great good sense of Washington’s neutrality.  Besides, the grand old man Thomas Jefferson was determined to preserve peace, for it was his favorite maxim that “the best war is more fatal than the worst peace.”  A further reason led him to refuse the alternative of war.  He was not without hope that one or both of the belligerents would return to reason and repeal the obnoxious acts, if the conduct of the United States, instead of being aggressive, should be patient.  Actuated by these views, the president recommended to congress the passage of an embargo act.  An embargo law was enacted in December, 1807.  By it all American vessels abroad were called home, and those in the United States were prohibited from leaving port.  In consequence of this measure, the commerce of the country was annihilated in an hour; and harbors, once flourishing and prosperous, soon became only resorts for rotting ships.  There can be no question now that the embargo was a serious blunder.  It crippled the American resources for the war that ensued; made the eastern States hostile to Jefferson’s, as well as his successor’s administration, and tended to foster in the minds of the populace at large, an idea that we shrank from a contest with Great Britain in consequence of inherent weakness.

There was a fourth and last cause of exasperation, against England, which assisted more than all the rest to produce the war of 1812.  This was the British claim to the right of impressment.  In the terrible struggles in which England found herself engaged with France, her maritime force was her chief dependence, and accordingly she increased the number of her ships unprecedentedly; but it soon became difficult to man all these vessels.  The thriving commerce pursued by the United States, as early as 1793, drew large numbers of English seamen into our mercantile marine service, where they obtained better wages than on board English vessels.  By the fiction of her law, a man born an English subject can never throw off this allegiance.  Great Britain determined to seize her seamen wherever found and force them, to serve her flag.  In consequence, her cruisers stopped every American vessel they met and searched the crew in order to reclaim the English, Scotch or Irish on board.  Frequently it happened that persons born in America were taken as British subjects; for, where the boarding officer was judge and jury of a man’s nationality, there was little chance of