When news of the Enforcing Act reached Boston, it was received with such indignation, that General Lincoln, the collector of the port, resigned, and the flags of the dismantled ships were hoisted at half-mast, processions of starving sailors and mechanics passed through the streets, and the whole community was highly excited; an excitement increased by an order from the Cabinet to the commandant of the fort to allow no vessel whatever to proceed to sea.

But the end of Jefferson’s administration was approaching.  He had come in as the advocate of popular rights; and now at the close of his term was enforcing measures more arbitrary than those which preceded the Revolution.  Madison was nominated as his successor.  All New England, save the inland State of Vermont, was revolutionized and voted against him, while Maryland and New York chose Federal Assemblies.  The South, however, gave him its votes, and he was elected; but the tide of public opinion was rolling strongly against the Embargo.

The new legislature of Massachusetts was convened; Governor Gore, who had displaced Gerry, drew their attention to the arbitrary and oppressive measures of Government; and the General Court, in their reply, after denouncing those measures as illegal and unconstitutional, used the memorable words, that “they would be true to the Union, although they had fallen under the ban of the Empire.”

The merchants determined to test the legality of the Enforcing Act; but John Quincy Adams and Joseph Story repaired to Washington, and urged the necessity of a repeal.  Their representations, and the signal defeat of the Democracy at the North, proved irresistible; and the Embargo, after a protracted struggle, fell before them.

From this glance at the history of the Embargo we can account for the asperity of feeling towards the Democratic leaders, and the distrust of their measures and men, which pervaded New England from the passage of the Embargo Act until the close of the war.

New England, and more especially Massachusetts, commercial from its infancy, did not come into the Union to surrender its commerce, navigation, or seamen to any visionary theories of the South.  For nearly two centuries it had struggled for all its liberties with the parent empire.  It had learned in the cruel school of oppression that the price of freedom is perpetual vigilance.

Fifteen months had now elapsed since the laying of the embargo, and it had more than realized all the presages of its opponents.  Our minister, Armstrong, had written from France, that it had produced no effect in France and was forgotten in England.  Pinckney, in England, did all in his power to save the Administration, by offering to end the embargo, if England would relax her policy; but Canning replied, that England had no complaints to make, that Spain and Russia had been opened to her, and the measure would serve to convince her that she was not absolutely dependent on the trade of America; with cutting irony, he added, he would make but one concession to America:  she had complained that England drew a tribute from her merchandise, when shipped to the Continent; he would, out of deference to American delicacy, substitute a total prohibition.  He had the tact, also, to draw from Pinckney a letter offering to concede many of the points in dispute, and published it with an insolent commentary.