Pinckney, by which these troubles with Great Britain. would have been stopped, but as a treaty with England would have been detrimental to our interests with France, Jefferson did not send the document to the Senate, and it was never ratified. This action of the President caused a tumult of excitement. The situa

tion was still more complicated by the Berlin (November 21, 1806) and Milan (December 17, 1807) decrees of Napoleon, which declared that the British Islands were in a state of blockade, and threatened with seizure all vessels trading with England or her dependencies, and the retaliatory "Orders in council" of England,

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November 11, 1807, which prohibited commerce with all portions of Europe except Russia.

June 22, 1807, one of our frigates, the Chesapeake, when just going to sea from Norfolk, Va., was overhauled by a British man-of-war, the Leopard, the officers of which came aboard as friends, and then astonished the Commodore by demanding to search the vessel for deserters. The demand was refused, and the vessel prepared for action; but before this was accomplished, the Leopard poured her broadsides into the Chesapeake, and compelled surrender. Four men were taken, three of whom proved to be American citizens, and the British government was compelled to disavow the outrage and promise reparation, which, by the way, was never given.

This action led to the proclamation of the President forbidding all British war ships to enter American ports, and December 22, 1807, Congress, at the request of President Jefferson, passed an act prohibiting exportations and the sailing of American vessels from home ports. This act, called "Jefferson's Embargo," remained in force until the end of the term of Jefferson's office,* together with the acts of France and England, news of all of which, however, excepting the Berlin decree and the Orders in council, had not reached America. The embargo act prostrated American commerce and brought home. from all quarters of the globe, her busy merchantmen.

*Congress had laid an embargo for sixty days, June 4, 1794, and had finally left it to the discretion of President Washington to continue it until the end of the Congressional recess. The "great" embargo is the one mentioned in the text. The third was laid April 4, 1812, and continued until the declaration of war with England, June 18. The fourth, lasting four months, was laid December 19, 1813.

The West and South, not being so extensively engaged in foreign commerce as the New England and Middle States, were better satisfied with this measure, by which Jefferson intended to ward off war; but in the maritime States the opposition to it was intense, and it showed itself in indignant public meetings and fiery addresses, as well as in votes, which, in two months more than a year, caused its repeal. It was in force, however, to within three days of the end of Jefferson's term of office, and he believed that if it had not been repealed, the war of 1812 would have been averted. He attributed the great power of New England in breaking down. his favorite act to the township system, which enables that portion of the country to bring so great a proportion of its best citizens to the polls.

The administration of Jefferson had been a memorable period. It had seen the territory of the United States vastly increased by the purchase of Louisiana from France; it had seen the first practical steamboat on the waters of the world; it had put

*

*Robert Fulton, of New York, went from that city to Albany, in 1807, in the Clermont, a side-wheel steamboat, driven by an engine that he had bought in England of Boulton and Watt, and adapted to the purpose of steam navigation. It was not the first steamboat, but the first that ran for practical purposes and proved of actual value.

Steamboats and railways were not considered unmitigated blessings, and Mr. Samuel Breck, writing in 1830, of his early recollections, said: “Gentlemen of fortune travelled then in better style than they do now. They did not get along so fast, but they went more securely, more agreeably, and more comfortably. Steamboats have ruined the inns, and in annihilating space have nearly broken up all private, genteel travelling. Everything now is done in vast crowds. Caravans move in mobs, and he who goes abroad nowadays must submit to the hugger-mugger assemblage of a steamboat on the water and a procession of ten or twelve coaches ou the land. Our fathers were not in such haste, nor so fond of kicking up a dust."

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