tation of slaves from Africa into the annexed territory should be forbidden; and an act was passed prohibiting their introduction, except by those persons from other parts of the United States who intended to be actual settlers, and were, therefore, permitted to bring slaves imported previous to 1798. But the law might properly have been entitled an Act for the Encouragement of the Trade in Negroes; and so it seems to have been regarded by the older slave States. South Carolina reopened the trade to Africa, and as Congress failed to levy the constitutional tax of ten dollars a head, the raw material, so to speak, came in free. The rest could be safely left to the law of supply and demand. Neither South Carolina, nor any other State, had imported slaves since 1798. The whole slave population, therefore, could be legally taken into Louisiana by actual settlers, and its place supplied in the old States by new importations. The demand regulated the supply, and the supply came from Africa as truly as if the importation had been direct to New Orleans. This was the legal course of trade till 1808; thenceforward it flourished without the protection of law but in spite of it, so long as it was profitable so long, that is, as the natural increase of the eastern negro was insufficient to answer the demand of the southwestern market.

But besides the peaceful extension of the na

tional domain there was much else in the first four or five years of Jefferson's administration to commend it to his countrymen. His party had nothing to complain of, despite that genial and generous assurance of the inaugural which could not be forgotten"we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists;" and the other party had reason to be thankful that, considering, as he said, "a Federalist seldom died, and never resigned," the number was not large who were reminded, by their removal from office, of their unreasonable delay in doing either the one thing or the other. It was only the politicians, however, a class much smaller then than it is now, who were concerned in such matters; the people at large were influenced by other considerations. Credit was given to the President for things that he did not do as well as for things that he did. It was due to him that the administration was an economical one; but it was through Mr. Gallatin's skillful management of the finances that the old public debt was in process of speedy extinction. Occasional impeachments enlivened the proceedings of Congress, which otherwise were as harmless as they were dull. Jefferson was never so much out of his proper element as in war, yet a successful one was carried on, during his first term, with the Barbary States which put an end for many years to the exactions and outrages which had long been needlessly submitted to. It was a war, however,

of only a few naval vessels in the hands of such energetic and brave men, destined to become famous in later years, as Bainbridge, Decatur, Preble, and Barron; and to send off the expedition was about all the government had to do with it. It was easy to keep clear of "entangling alliances," or entanglements of any sort with European powers, so long as they left the commerce of the United States to pursue its peaceful and profitable course without molestation. This both England and France did for several years, and there fell, in consequence, an immense carrying trade into the hands of American merchants which brought prosperity to the whole country, such as was never known before, and was not known again, after it was lost, for near a quarter of a century. All these things made Mr. Jefferson acceptable to the people as almost a heavenappointed President. If, as John Quincy Adams thought, fortune delighted to beam upon him with her sunniest smiles, he knew, at least, how best to take advantage of them. While they lasted his Secretary of State sat in their light and warmth, quietly and contentedly busy and in the diligent and faithful discharge of official duty, which could not in those years of prosperous tranquillity be over-burdensome.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE EMBARGO.

ALMOST at the beginning of his second term, Jefferson found himself in troubled waters, as the United States was drawn slowly but surely into the vortex of European war. The carrying trade at home and abroad had fallen very much into the hands of Americans, and this became the root of bitterness. The tonnage of their vessels employed in foreign trade and entered at the customhouses of the United States was equal to nearly four fifths of the tonnage of British vessels engaged in the same traffic and entered at home. But there was this difference: the foreign commerce of Great Britain was almost all carried on from her own ports, and the returns, therefore, showed its full volume. On the other hand, the American ships were largely the carriers between the ports of the belligerents and of other powers in Europe, and there were no entries at the American custom-houses of their employment, or that they were employed at all. As early as 1804-05, the aggregate value of this foreign trade in the hands of Americans was probably much larger

than that controlled by English merchants; and the former increased to the time of the promulgation of the Berlin decree of 1806, and the British orders in council of the next year. Nor was it only that wealth flowed into the country as the immediate return from this trade abroad. It stimulated enterprise and industry at home by the increase of capital; and there was not only more money to work with, but more to spend. Consequently the increase in exports and in imports grew steadily. In 1805, 1806, and 1807, about one half the average total exports, something over the value of twenty million of dollars, went to Great Britain. alone; and the value of the imports from that country for the same period was about sixty million dollars a year. Nor did this disproportion, though increasing with the growing prosperity, represent a general balance of trade against the United States, as one school of political economists would insist it must have done. For the imports were small from other European countries in exchange for American products; and the difference, together with the profits of the carrying trade abroad, was remitted in English manufactures. In other words, the imports from England. represented the returns for all exports to Europe, and the returns also available in the first instance through bills of exchange of the trade which had been gained by Americans and lost by those nations whose ships the war had driven from the ocean.