before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and
history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be
construed as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a
disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly
legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the
same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the
United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog
in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true
and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.

Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe with the greatest consideration. At
this period Monroe and Madison were both candidates for the Republican
nomination for the presidency. Jefferson's choice was Madison, but he
remained impartial between them; and he withheld Monroe's treaty from
publication at a time when to publish it would have given a fatal blow to
Monroe's prospects. In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to disguise
and soften Monroe's discredit.

The wisdom of Jefferson's course as to the treaty was shown before three
months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which, had the Monroe
treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June,
1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to
search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which
was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and
wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but
carried off three alleged deserters.

This event roused a storm of indignation, which never quite subsided until
the insult had been effaced by the blood which was shed in the war of
1812. "For the first time in their history," says Mr. Henry Adams, "the
people of the United States learned in June, 1807, the feeling of a true
national emotion." "Never since the battle of Lexington," wrote Jefferson,
"have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present."

War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away
by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England
demanding reparation, and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British
men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or
bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a
while.

To his son-in-law, Joh