untry, at the instance of one man, inflicted a severer
strain upon its citizens. The ravages of French and English together,
since the outbreak of war in 1793, did not do so much damage as the
embargo did in one year, for it threatened ruin to every shipowner,
importer, and exporter in the United States. Undoubtedly Jefferson and
his party had in mind the success of the non-importation agreements
against the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties, but what was then the
voluntary action of a great majority was now a burden imposed by one part
of the country upon another. The people of New York and New England
simply would not obey the Act. To enforce it against Canada became an
impossibility, and to prevent vessels from escaping a {201} matter of
great difficulty. Jefferson persisted doggedly, and induced Congress to
pass laws giving revenue collectors extraordinary powers of search and
seizure, but without results.

Under this intolerable grievance, the people of the oppressed regions
rapidly lost their enthusiasm for the Democratic administration. Turning
once more to the Federalist party, which had seemed practically extinct,
they threw State after State into its hands, and actually threatened the
Republican control in the Presidential election of 1808. Had a coalition
been arranged between the disgusted Republican factions of New York and
Pennsylvania and the Federalists of New England, Delaware, and Maryland,
James Madison might well have been beaten for successor to Jefferson.
But worse remained behind. The outraged New Englanders, led by Timothy
Pickering and others, began to use again, in town-meetings and
legislatures, the old-time language of 1774, once employed against the
Five Intolerable Acts, and to threaten secession. As Jefferson said
later, "I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by
the New England townships."

By this time, it was definitely proved that as a means of coercion the
embargo was worthless. English manufacturers and their {202} workmen
complained, but English ship-owners profited, and crowds of British
seamen returned perforce to their home, even at times into the royal
navy. Canning, for the Portland Ministry, sarcastically declined to be
moved, observing that the embargo, whatever its motives, was practically
the same as Napoleon's system, and England could not submit to being
driven to surrender to France even to regain the American market or
relieve the Ame