cing 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.

Jefferson still clung to the embargo; but Madison and his friends,
deferring to the reasons of Story and Adams, and yielding to the adverse
current now setting strongly against Democracy, March 9, 1809, repealed
the obnoxious act. Such was the end and signal failure of a measure
alike disastrous at home and abroad, a measure which had falsified all
the predictions of its author. Its avowed object was to secure our
seamen from impressment, to protect our commerce, and preserve our
ships; its presumed object was to cooeperate with Fr