elected by ten of the sixteen states
then constituting the Union. Jefferson was as inimical to England as he
was favorable to France, so was his secretary of state, and successor in
the presidential chair, Madison. Although there were many intervenient
heart-burnings, it was not until the year 1807, when Jefferson was a
second time president, that the government of the United States assumed
a decidedly hostile attitude towards Great Britain. The Berlin decree,
in which the French ruler ventured to declare the British islands in a
state of blockade, and to interdict all neutrals from trading with the
British ports in any commodities whatever, produced fresh retaliatory
orders in council, intended to support England's maritime rights and
commerce, and to counteract Bonaparte's continental system. The Berlin
decree was a gross infringement of the law of nations and an outrage on
neutral rights, which especially called for resistance from the
Americans, a neutral and trading people; but they neither resisted nor
seriously remonstrated against it. Other causes of dispute arose from
the determination of the British government to exclude the Americans
from the blockaded ports of France, and from that inexhaustible source
of quarrel, the impressment of British seamen from American vessels,
especially as the difficulty of distinguishing British from American
seamen led occasionally to the impressment of American native born
citizens. In June, 1807, occurred the rencontre between his majesty's
ship Leopard and the Chesapeake, which terminated in the forcible
extraction from the American frigate of four deserters from British
ships of war. The British government instantly disavowed this act, and
recalled Vice-Admiral Berkeley, who had given the order to search the
Chesapeake. Jefferson, however, not only issued a proclamation
interdicting all British ships of war from entering the ports of the
United States, but proposed to congress to lay an embargo on American
vessels, and to compel the trading ships of every other nation to quit
the American harbours. This proposition was warmly opposed by the
federalists, or Washingtonians, but it was nevertheless adopted by large
majorities. Thus matters remained, with subsequent slight modifications,
from the month of December, 1807, to the declaration of war in 1812, an
interval which the commercial classes spent in a hopeless struggle
against bankruptcy and ruin. Attempts were not wanting on