, was
possible but not inviting. Jefferson shrank from it. A man of peace, he
disliked war's brazen clamor; a man of kindly spirit, he was startled at
the death and destruction which it brought in its train. So for the
eight years Jefferson steered an even course, suggesting measure after
measure with a view to avoiding bloodshed. He sent, it is true,
Commodore Preble in 1803 to punish Mediterranean pirates preying upon
American commerce; but a great war he evaded with passionate
earnestness, trying in its place every other expedient to protect
American rights.

=The Embargo and Non-intercourse Acts.=--In 1806, Congress passed and
Jefferson approved a non-importation act closing American ports to
certain products from British dominions--a measure intended as a club
over the British government's head. This law, failing in its purpose,
Jefferson proposed and Congress adopted in December, 1807, the Embargo
Act forbidding all vessels to leave American harbors for foreign ports.
France and England were to be brought to terms by cutting off their
supplies.

The result of the embargo was pathetic. England and France refused to
give up search and seizure. American ship owners who, lured by huge
profits, had formerly been willing to take the risk were now restrained
by law to their home ports. Every section suffered. The South and West
found their markets for cotton, rice, tobacco, corn, and bacon
curtailed. Thus they learned by bitter experience the national
significance of commerce. Ship masters, ship builders, longshoremen, and
sailors were thrown out of employment while the prices of foreign goods
doubled. Those who obeyed the law were ruined; violators of the law
smuggled goods into Canada and Florida for shipment abroad.

Jefferson's friends accepted the medicine with a wry face as the only
alternative to supine submission or open war. His opponents, without
offering any solution of their own, denounced it as a contemptible plan
that brought neither relief nor honor. Beset by the clamor that arose on
all sides, Congress, in the closing days of Jefferson's administration,
repealed the Embargo law and substituted a Non-intercourse act
forbidding trade with England and France while permitting it with other
countries--a measure equally futile in staying the depredations on
American shipping.

=Jefferson Retires in Favor of Madison.=--Jefferson, exhausted by
endless wrangling and wounded, as Washington had been, by savage