aims. To concede
the right of search on the high seas was to admit a vast extension of
British jurisdiction. As early as 1792, Jefferson had stated the
principle for which the United States had consistently contended: "The
simplest rule will be that the vessel being American shall be evidence
that the seamen on board of her are such." The principle was never
accepted by any British ministry. The practice of impressment continued
to harass each succeeding administration. In 1806, a crisis seemed at
hand. Madison reported to the House of Representatives the names of nine
hundred and thirteen persons who appeared to have been impressed from
American vessels. How many of these were British deserters under
American names, it is impossible to say. The number reported by Madison
is at least an index to the sense of injury which the nation felt.

When President Jefferson sent Pinkney to join Monroe in securing a
comprehensive treaty with Great Britain, which should restore West India
trade to its old condition and provide indemnity for the American
vessels condemned in the admiralty courts, he set down, as a _sine qua
non_ in his instructions, the renunciation by the British Government of
the practice of impressment. It was an ultimatum which expressed a truly
national feeling; but with the consciousness of power which the
domination of the high seas gave, the British commissioners treated
this ultimatum, somewhat contemptuously, as an impossible and
unwarranted demand. The American mission should have ended then and
there; but on obtaining assurances that greater care would be exercised
in impressing seamen, Monroe and Pinkney determined to disregard their
instructions. Negotiations were continued and culminated in a treaty,
December 1, 1806, which ran counter to the injunctions of the President
in every particular. He refused to submit the document to the Senate.
Nevertheless, he permitted Madison to draft new instructions for the
commissioners, in the hope that the treaty could be made a basis for
further negotiations. While these new instructions were crossing the
ocean, a disaster occurred which brought the United States and Great
Britain to the verge of war.

In the early months of 1807, some French frigates had run up Chesapeake
Bay to escape a British squadron. Relying on what Jefferson pleasantly
termed the hospitality of the United States, these British men-of-war
dropped anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, near Cape Henry, whe