arded without delay.

It is in this stage of the proceedings, which he probably regulated from
the first, that I shall introduce Mr. Tazewell to your notice. No
community was ever placed in a more delicate dilemma. The stoppage of
our commerce would produce great inconvenience, and there was no force
which the federal government could command at all competent to raise the
embargo; and at any moment blood might be shed. The people, meantime,
were in a tempest of rage. I have heard, from men who saw those times,
that, if the British commodore had put his threat in execution--if, in
so doing, as would have been inevitable, he had taken another human
life, or shed another drop of American blood, not only would war have
followed, but something worse than war, which, even at this distance of
time, we tremble to contemplate. The blood of innocent Englishmen would
have been shed everywhere as a propitiation to the manes of our murdered
countrymen. Under these circumstances Tazewell dictated the celebrated
letter of the mayor of Norfolk, which was admired over the whole
country, not only for its spirit, but for the admirable tact with which
it put the British commodore in the wrong. That letter, which was
written on the Fourth of July, begins with this paragraph:

"Sir, I have received your menacing letter of yesterday. The day on
which this answer is written ought of itself to prove to the subjects of
your sovereign that the American people are not to be intimidated by
menace; or induced to adopt any measures except by a sense of their
perfect propriety. Seduced by the false show of security, they may be
sometimes surprised and slaughtered, while unprepared to resist a
supposed friend. That delusive security is now passed forever. The late
occurrence has taught us to confide our safety no longer to anything
than to our own force. We do not seek hostility, nor shall we avoid it.
We are prepared for the worst you may attempt, and will do whatever
shall be judged proper to repel force, whensoever your efforts shall
render any act of ours necessary. Thus much for the threats in your
letter."

Of this letter Tazewell was appointed to be the bearer, and, attended by
a friend whose son is now a leading member of our bar,[7] delivered it
to Commodore Douglas on board the Bellona frigate in the presence of the
captains of the fleet. An account of the scene is fortunately preserved
by his own pen in a letter to the Mayor; and it is pla