et not all; for illicit employment, for evading
the Acts, enough remained to disconcert the Government, alike by their
numbers and the boldness of their movements.

"This Embargo law," wrote Jefferson to Gallatin, August 11, 1808, "is
certainly the most embarrassing we ever had to execute. I did not
expect a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud, and open
opposition by force, could have grown up within the United
States."[242] Apostle of pure democracy as he was, he had forgotten to
reckon with the people, and had mistaken the convictions of himself and
a coterie for national sentiment. From all parts of the country men
began silently and covertly to undermine the working of the system.
Passamaquoddy Bay on the borders of New Brunswick, and St. Mary's on
the confines of Florida, remote from ordinary commerce, became
suddenly crowded with vessels.[243] Coasters, not from recalcitrant New
England only, but from the Chesapeake and Southern waters, found it
impossible to reach their ports of destination. Furious gales of wind
drove them from their course; spars smitten with decay went overboard;
butts of planking started, causing dangerous leaks. Safety could be
found only by bearing up for some friendly foreign port, in Nova Scotia
or the West Indies, where cargoes of flour and fish had to be sold for
needed repairs, to enable the homeward voyage to be made. Not
infrequently the vessel's name had been washed off the stern by the
violence of the waves, and the captain could remember neither it nor
his own. The New York and Vermont frontiers became the scene of
widespread illegal trade, the shameful effects of which upon the
patriotism of the inhabitants were conspicuous in the following war. A
gentleman returning from Canada in January, 1809, reported that he had
counted seven hundred sleighs, going and returning between Montreal and
Vermont.[244] This on one line only. A letter received in New York
stated that, during the embargo year, 1808, thirty thousand barrels of
potash had been brought into Quebec.[245] "While our gunboats and
cutters are watching the harbors and sounds of the Atlantic," said a
senator from his place, "a strange inversion of business ensues, and by
a retrograde motion of all the interior machinery of the country,
potash and lumber are launched upon the lakes, and Ontario and
Champlain feel the bustle of illicit traffic.... Violators of the laws
are making fortunes, while the conscientious observ