he United
States were unaccustomed. Already a justice of a circuit court had
decided in opposition to instructions issued by the President himself.
The new legislation was followed by an explosion of popular wrath and
street demonstrations. These were most marked in the Eastern states,
where the opposition party and the shipping interest were strongest.
Feeling was the more bitter, because the revolt of Spain, and the
deliverance of Portugal, had exempted those nations and their
extensive colonies from the operation of the British Orders in
Council, had paralyzed in many of their ports the edicts of Napoleon,
and so had extended widely the field safe for neutral commerce. It was
evident also that, while the peninsula everywhere was the scene of
war, it could not feed itself; nor could supplies for the population,
or for the British armies there, come from England, often narrowly
pressed herself for grain. Cadiz was open on August 26; all neutrals
admitted, and the British blockade raised. Through that portal and
Lisbon might flow a golden tide for American farmers and shipmen. The
town meetings of New England again displayed the power for prompt
political agitation which so impressed the imagination of Jefferson.
The Governor of Connecticut refused, on constitutional grounds, to
comply with the President's request to detail officers of militia, to
whom collectors could apply when needing assistance to enforce the
laws. The attitude of the Eastern people generally was that of mutiny;
and it became evident that it could only be repressed by violence, and
with danger to the Union.

Congress was not prepared to run this risk. On February 8, less than a
month after the Enforcement Act became law, its principal supporter in
the Senate[277] introduced a resolution for the partial repeal of the
Embargo Act. "This is not of my choice," he said, "nor is the step one
by which I could wish that my responsibility should be tested. It is
the offspring of conciliation, and of great concession on my part. On
one point we are agreed,--resistance to foreign aggressions. The
points of difficulty to be adjusted,--and compromised,--relate to the
extent of that resistance and the mode of its application. In my
judgment, if public sentiment could be brought to support them, wisdom
would dictate the combined measures of embargo, non-intercourse, and
war. Sir, when the love of peace degenerates into fear of war, it
becomes of all passions the