xcitement since the battle of Lexington."[154] Immediately the most
exposed ports were strengthened, and the States were called upon to
organise and equip 100,000 militia ready to march. Among other things,
Jefferson ordered British cruisers to depart from American waters,
forbidding all aid and intercourse with them.

[Footnote 154: Jefferson to Colonel Taylor, August 1, 1807; _Works_,
v., 148.]

On the day of Governor Tompkins' inauguration the crippled
_Chesapeake_ sailed back into Norfolk; and before the New York
Legislature assembled in the following January, England had published
its Orders in Council, forbidding all neutral trade with France.
Napoleon had also promulgated his Milan Decree, forbidding all neutral
trade with England, and the Congress of the United States, with closed
doors, in obedience to the recommendation of the President, had
ordered an embargo forbidding all foreign-bound American vessels to
leave United States ports.

For several years American commerce, centring chiefly in New England
and New York, and occupying a neutral position toward European
belligerents, had enjoyed unparalleled prosperity. Reaching all parts
of the world, it had, indeed, largely engrossed the carrying trade,
especially of France and the European powers. As restraints increased,
the Yankee skippers became sly and cunning--risking capture, using
neutral flags, and finding other subterfuges for new restrictions. The
embargo would tie up the ships to rot, throw seamen out of employment,
destroy perishable commodities like breadstuffs, and paralyse trade.
From the moment of its passage, therefore, merchants and shipowners
resisted it, charging that Napoleon's Decree had provoked the British
Orders, and that if the former would recede, the latter would be
modified. It revived the old charge of Jefferson's enmity to commerce.
In the excitement, DeWitt Clinton opposed it, and Cheetham, with his
bitter, irritating pen, sustained him. He thought American commerce
might be left to solve the difficulty for itself, by allowing
merchants to arm their vessels or otherwise encounter the risks and
perils at their own discretion, rather than be compelled to abandon
the highway of nations to their British rivals, whose sole purpose, he
maintained, was to drive us from the ocean and capture French supplies
being transported in French vessels.

But the Republicans in Congress stood firmly by the embargo, holding
that if George Cannin