It is March 10th. Welcome to Episode 69 of History in a Year. Today, Thomas Jefferson tries to punish the world and accidentally bankrupts the United States. Following the bloody Chesapeake-Leopard affair, the American public is screaming for war against Great Britain. But Jefferson knows the tiny US Navy cannot survive a fight with the British Empire. Instead, he launches an unprecedented experiment in “peaceable coercion.” We explore the catastrophic failure of the Embargo Act of 1807, the economic devastation of New England, the rise of desperate smugglers, and how the champion of limited government ended up using federal troops against his own citizens.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 10th. Welcome to Episode 69. Yesterday, we watched the British warship HMS Leopard open fire on the American frigate USS Chesapeake, killing three sailors and kidnapping four others right off the coast of Virginia.
LEAH:
The year is 1807, and the United States is absolutely furious. The public is holding massive rallies, burning King George in effigy, and demanding that President Thomas Jefferson declare war on Great Britain.
STEPHEN:
But Thomas Jefferson is a pragmatist. He looks at the map, he looks at the budget, and he looks at the military.
LEAH:
The United States Navy has roughly a dozen frigates. The British Royal Navy has over 600 warships. If America declares war, the British will simply sail up and down the East Coast, burn the ports, and destroy the country.
STEPHEN:
But Jefferson knows he has to do something. He cannot let a foreign empire slaughter American sailors and steal them off American ships without a massive response.
LEAH:
So, he comes up with an alternative to military war. He calls it “peaceable coercion.”
STEPHEN:
Jefferson believed that the British and the French—who were locked in the apocalyptic Napoleonic Wars—desperately needed American food and raw materials to survive. He thought American wheat, cotton, and timber were essential to the European war machine.
LEAH:
His logic was simple: If we stop selling them our stuff, their economies will collapse, their people will starve, and they will be forced to beg us to trade again. And when they beg, we will force them to respect American neutrality and stop kidnapping our sailors.
STEPHEN:
It was a brilliant theory. And in December 1807, he pushed the Embargo Act through Congress.
LEAH:
The Embargo Act was breathtaking in its scope. It didn’t just ban trade with Britain and France. It banned all American ships from sailing to any foreign port anywhere in the world.
STEPHEN:
It was a complete, 100% shutdown of the American export economy. Jefferson essentially slammed the door to the outside world and locked it.
LEAH:
The problem was… the theory was completely wrong.
STEPHEN:
It turned out that Great Britain and France didn’t actually need American goods that badly. The British just started buying their cotton and wheat from South America and their own colonies. The French, who controlled most of the European continent, barely even noticed the embargo.
LEAH:
The people who did notice were the Americans. The Embargo Act was an absolute, unmitigated economic disaster for the United States.
STEPHEN:
In a single year, American exports plummeted from $108 million down to just $22 million. The economy didn’t just shrink; it fell off a cliff.
LEAH:
The region that was hit the hardest was New England. The entire economy of states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island was built on shipping, shipbuilding, and maritime trade.
STEPHEN:
Suddenly, hundreds of massive merchant ships were just sitting in Boston Harbor, rotting at the docks. Thirty thousand sailors lost their jobs overnight. Warehouses were empty. Merchants went completely bankrupt.
LEAH:
The political backlash was instantaneous and furious. The Federalist Party, which had been basically dead since the Election of 1800, suddenly roared back to life. They accused Jefferson of being a tyrant who was trying to destroy the North to help his Southern farmer friends.
STEPHEN:
Newspapers published furious political cartoons. The most famous one featured a giant snapping turtle biting a merchant who is trying to load a barrel onto a ship. The turtle was named “Ograbme”—which is simply the word “Embargo” spelled backwards.
LEAH:
But Americans are incredibly resourceful. When the government makes something illegal, people just find a way to do it illegally.
STEPHEN:
Smuggling exploded. It became the national pastime of New England.
LEAH:
Merchants couldn’t sail across the Atlantic, so they started sailing tiny boats up the coastline under the cover of darkness, slipping across the border into British Canada to sell their goods.
STEPHEN:
Massive wagon trains full of American wheat and lumber started driving north through the deep woods of New York and Vermont, crossing the Canadian border to trade with the British.
LEAH:
And this is where Thomas Jefferson’s presidency takes a truly dark, ironic turn.
STEPHEN:
Remember, Thomas Jefferson is the ultimate champion of limited government. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. He fought Alexander Hamilton for a decade over the dangers of a powerful, overreaching federal government.
LEAH:
But to enforce his Embargo Act, Thomas Jefferson had to become the exact thing he hated.
STEPHEN:
When local juries in New England refused to convict the smugglers, Jefferson declared the region to be in a state of insurrection.
LEAH:
He deployed the United States military—federal troops and the Navy—to patrol the American coastline and the Canadian border. He authorized federal agents to seize American cargo without a warrant if they even suspected it was going to be smuggled.
STEPHEN:
The architect of American liberty was using armed soldiers to stop American citizens from engaging in free trade. It was a massive expansion of federal power, and it completely shattered Jefferson’s second term.
LEAH:
The Embargo Act stayed in place for 15 agonizing months. It did absolutely zero damage to Great Britain or France, and it nearly destroyed the United States from the inside out.
STEPHEN:
By early 1809, Jefferson was a broken, exhausted man. His popularity had tanked. He couldn’t wait to leave the presidency and go back to his farm at Monticello.
LEAH:
On March 1, 1809, just three days before his presidency ended, Jefferson finally caved. He signed the Non-Intercourse Act, which officially repealed the disastrous Embargo. It allowed Americans to trade with the rest of the world again—except for Britain and France.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson packed his bags and left Washington D.C., leaving the absolute mess he had created for his successor.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 70. James Madison Takes Office. The “Father of the Constitution” steps into the presidency, inheriting a fractured nation and a boiling foreign policy crisis. We explore the brilliant mind, the tiny stature, and the magnificent wife of the fourth President of the United States as the country spirals closer and closer to war.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.