Debates on American Neutrality

The Chesapeake and the Leopard

Washington Federalist, 3 July 1807

We have never, on any occasion, witnessed the spirit of the people excited to so great a degree of indignation, or such a thirst for revenge, as on hearing of the late unexampled outrage on the Chesapeake. All parties, ranks, and professions were unanimous in their detestation of the dastardly deed, and all cried aloud for vengeance. The accounts which we receive from every quarter tend to show that these sentiments universally prevail. The Administration may implicitly rely on the cordial support of every American citizen, in whatever manly and dignified steps they may take, to resent the insult and obtain reparation for the injury.

The Responsibility For The British Outrage

Washington National Intelligencer, 10 July 1807

We are pleased to observe the circumspection of the merchants. If they consult their own interests, or that of the country, they will for a time repress their spirit of adventure, and run as few risks as possible, until an explicit answer shall be given by the British Ministry. As yet it remains a point undetermined whether the late barbarous outrages have emanated directly from the British Cabinet, or are the acts exclusively of subordinate commanders. If they are directly authorized by the Cabinet, then we may calculate upon a scene of violence co-extensive with British power, and for another display of that perfidy so characteristic of its government. Every American vessel on the ocean will be seized and sent into some British port for adjudication, and the courts will take special care, if they do not forthwith proceed to condemnation, at any rate to keep the cases sub judice. Indeed, if the recent outages do not emanate from the government, it is difficult to say whether they will not, notwithstanding, seize what they may consider a favorable opportunity to wreak their vengeance on this country. We know the hostility of the greater part of those who compose the British administration to our principles, and they may be Quixotic enough to imagine themselves able to crush these principles, or seriously arrest our commercial growth. They may, therefore, under some hollow pretext, refuse that satisfaction which we demand, the result of which will be war. There is indeed no small color of truth in the suppostion that this outrage has flowed from the change in the British Ministry, connected with the fate the treaty has received from our government, and that without meaning or expecting war, they have virtually authorized aggressions on us, which they fancied we would tamely submit to; and that however astonished they may be with the manifestation they will soon receive of the temper of the nation, their pride may prevent them from retracting.

Everything is, and must for some time remain, uncertain. In the meantime it becomes our duty to husband all our srength. But little injury can accrue to the merchant from a suspension of his export business for a few months, compared with the incalculable evils that might befall him from its active prosecution. He is, therefore, under a double obligation to pursue this course, arising not only from a regard to his own interest, but likewise from a love of his country. In the day of danger it will want all its resources, and all its seamen. Were Congress in session, it is extremely probable that their first step would be the imposition of an embargo. What they would do, were they sitting, it is the interest and duty of the merchant to do himself. We have no doubt that the intelligence of this order of men may on this occasion, as it has on all former occasions, be relied on.

The Chesapeake and the Leopard

New York Eveing Post, 24 July 1807

We say and we once more repeat it, that the Chesapeake, being a national ship, was not liable to be searched for any purpose, nor to have any of her crew taken from her. This is ground that ought to be maintained at every hazard. But on the other hand, candor demands the concession, that it was in every way improper in the American commodore to enlist four deserters from the British man of war, knowing them to be such; and whether they were English subjects, or had voluntarily enlisted and received their bounty (this being a conduct long since silently permitted by us), is immaterial. And we say further that if the Administration, on being applied to by the English counsul, refused to accommodate the affair, but insisted on protecting the men by placing them under the national flag, the Administration thereby became criminal, and are answerable to the people for their culpable conduct.

Such are the sentiments we hold on this subject: they have been often revised, and are believed to be correct.

The result is that our own Administration are considered as having been to blame; but not so that their misconduct justified the resort to force on the part of the English. On this point, we are ready to say that we consider the national sovereignty has been attacked, the national honor tarnished, and that ample reparations and satisfaction must be given or that war ought to be resorted to by force of arms.

The Embargo and the Farmer's Story

Columbia Centinel, 25 May 1808

A zealous Boston Democrat was lately in the country extolling the embargo to a plain farmer, as a wise as well as a strong measure, and urging the farmer to express his opinion upon it. The farmer, however, modestly declined, saying that he lived in the bush where he had not the means of information on which to ground an opinion on political measures; but if Boston folks, who knew more, said it was right, he supposed it was so; but, says he, I will tell you a story. Our minister one day sent his boy to the pasture after a horse. He was gone so long that the parson was afraid the horse had kicked his brains out; he went therefore with anxiety to look after him. In the field he found the boy standing still with his eyes steadily fixed upon the ground. His master inquired with severity what he was doing there. Why, sir, said he, I saw a woodchuck run into this hole, and so I thought I would stand and watch for him until he was starved out; but I declare I am almost starved to death myself.

Hateful Measures for Enforcing the Embargo

Boston Gazette, 2 February 1809

Within a few days past Colonel Boyd, commanding at the Castle, received orders from the Secretary of War to interdict all vessels from passing Fort Independence; in consequence of this edict the acting Collector has been placed under the necessity of withholding clearances to every description of vessels.

This aggravated repression was not generally known until yesterday, when the vessels in the harbor bound their colors in black, and hoisted them half-mast. The circumstance has created some considerable agitation in the public mind, but to the honor of the town has been yet unattended with any serious consequences.

It is to be presumed that this new edict will at least continue to be enforced until Secretary Dearborn is at leisure to come on, to mark out his favorites, and take upon himself the office, so long reserved for him, of the Customs.

The spirit of our citizens is rising and may burst into a flame. Everything should therefore be done to calm them till the Legislature has had time to mature its plans of redress. It is feared that the caution necessary in such an assembly may protract our relief too long; but we must wait patiently the aid of our Constitutional Guardians, rather than stain the character of this metropolis by mobs and riots. If our government cannot do anything now that shall afford full and complete relief, they may at least do enough to calm the public mind and lead the citizens to wait for events, which must place the means for a radical cure completely in our hands.

The spirit of New England is slow in rising; but when once inflamed by oppression, it will never be repressed by anything short of complete justice.

The Embargo Experiment Ended

Baltimore Federal Republican, March 1809

The embargo now ceases to be in force, and every merchant who can give a bond with good sureties to double the amount of vessel and cargo, is entitled to clear out for any port except in France or England or the dependency of either of them. After depriving government of its means of support for sixteen months, and preventing the people of the United States from pursuing a lawful and profitable commerce, and reducing the whole country to a state of wretchedness and poverty, our infatuated rulers, blinded by a corrupt predilection for France, have been forced to acknowledge their fatal error, and so far to retrace their steps. To the patriotism of the New England States is due the praise of our salvation. By their courage and virtue have we been saved from entanglements in a fatal alliance with France. The whole system of fraud and corruption has been exposed to the people, and those very men who were the first to cast off the yoke of England, have lived to save their country from falling under the command of a more cruel tyrant. The patriot who had the courage to encounter the fury of the political storm, who stepped forth in the hour of danger to give the first alarm to his country, we trust will one day be rewarded with the highest honors in the gift of a grateful people.

French Outrages Against Our Ships and Sailors

New York Evening Post, July 1809

Fellow Citizens, for more than two years has your flag been struck on the ocean whenever it has been met with by the flag of France; your vessels have been scornfully burnt or scuttled in the ocean; your property has been seized or confiscated; your sailors robbed and manacled, or forced by cruelties to serve against their own country; the worthless part of them suborned by a public decree to commit perjury, and on their evidence, though charging no crime, the wretched remainder of the crew condemned as prisoners of war, landed as such and marched without shoes to their feet or clothing to their backs in the most inclement weather some hundreds of miles into the interior of France; lashed along the highway like slaves, treated with every possible indignity, and then immured in the infernal dungeons of Arras or Verdun. There, deprived of every comfort and of all intercourse with the rest of the world, there, fellow citizens, have they been lying, some for months and some for years! There they now lie, wasting away the best vigor of their days, counting the hours of their captivity as they turn in vain their imploring eyes towards their own government, and etching down another and another week of grief and despondence. Nineteen cents a day allowed them for subsistence and clothing and medicine! Allow them seven a day, or $25 a year for clothing, and you leave them four cents to purchase each meal. Think of this, ye who live in luxury here, and read their story with more indifference than you listen to the fictitious sorrows of a Robinson Crusoe; think of this, and let it at length engage your attention, and induce you to demand of your government to interfere in earnest.

But after all, what is to be expected? If any one of these wretched men, more fortunate than his fellow sufferers, escapes and brings the tale of their situation, and makes it known to his countrymen, a set of inhuman wretches here, more cruel than the French themselves, turn their wrongs into derision, or exert their miserable faculties in cavillings and criticisms to shew that all these statements are fabrications, because they have not been drawn up by some special pleader. The barbarous impudence of some editors pronounces them forgeries, and every fellow who can set a type repeats the infamous calumny, till the public voice that had begun to raise itself in their favor is stilled, and sympathy extinguished.

New York Evening Post, 1 July 1809

The proceedings of the present Congress, the debates, the votes and the acts, are calculated to excite nothing but surprise, indignation or ridicule. On the question of foreign relations, I do really think the French party has been more fairly unmasked than on any former occasion. Nobody can possibly forget that at the last session, every democrat in the house was loud and boisterous in his declarations of impartiality between France and Great Britain: they would hold them both in the same estimation, both they said had injured; neither had atoned nor offered satisfaction; both therefore should be equally excluded from our hospitality, until such satisfaction was attained. Since that time Great Britain, much to their surprise and vexation, has offered such satisfaction, and it has been accepted by the president; France has offered nothing; her wrongs and her insults remain full blown. And yet the Jefferson party, in the very teeth of all their professions, yet sounding in our ears, refuse to restore intercourse with Great Britain, unless it is also restored with France. What language can convey the indignant emotions that every American must experience at this bare faced conduct? I am lost in amazement. How long will the people remain stone blind to the conduct of such rulers, and to the consequences which will result from it?

Aurora General Advertiser, 31 July 1809

The prints which, by their subserviency to the baleful oppression of Great Britain, have contributed so much to the disgrace of this nation, and encouraged, by their corruption, the insolence of the enemy, are now seeking to make a sett off by rumors from France, which, like their usual fabrications, are too clumsy and preposterous to merit regard.

It is the common practice with the English government, and with its emissaries and adherents every where, to endeavor to mitigate her injustice, by drawing comparisons with the injustice of France. To the wrongs of France we are as much opposed as to those of England; but it will not answer, to say that, because France does us an injury, that, therefore, England has a right to accumulate wrongs upon us. If the argument is good for any thing, it must cut both ways; and then if it be admitted, the incessant insolence, aggression, insult, and outrage of England, furnishes precedents which, if France were to follow, might, with equal propriety, be used by France to mitigate or palliate her injustice.

...Whenever the outrages of England are complained of, the cry of the British faction is, that there is "French influence."

If the laws of nations are asserted and maintained - it is said to arise from "French influence."

If government endeavors to preserve its peace by self-denial - it is "French influence."

If we complain of the infringement of our territory, or the impressment of our seamen - it is said to be "French influence."...

It is time to meet this delusion - the measure of British wrongs is now too full for palliation. The atrocious character of the measures of that government, cannot be mitigated; upon a comparison with the conduct of France to the United States, the contrast presents on one side a map of murderous and pestilential deformity; on the other we see the petulance, mixed with the compassion, of a nation desirous of being generous to us, and conscious that no cause of enmity can naturally exist between us.

The crisis comes upon us now, when we must look to our own security, and the policy which is best adapted to ensure our rights and our prosperity.

France has fought our battles - had Britain triumphed, we should have been enslaved.

We can have no natural sympathies for a government which has tyrannised over us in every shape - which has murdered, torn from their homes, and plundered our citizens, insulted our flag, our territory, and our independence - and trampled upon the laws of civilized nations.

...We want no alliance - we look for none - we look for peace - we have a right to insist on free commerce and peace; and neither of the belligerents have a right to invade the one or the other.

In our policy we must detest the nation that insults or injures us. Our policy in regard to Europe has not been naturally wise.

We must stand upon that ground which asserts the rights of property alike, on the earth and the seas. Which assures neutral commerce, and which gives the high road of the ocean, as God has given it to man free, and without any other bounds to it than the creator has placed.

We have no need to league with the belligerents, we have only to defend ourselves from oppression.