and we refused to import certain articles of British manufacture after November 1, 1806. Napoleon had scored one point in his game with Jefferson. He had got the United States to take a step toward hostilities with England. As a measure of retaliation, it was, indeed, ridiculously weak-"a dose of chicken broth to be taken nine months hence," as John Randolph termed it. But weak as it was, it was a measure of retaliation. The same

skill and management, Napoleon might hope, would lead the United States to employ strong measures in the course of time.

QUESTIONS.

1. How would you interpret Jefferson's majority in 1804? 2. What commands did Napoleon give to Jefferson, and why did Jefferson obey them?

3. Give the substance of the dispatch which the government received from Armstrong in the latter part of 1805.

4. What influence did it exert upon the policy of the United States toward England and why?

5. What means did Jefferson employ to bring his Spanish policy before Congress?

6. Explain the paragraph quoted from the speech made by Randolph early in 1805.

7. April 12, 1807, Joseph H. Nicholson, a prominent Maryland Republican, wrote a letter to Monroe containing the following passage: "There is a portion who yet retain the feelings of 1798, and whom I denominate the old Republican party. It is said they have not his (Jefferson's) confidence, and I lament it. You must have perceived from the public prints that the most active members in the House of Representatives are new * These are styled exclusively the President's friends." Who were the "Old Republicans?" Account for the fact that they no longer enjoyed the confidence of the President.

men.

8. Enumerate the passages quoted from Randolph's speech which seem to be in a special sense an exposition of the doctrines of "Old Republicanism."

9. What did Randolph mean by "There are no longer Pyrenees?" Also, "Your king and cure all?”

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BERLIN DECREE AND THE ATTACK ON THE

CHESAPEAKE.

[F refusing to buy certain articles of British pro

to

on

duce was likely to produce any effect on England, there were certainly strong reasons for

the Non-importation Act. The Rule of Impressment 1756 was but one of several out

prove

was an

rages inflicted by England in 1805, any one of which ought to have been intolerable. Since Pitt's return to power (1804), the practice of impressment had been enforced more vigorously than ever. Great Britain assumed that every seaman who could not that he was a native born American, English subject. 'In the words of Basil Hall, a young midshipman who served on the British frigate "Leander," in 1805, British officers impressed every American seaman "whom they had reason, or supposed or said they had reason to consider" a British subject, "or whose country they guessed from dialect or appearance." Sometimes they did not leave sailors enough on the American vessel to man her. Sometimes they impressed men whose dialect proved that they were not British born. An American dared not leave port without a certificate of citizenship describing his "eyes and

510

nose and mouth and chin, the color of his hair and complexion, and the marks and scars about his person-like the advertisement of a runaway slave."* John Quincy Adams heard a British lieutenant threaten to take a native of Charlestown, Massachusetts, from an American vessel because the lieutenant chose to think that the person of the sailor did not accurately correspond to the description contained in his certificate of citizenship.† For a number of years after 1804 these impressments averaged about one thousand a year.‡

*New England Federalism, 179.

That we may get a more vivid appreciation of the practical workings of impressment, I quote at length from the deposition of one Isaac Clark, a citizen of Massachusetts, sworn to before a justice of the peace. "I had a protection (a certificate of citizenship) from the customhouse in Salem, which I showed to Captain Elliott; he swore that I was an Englishman, tore my protection to pieces before my eyes, and ordered me to go to work. I told him I did not belong to his flag, and I would do no work under it. He then ordered my legs to be put in irons, and the next morning ordered the master-at-arms to take me on deck and give me two dozen lashes; after receiving them, he ordered him to keep me in irons, and give me one biscuit and one pint of water for twenty-four hours. After keeping me in this situation one week, I was brought on deck, and asked by Captain Elliott if I would go to my duty. On my refusing, he ordered me to strip, tied me up a second time, and gave me two dozen more, and kept me on the same allowance another week-then ordered me on deck again, asked if I would go to work. I still persisted that I was an American; and that he had no right to command my services, and I would do no work on board his ship. He told me he would punish me until I was willing to work; and gave me the third two dozen lashes. ordered a very heavy chain put round my neck, fastened to a ring-bolt in the deck and that no person except the master-at-arms should speak to me, or give me anything to eat or drink, but one biscuit, and one pint of water, for twenty-four hours until I would go to work. I was kept in this situation for nine weeks, when being exhausted by hunger and thirst, I was obliged to yield." The Olive Branch 209-210.

The larger part of the sailors impressed were British born. Gallatin calculated that American tonnage increased at the rate

British blockade

ports.

But this was far from completing the list of British outrages. Many of the harbors of the United States were blockaded by British of American frigates. Basil Hall, whose frigate, the "Leander," was one of the three which blockaded New York in 1805 and 1806, gave an account of their methods. "Every morning at daybreak," he said, "we set about arresting the progress of all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to the right and left to make every ship that was running in, heave to, or wait until we had leisure to send a boat on board 'to see,' in our lingo, 'what she was made of.' I have frequently known a dozen and sometimes a couple of dozen ships lying a league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and worse than all their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day before our search was completed." This search was made not merely for British (?) sailors but for any sort of evidence that might serve to justify the capture of the ship. To this end, private letters were opened without scruple, and on the flimsiest evidence, vessels were captured and sent to Halifax for trial, to be detained for months at great expense and with great injury to their cargoes, even when they were fortunate enough to escape confiscation. The brutal recklessness of these British frigates received a terrible illustration in 1806. April, 1806, the "Leanof about seventy thousand tons a year after 1803. Four thousand two hundred men were required to supply this yearly increase, of whom he estimated that twenty-five hundred were British. Many of these had deserted from the British service. Works I, 335.