Embargo Is An Act Of War

So, what is it when the embargo is imposed by your own Government? Ponder that while you search for a frozen Turkey this November.

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At Jefferson’s request the two houses of Congress considered and passed the Embargo Act quickly in December 1807. All U.S. ports were closed to export shipping in either U.S. or foreign vessels, and restrictions were placed on imports from Great Britain. The act was a hardship on U.S. farmers as well as on New England and New York mercantile and maritime interests, especially after being buttressed by harsh enforcement measures adopted in 1808. Its effects in Europe were not what Jefferson had hoped. French and British dealers in U.S. cotton, for example, were able to raise prices at will while the stock already on hand lasted; the embargo would have had to endure until these inventories were exhausted. Napoleon is said to have justified seizure of U.S. merchant ships on the grounds that he was assisting Jefferson in enforcing the act. The Federalist leader Timothy Pickering even alleged that Napoleon himself had inspired the embargo.

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Confronted by bitter and articulate opposition, Jefferson on March 1, 1809 (two days before the end of his second term), signed the Non-Intercourse Act, permitting U.S. trade with countries other than France and Great Britain. U.S. trade restrictions were rolled back entirely by Macon’s Bill No. 2 (1810), which authorized the president, upon normalization of commercial relations with either England or France, to reinstate nonintercourse against the other. Seizing the opportunity, Napoleon announced that his decrees were repealed, insofar as they affected the United States. After waiting several months for a similar response from England, Madison—who had succeeded Jefferson as president—prohibited trade with Great Britain in February 1811. That action helped set the stage for the War of 1812.

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