On June 21, 1807, the British frigate Leopard fired on the USS Chesapeake near Norfolk, Virginia. The British killed three sailors and injured eighteen. The British then boarded the Chesapeake impressing three Americans. Citizens throughout the United States expressed outrage.
In response, Jefferson urged Congress to pass the Embargo Act of 1807. It prevented American ships from sailing to foreign ports, and engaging in trade with Britain or France. Its purpose was to stop impressment and force Britain to respect America’s neutrality. While the Embargo addressed the dangers of their merchant marine, New Englanders detested it. It affirmed their suspicions. Jefferson blatantly ignored New England’s economic interests. His crippling policy devastated the profitable trade merchants risked so much to achieve. The act was impossible to enforce. New Englanders refused to comply, smuggling their goods to Canada.
Responding to New England’s resistance to the Embargo, Congress passed an ‘Enforcement Act’ in 1809. Without a warrant Federal officials confiscated goods bound for foreign ports. New Englanders considered enforcement unjust and severe.
As New England suffered through its fourteenth month of embargo, even the Democratic-Republicans in New England revolted. Howls of protest came from town meetings. New Englanders looked to their state governments for redress. Federalists controlled the state legislatures. They used Jefferson’s and Madison’s reasoning behind the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions to defy the Embargo.
In 1798, Jefferson devised a political argument called the Kentucky Resolution. His argument concerned the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, passed when John Adams was president. The Acts targeted Irish and French immigrants and newspaper editors. Immigrants suspected of fomenting a French-style revolution were aliens and newspaper editors critical of the Adams administration were seditious. Jefferson argued state legislatures could declare Congressional acts unconstitutional if the Constitution did not authorize them. Madison wrote a similar document for Virginia’s legislature in 1799. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions set forth arguments for states’ rights and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
In February 1809, angry New Englanders proposed a convention to nullify the Embargo. They openly discussed secession.[1]
It has been several weeks since secession petitions were sent to the “We the People” White House site. President Obama has not responded to them, although understandably, he responded to a number of petitions on guns and gun control. Can he be excused from not responding to the secession petitions because the fiscal cliff looms? Will he ignore the secession petitions, as Jefferson ignored angry New Englanders?
Next: How Jefferson and Madison Reacted
Look for it Monday, January 31.
[1] Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, Vol. 1, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 396.
