Henry Adams and the Making of America by Garry Wills

Author:Garry Wills [Wills, Garry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

In other words: "Each government had tried to overthrow the other; but that of England was for the moment the more successful" (1154).

At this point Madison renewed an offer to end the Embargo, so far as it affected England, if the Orders in Council were lifted. This overture reached England just as news arrived of Wellesley's victory over Napoleon's troops in Portugal. Canning, the British foreign minister, flung Madison's offer back in his face. He said this was no time to give credit to a country that "did not come in aid of the [British] blockade of the European continent." With hypocritical regret, Canning added that he would have liked to see the Embargo end, not for any advantage to England, but to facilitate "its removal as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people" (1157–58). Jefferson had missed the chance to join the crusade, and now the victors were jeering him. As Jefferson told the British minister, referring to this letter, it "was written in the high ropes [disdainfully, OED] and would be stinging to every American breast" (1169).

Jefferson had tried to get rid of the Embargo on the only terms that seemed to save some honor, and he had been unable to. What course was left him? He was stranded outside the world coalition fighting for Spanish freedom. Napoleon was not listening to his overtures for Florida. Discontent with the Embargo had spread among Republicans as well as Federalists. The second session of the Tenth Congress would begin in November. What action could he recommend to it?

Jefferson found what other presidents have, that it is easier to get into a rash commitment than out of it. Rufus King made a comment that would be repeated when America tried to disentangle itself from Vietnam: "The longer it [the Embargo] is continued, the deeper our disgrace when it is raised" (1167). John Marshall wrote privately: "Nothing can be more completely demonstrated than the inefficacy of the Embargo; yet the demonstration seems to be of no avail" (1166). These views were perhaps expectable from Federalists. But Jefferson's friends were gently trying to break the news to him as well. Wilson Cary Nicholas, Jefferson's neighbor at Monticello whom the president had urged to re-enter the House, tried to warn him. Nicholas knew what he was writing about, since he had been a collector of customs in Norfolk during the interim between his House terms. He wrote:

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