Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

It remains for us, therefore, to consider what submission is, and what the pledge not to submit implies.

One man submits to the order, decree, or edict of another, when he does that thing which such order, decree, or edict commands, or when he omits to do that thing which such order, decree, or edict [359] prohibits. This, then, is submission. It is to do as we are bidden. It is to take the will of another as a measure of our rights. It is to yield to his power, to go where he directs, or to refrain from going where he forbids us.

If this be submission, then the pledge not to submit implies the reverse of all this. It is a solemn declaration that we will not do that thing which such order, decree, or edict commands, or that we will do what it prohibits. This, then, is freedom. This is honor. This is independence. It consists in taking the nature of things, and not the will of another, as the measure of our rights. What God and nature offer us we will enjoy in despite of the commands, regardless of the menaces of iniquitous power.

Let us apply these correct and undeniable principles to the edicts of Great Britain and France, and the consequent abandonment of the ocean by the American government. The decrees of France prohibit us trading with Great Britain. The orders of Great Britain prohibit us from trading with France. And what do we do? Why, in direct subserviency to the edicts of each, we prohibit our citizens from trading with either. We do more. As if unqualified submission was not humiliating enough, we descend to an act of supererogation in servility; we abandon trade altogether; we not only refrain from that particular trade which their respective edicts prescribe, but, lest the ingenuity of our merchants should enable them to evade their operation, to make submission doubly sure, the American government virtually re-enact the edicts of the belligerents, and abandon all the trade which, notwithstanding the practical effects of their edicts, remains to us. The same conclusion will result if we consider our embargo in relation to the objects of this belligerent policy. France, by her edicts, would compress Great Britain by destroying her commerce and cutting off her supplies. All the continent of Europe, in the hand of Bonaparte, is made subservient to this policy. This embargo law of the United States, in its operation, is a union with the continental coalition against British commerce at the very moment most auspicious to its success. Can anything be in more direct subserviency to the views of the French Emperor? If we consider the orders of Great Britain, the result will be the same. I proceed at present on the supposition of a perfect impartiality in our administration towards both belligerents, so far as relates to the embargo law. Great Britain has two objects in issuing her orders. First, to excite discontent in the people on the Continent, by depriving them of their accustomed colonial supplies. Second, to secure to herself that commerce of which she deprived neutrals. Our embargo co-operates with the British view in both respects. By our dereliction of the ocean, the Continent is much more deprived of the advantages of commerce than it would be possible for the British navy to effect, and by removing our competition all the commerce of the Continent which can be forced is wholly left to be reaped by Great Britain. The language of each sovereign is in direct conformity with these ideas. Napoleon tells the American minister, virtually, that we are very good Americans; that although he will not allow the property he has in his hands to escape him, nor desist from burning and capturing our vessels on every occasion, yet that he is, thus far, satisfied with our co-operation. And what is the language of George III., when our minister presents to his consideration the embargo laws? Is it Le roy s'avisera? “The King will reflect upon them.” No, it is the pure language of royal approbation, “Le roy Le veut”— “The King wills it.” Were you colonies, he could expect no more. His subjects will as inevitably get that commerce which you abandon as the water will certainly run into the only channel which remains after all the others are obstructed. In whatever point of view you consider these embargo laws in relation to those edicts and decrees, we shall find them co-operating with each belligerent in its policy. In this way, I grant, our conduct may be partial. But what has become of our American rights to navigate the ocean? They are abandoned in strict conformity to the decrees of both belligerents. This resolution declares that we will no longer submit to such degrading humiliation. Little as I relish it, I will take it as the harbinger of [360] a new day—the pledge of a new system of measures.

Perhaps, here, in strictness, I ought to close my observations. But the report of the committee, contrary to what I deem the principle of the resolution, unquestionably recommends the continuance of the embargo laws. And such is the state of the nation, and in particular that portion of it which, in part, I represent, under their oppression, that I cannot rerain submitting some consideration on that subject.

When I enter on the subject of the embargo, I am struck with wonder at the very threshold. I know not with what words to express my astonishment. At the time I departed from Massachusetts, if there was an impression which I thought universal, it was that at the commencement of this session an end would be put to this measure. The opinion was not so much that it would be determinated, as that it was then at an end. Sir, the prevailing sentiment, according to my apprehension, was stronger than this—even that the pressure was so great that it could not possibly be longer endured; that it would soon be absolutely insupportable. And this opinion, as I then had reason to believe, was not conlined to any one class, or description, or party—even those who were friends of the existing administration, and unwilling to abandon it, were yet satisfied that a sufficient trial had been given to this measure. With these impressions, I arrive in this city. I hear the incantation of the great enchanter. I feel his spell. I see the legislative machinery begin to move. The scene opens, and I am commanded to forget all my recollections, to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, to contradict what I have seen, and heard, and felt. I hear that all this discontent was merely party clamor—electioneering artifice; that the people of New England are able and willing to endure this embargo for an indefinite, unlimited period; some say for six months, some a year, some two years. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Macon) told us that he preferred three years of embargo to a war. And the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Clopton) said expressly, that he hoped we should never allow our vessels to go upon the ocean again, until the orders and decrees of the belligerents were rescinded. In plain English, until France and Great Britain should, in their great condescension, permit. Good Heavens! Mr. Chairman, are men mad? Is this House touched with that insanity which is the never-failing precursor of the intention of Heaven to destroy? The people of New England, after eleven months deprivation of the ocean, to be commanded still longer to abandon it, for an undefined period, to hold their inalienable rights at the tenure of the will of Great Britain or of Bonaparte! A people commercial in all respects, in all their relations, in all their hopes, in all their recollections of the past, in all their prospects of the future —a people, whose first love was the ocean, the choice of their childhood, the approbation of their manly years, the most precious inheritance of their fathers—in the midst of their success, in the movement of the most exquisite perception of commercial prosperity, to be commanded to abandon it, not for a time limited, but for a time unlimited—not until they can be prepared to defend themselves there (for that is not pretended), but until their rivals recede from it—not until their necessities require, but until foreign nations permit! I am lost in astonishment, Mr. Chairman. I have not words to express the matchless absurdity of this attempt. I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong destruction which a blind perseverance in such a system must bring upon this nation. . . .

Mr. Chairman, other gentlemen must take their responsibilities—I shall take mine. This embargo must be repealed. You cannot enforce it for any important period of time longer. When I speak of your inability to enforce this law, let not gentlemen misunderstand me. I mean not to intimate insurrections or open defiance of them. Although it is impossible to foresee in what acts that “oppression,” will finally terminate, which, we are told, “make wise men mad,” I speak of an inability resulting from very different causes.

The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Macon) exclaimed the other day, in a strain of patriotic ardor, “What! shall not our laws be executed? Shall their [361] authority be defied? I am for enforcing them at every hazard.” I honor that gentleman's zeal; and I mean no deviation from that true respect I entertain for him, when I tell him that in this instance “his zeal is not according to knowledge.”

I ask this House, is there no control to its authority? Is there no limit to the power of this national legislature? I hope I shall offend no man when I intimate that two limits exist—nature and the Constitution. Should this House undertake to declare that this atmosphere should no longer surround us, that water should cease to flow, that gravity should not hereafter operate, that the needle should not vibrate to the pole, I do suppose, Mr. Chairman,—Sir, I mean no disrespect to the authority of this House, I know the high notions some gentlemen entertain on this subject—I do suppose—sir, I hope I shall not offend—I think I may venture to affirm, that, such a law to the contrary notwithstanding, the air would continue to circulate, the Mississippi, the Hudson, and the Potomac would hurl their floods to the ocean, heavy bodies continue to descend, and the mysterious magnet hold on its course to its celestial cynosure.

Just as utterly absurd and contrary to nature is it to attempt to prohibit the people of New England, for any considerable length of time, from the ocean. Commerce is not only associated with all the feelings, the habits, the interests, and relations of that people, but the nature of our soil and of our coast, the state of our population and its mode of distribution over our territory, render it indispensable. We have 500 miles of sea-coast, all furnished with harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, basins—with every variety of invitation of the sea—with every species of facility to violate such laws as these. Our people are not scattered over an immense surface; at a solemn distance from each other, in lordly retirement, in the midst of extended plantations and intervening wastes. They are collected on the margin of the ocean, by the sides of the rivers, at the heads of bays, looking into the water or on the surface of it for the incitement and the reward of their industry. Among a people thus situated, thus educated, thus numerous, laws prohibiting them from the exercise of their natural rights will have a binding effect not one moment longer than the public sentiment supports them. . . .

I ask in what page of the Constitution you find the power of laying an embargo? Directly given it is nowhere. You have it, then, by construction, or by precedent. By construction of the power to regulate. I lay out of the question the commonplace argument, that regulation cannot mean annihilation, and that what is annihilated cannot be regulated. I ask this question— Can a power be ever obtained by construction which had never been exercised at the time of the authority given—the like of which had not only never been seen, but the idea of which had never entered into human imagination, I will not say in this country, but in the world? Yet such is this power, which by construction you assume to exercise. Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse like this in a commercial nation. Did the people of the United States invest this House with a power of which at the time of investment that people had not and could not have had any idea? For even in works of fiction it had never existed.

But it has been asked in debate,¹ “Will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations?” An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea-nymph. She was as free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came, like a goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her while she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty, a handcuffed liberty, a liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between four sides of a prison, and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster. Its parentage is all inland.

The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Macon) exclaimed the other day, “Where is the spirit of ‘76?” Ay, sir; where is it? Would to Heaven that at our invocation it would condescend to alight on this floor. But let gentlemen remember that the spirit of ‘76 was not a spirit [362] of empty declamation, or of abstract propositions. It did not content itself with non-importation acts, or non-intercourse laws. It was a spirit of active preparation, of dignified energy. It studied both to know our rights and to devise the effectual means of maintaining them. In all the annals of ‘76 you will find no such degrading doctrine as the one maintained in this report. It never presented to the people of the United States the alternative of war or a suspension of our rights, and recommend the latter rather than to incur risk of the former. What was the language of that period in one of the addresses of Congress to Great Britain? “You attempt to reduce us by the sword to base and abject submission. On the sword, therefore, we rely for protection.” In that day there were no alternatives presented to dishearten—no abandonment of our rights under the pretence of maintaining them—no gaining the battle by running away. In the whole history of that period there are no such terms as “embargo—dignified retirement—trying who can do each other the most harm.” At that time we had a navy—that name so odious to the influences of the present day. Yes, sir, in 1776, though but in our infancy, we had a navy scouring our coasts, and defending our commerce, which was never for one moment wholly suspended. In 1776 we had an army also; and a glorious army it was; not composed of men halting from the stews, or swept from the jails, but of the best blood, the real yeomanry of the country, noble cavaliers, men without fear, and without reproach. We had such an army in 1775, and Washington was at its head. We have an army in 1808, and a head to it.

I will not humiliate those who lead the fortunes of the nation at the present day by any comparison with the great men of that period. But I recommend the advocates of the present system of public measures to study well the true spirit of 1776 before they venture to call it in aid of their purposes. It may bring in its train some recollections not suited to give ease or hope to their bosoms. I beg gentlemen who are so frequent in their recurrence to that period to remember, that among the causes which led to a separation from Great Britain the following are enumerated. Unnecessary restrictions upon trade; cutting off commercial intercourse between the colonies; embarrassing our fisheries; wantonly depriving our citizens of necessaries; invasion of private property by governmental edicts; the authority of the commander-in-chief, and under him of the brigadier-general, being rendered supreme in the civil government; the commander-in-chief of the army made governor of a colony; citizens transferred from their native country for trial. Let the gentlemen beware how they appeal to the spirit of ‘76; lest it come with the aspect, not of a friend, but of a tormenter—lest they find a warning when they look for support, and instead of encouragement they are presented with an awful lesson. . . .

Let me ask, Is embargo independence? Deceive not yourselves. It is palpable submission. Gentlemen exclaim, Great Britain “smites us on one cheek.” And what does Administration? “It turns the other also.” Gentlemen say, Great Britain is a robber, she “takes our cloak.” And what says Administration? “Let her take our coat also.” France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your commerce, and you yield it entirely. Sir, this conduct may be the way to dignity and honor in another world, but it will never secure safety and independence in this.

At every corner of this great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority, wringing their hands and exclaiming, “What shall we do? Nothing but embargo will save us. Remove it, and what shall we do?” Sir, it is not for me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans of government. But to my eye the path of our duty is as distinct as the milky way—all studded with living sapphires, glowing with cumulating light. It is the path of active preparation, of dignified energy. It is the path of 1776. It consists, not in abandoning our rights, but in supporting them, as they exist, and where they exist—on the ocean as well as on the land. It consists in taking the nature of things as the measure of the right of your citizens, not the orders and decrees of imperious foreigners. Give what protection you can. [363] Take no counsel of fear. Your strength will increase with the trial, and prove greater than you are now aware.

But I shall be told, “This may lead to war.” I ask, “Are we now at peace?” Certainly not, unless retiring from insult be peace—unless shrinking under the lash be peace. The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse. Abandonment of essential rights is worse.

Sir, I could not refrain from seizing the first opportunity of spreading before this House the sufferings and exigencies of New England under this embargo. Some gentlemen may deem it not strictly before us. In my opinion—it is necessarily. For, if the idea of the committee be correct, and embargo is resistance, then this resolution sanctions its continuance. If, on the contrary, as I contend, embargo is submission, then this resolution is a pledge of its repeal.