Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 (4 of 16 vol.). United States. Congress

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СКАЧАТЬ had been entertained that such a violent and convulsed condition of society would not be of long duration. Experience, however, soon proved that the infuriate rage of man was as yet unsatisfied, and had much greater lengths to go. For early in the succeeding year (1807), an order of the British Council was issued, by which the trade of neutrals, and of course of American citizens, was interdicted from the port of one belligerent to the port of another. And in the ensuing May, the rivers Elbe, Weser, and Ems, with the interjacent coasts were declared by them to be in a state of blockade, and a similar declaration was made on their part to neutrals in regard to the straits of the Dardanelles and the city of Smyrna. But these were but subordinate incidents in this commercial drama; the catastrophe of the tragedy was soon to be developed. "On the 22d of June, by a formal order from a British Admiral, our frigate Chesapeake, leaving her port for a distant service, was attacked by one of these vessels, which had been lying in our harbors under the indulgence of hospitality, was disabled from proceeding, had several of her crew killed, and four taken away." Immediately the President by proclamation interdicted our harbors and waters to all British armed vessels, and forbade intercourse with them. Under an uncertainty how far hostilities were intended, and the town of Norfolk being threatened with an immediate attack, a sufficient force was ordered for the protection of that place, and such other preparations commenced and pursued as the prospect rendered proper.

      In furtherance of these schemes, a proclamation was published, holding all their absent seamen to their allegiance, recalling them from foreign services, and denouncing heavy penalties for disobedience. The operation of this upon the American merchant service would have been very sensibly felt. Many British born subjects were in the employ of our merchants, and that very Government, which claimed as a British subject every American citizen who had been but two years a seaman in their service, refused to be bound by their own rule in relation to British subjects who had served an equal term on board the ships of the United States. But this was not all. The month of November was distinguished by an order retaliating on France a decree passed by her some time before, declaring the sale of ships by belligerents to be illegal; and thus, by virtue of concurrent acts of these implacable enemies, the poor neutral found it impossible to purchase a ship either from a subject of Great Britain or of France. That season of gloom was famous, or rather infamous, for another act prohibiting wholly the commerce of neutrals with the enemies of Great Britain, and for yet another, pregnant with the principles of lordly domination on their part, and of colonial vassalage on our, by which the citizens of these independent and sovereign States are compelled to pay duties on their cargoes in British ports, and receive licenses under the authority of that Government, as a condition of being permitted to trade to any part of Europe in possession of her enemies.

      This outrageous edict on the part of Britain was succeeded by another on the side of France, equalling, or if possible, surpassing it in injustice. In December came forth the decree of Milan, enforcing the decree of Berlin against American trade; dooming to confiscation every vessel of the United States that had been boarded or even spoken to by a Briton, and encouraging, by the most unjustifiable lures, passengers and sailors to turn informers. The abominable mandate was quickly echoed in Spain, and sanctioned by the approbation of His Most Catholic Majesty. It has been executed with shocking atrocity. In addition to other calamities, the property of neutrals has been sequestered in France, and their ships burned by her cruisers on the ocean.

      Such, Mr. President, was the situation of the European world, when Congress deemed it necessary to declare an embargo on our own vessels. Denmark and Prussia, and Russia, and Portugal, had become associated or allied with France; and, with the exception of Sweden, the commerce of our citizens was prohibited, by the mutually vindictive and retaliating belligerents, from the White Sea to the Adriatic. American ships and cargoes were declared the prize and plunder of the contending powers. The widely-extended commerce of our people was to be crushed to atoms between the two mighty millstones, or prudently withdrawn from its dangerous exposure, and detained in safety at home. Policy and prudence dictated the latter measure. And as the ocean was become the scene of political storm and tempest, more dreadful than had ever agitated the physical elements, our citizens were admonished to partake of that security for their persons and property, in the peaceful havens of their country, which they sought in vain on the high seas and in European harbors. The regulations, so destructive to our commerce, were not enacted by us. They were imposed upon us by foreign tyrants. Congress had no volition to vote upon the question. In the shipwreck of our trade, all that remained for us to do, was to save as much as we could from perishing, and as far as our efforts would go, to prevent a total loss.

      I touch, with a delicate hand, the mission of Mr. Rose. The arrival of this Envoy Extraordinary from Britain was nearly of the same date with an order of his Government, blockading Carthagena, Cadiz, and St. Lucar, and the intermediate ports of Spain, and thereby vexing the commerce of American citizens. The unsuccessful termination of his negotiation has been but a few months since followed by a refusal on the part of his Government to rescind its orders, that work so much oppression to our commerce, on condition of having the embargo suspended in respect to theirs. And the French Ministry has treated a similar friendly and specific overture, from our Executive, with total disregard. In addition to all which we learn, from the highest source of intelligence, that the British naval commander at Barbadoes did, about the middle of October, declare the French leeward Caribbean Islands to be in a state of strict blockade, and cautioning neutrals to govern themselves accordingly, under pain of capture and condemnation.

      Thursday, November 24

The Embargo

      Mr. Giles addressed the Senate:

      Mr. President: Having during the recess of Congress retired from the political world, and having little agency in the passing political scenes, living in a part of the country, too, where there is little or no difference in political opinions, and where the embargo laws are almost universally approved, I felt the real want of information upon the subject now under discussion. I thought I knew something of the general objects of the embargo laws, and I had not been inattentive to their general operations upon society, as far as I had opportunities of observing thereupon.

      When I arrived here, and found that this subject had excited so much sensibility in the minds of many gentlemen I met with, as to engross their whole thoughts, and almost to banish every other topic of conversation, I felt also a curiosity to know what were the horrible effects of these laws in other parts of the country, and which had escaped my observation in the part of the country in which I reside. Of course, sir, I have given to the gentlemen, who have favored us with their observations on both sides of the question under consideration, the most careful and respectful attention, and particularly to the gentlemen representing the eastern section of the Union, where most of this sensibility had been excited. I always listen to gentlemen from that part of the United States with pleasure, and generally receive instruction from them; but on this occasion, I am reluctantly compelled to acknowledge, that I have received from them less satisfaction and less information than usual; and still less conviction.

      It was hardly to have been expected, Mr. President, that after so many angry and turbulent passions had been called into action, by the recent agitations throughout the whole United States, resulting from the elections by the people, to almost all the important offices within their gift, and particularly from the elections of electors for choosing the President and Vice President of the United States, that gentlemen would have met here perfectly exempt from the feelings which this state of things was naturally calculated to inspire. Much less was it to have been expected, sir, that gentlemen who had once possessed the power of the nation, and who, from some cause or other, had lost it; (a loss, which they now tell us they but too well remember, and I fear, might have added, too deeply deplore,) gentlemen too, sir, who at one time during the electioneering scene had indulged the fond and delusive hope, that through the privations necessarily imposed upon our fellow-citizens, by the unexampled aggressions of the belligerent powers, they might once more find their way to office and power, and who now find themselves disappointed in this darling expectation – it was not at all to be expected, sir, that these gentlemen should now appear here, perfectly exempt from the unpleasant feelings which so dreadful СКАЧАТЬ