Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/261

1808. on the Canadian frontier shortly before the adjournment of Congress. Immediately after the adjournment he took in hand the more serious difficulties of the coasting-trade. The experiment of peaceable coercion was at last to have full trial, and Jefferson turned to the task with energy that seemed to his friends excessive, but expressed the vital interest he felt in the success of a theory on which his credit as a statesman depended. The crisis was peculiarly his own; and he assumed the responsibility for every detail of its management.

May 6 the President wrote to Gallatin a letter containing general directions to detain in port every coasting-vessel which could be regarded as suspicious. His orders were sweeping. The power of the embargo as a coercive weapon was to be learned.


 * "In the outset of the business of detentions," said the President, "I think it impossible to form precise rules. After a number of cases shall have arisen, they may probably be thrown into groups and subjected to rules.  The great leading object of the Legislature was, and ours in execution of it ought to be, to give complete effect to the embargo laws.  They have bidden agriculture, commerce, navigation to bow before that object,—to be nothing when in competition with that.  Finding all their endeavors at general rules to be evaded, they finally gave us the power of detention as the panacea; and I am clear we ought to use it freely, that we may by a fair experiment know the power of this great weapon, the embargo."