Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/382

372 the President for the policy which ended in Gallatin's alternative, the harshness of the choice was intolerable. They felt that the embargo must be abandoned; but they felt still more strongly that the double war was ruin. In vain Gallatin tried in his Treasury Report to persuade them that to fight the two nations was a practicable task. Congress writhed and rebelled.

Campbell's report closed by recommending three Resolutions as common ground on which all parties could take their stand, whether for war or embargo. The first declared that the United States could not, without a sacrifice of their rights, honor, and independence, submit to the edicts of Great Britain and France. The second declared the expediency of excluding from the United States the ships and the products of all Powers which maintained these edicts in force. The third recommended immediate preparations for defence.

The Federalists were eager for attack; and when, November 28, Campbell called up the first of his Resolutions for debate, Josiah Quincy fell upon it with violence not easily forgotten, and doubtless meant to strengthen the general belief that New England would control her passions no longer.


 * "The course advocated in that Report is in my opinion loathsome," he said; "the spirit it breathes disgraceful; the temper it is likely to inspire neither calculated to regain the rights we have lost, nor to preserve those which remain to us."