What did the embargo act do

By Nancy Finlay
Our ships all in motion Once whitened the ocean; They sailed and returned with a cargo. Now doomed to decay They have fallen a prey

To Jefferson, worms, and embargo.

President Thomas Jefferson hoped that the Embargo Act of 1807 would help the United States by demonstrating to Britain and France their dependence on American goods, convincing them to respect American neutrality and stop impressing American seamen. Instead, the act had a devastating effect on American trade. All vessels under United States jurisdiction found themselves prohibited from making foreign voyages. Trade ships sat rotting at the wharves.

Many leaders of Connecticut’s ruling party, the Federalists, made their fortunes in shipping. They had opposed Jefferson from the beginning and considered the embargo both a mistake and a disaster. Some sought to evade the unpopular act, smuggling British goods from Canada using coastal vessels. In open defiance of the law, Jedidiah Huntington, the Federalist customs collector in New London, granted numerous Connecticut vessels “special permission” to make foreign voyages. For its part, Hartford’s Federalist newspaper, the Connecticut Courant, missed no opportunity to attack and condemn the embargo and the Republican party which sought to enforce it.

In February 1809, Governor Jonathan Trumbull Jr. called a special session of the Connecticut legislature and declared the embargo unconstitutional. Trumbull was a staunch Federalist, the son of Jonathan Trumbull Sr., Connecticut’s last colonial governor, who had continued to serve throughout the Revolutionary War. Trumbull Jr. had been governor since 1797, and in 1809 was serving the last of eleven consecutive terms in that office. (He died in office later in the year.) Republican members of the assembly were shocked by Trumbull’s action, calling it “an enormous stride towards treason and civil war.”

An End to the Embargo Act of 1807

The embargo ended in March of 1809, when the Non-Intercourse Act reopened trade to all nations except England and France. The effects of the embargo, however, lasted much longer than that. Connecticut’s Federalists proved adamant in their dislike and distrust of Jefferson and the Republican party. Their opposition extended to the War of 1812 and to the federal government itself, culminating in the Hartford Convention of 1814, ultimately contributing to the Federalists’ downfall.

While the embargo proved a disaster for shipping, it had a positive effect on manufacturing. Connecticut’s many streams and rivers provided a good source of waterpower and textile mills began operating as early as the 1790s, using technology smuggled from Great Britain. These small-scale industries were unable to compete with the large British manufacturers, however, until the embargo shut down trade and British imports were no longer readily available.

Other Connecticut industries also prospered under the embargo. These included paper mills, gun factories, blast furnaces and forges, tanneries, and distilleries. By 1810, Connecticut produced nearly $6 million worth of manufactured goods each year, a substantial sum in that period. The state, which had previously been primarily agricultural, was on its way to becoming a center of industry and innovation.

Nancy Finlay grew up in Manchester, Connecticut. She has a BA from Smith College and an MFA and PhD from Princeton University. From 1998 to 2015, she was Curator of Graphics at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Connecticut Historical Society. “Guide to the Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. Papers,” 2016. Link.

Morgan, Forrest, ed. Connecticut as a Colony and as a State, or One of the Original Thirteen. Vol. 3. Hartford: The Publishing Society of Connecticut, 1904.

Purcell, Richard J. Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1918.

Gordinier, Glenn S. “Enterprise and Authority: Southeastern Connecticut Responds to the Jeffersonian Embargo.” Connecticut History 49, no. 1 (Spring 2010).

The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general embargo enacted by the U.S. Congress prohibiting all foreign commerce. It was primarily directed toward Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars.

The embargo was imposed in response to flagrant violations of U.S. neutrality, in which American merchantmen and their cargoes were seized as contraband of war by the British and French Navies. The British Royal Navy, in particular, resorted to the practice of impressment, forcing thousands of American seamen into service on their warships. Both Great Britain and France, in the midst of a war for control of Europe, justified the plunder of U.S. shipping as incidental to war and necessary for their success. The official orders issued in support of these actions by European powers were widely recognized in the United States as grounds for a U.S. declaration of war.

"Peaceful Coercion"

As these attacks on U.S. merchant ships mounted, President Thomas Jefferson weighed public support for retaliation. He recommended that Congress respond with commercial warfare, rather than with military mobilization. Both Jefferson and Madison viewed war as particularly fatal to republican government, and Jefferson sought to avoid war in favor of what he called "peaceful coercion." By restricting trade in crucial raw materials, Jefferson hoped to bring the British and French economies and their respective war machines to a halt, after which (he assumed) the European powers would show greater respect for the rights of American shipping. To this end, Jefferson signed the Embargo Act into law on December 22, 1807, after passage by the Republican-dominated Congress. 

The embargo, which lasted from December 1807 to March 1809, turned out to be impractical as a coercive measure and was a failure both diplomatically and economically. The legislation inflicted devastating burdens on the U.S. economy and the American people, effectively throttling American overseas trade. All areas of the United States suffered: In commercial New England and the Middle Atlantic states, ships rotted at the wharves, and in the agricultural areas, particularly in the South, farmers and planters could not sell their crops on the international market. For New England, and especially for the Middle Atlantic states, there was some consolation, for the scarcity of European goods stimulated the development of American industry.

At the same time, the British were still able to export goods to America: Initial loopholes overlooked coastal vessels from Canada smuggling goods, whaling ships, and privateers from overseas. Widespread disregard of the law meant enforcement was difficult, and the embargo became a financial disaster for the United States.

The embargo also undermined national unity in the United States, provoking bitter protests, especially in New England commercial centers. The issue vastly increased support for the Federalist Party and led to huge gains in its representation in Congress and in the electoral college in 1808. Thomas Jefferson's doctrinaire approach to enforcing the embargo violated a key Democratic-Republican precept: commitment to limited government. Many Democratic-Republicans felt that Jefferson's authorization of heavy-handed enforcement by federal authorities violated both sectional interests and individual liberties. 

Despite its unpopular nature, the Embargo Act did have some limited, unintended benefits. For example, fledgling capitalist workers responded by bringing in fresh capital and labor to New England textile and other manufacturing industries, decreasing American reliance on British imports.

After 15 months, the embargo was revoked on March 1, 1809, in the final days of Jefferson's presidency. It was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. The intent was to damage the economies of the United Kingdom and France. Like its predecessor, the Non-Intercourse Act was mostly ineffective and contributed to the outbreak of the War of 1812.

This 1807 political cartoon satirizes the Embargo Act. Here, a turtle named "Ograbme" ("Embargo" spelled backward) bites a merchant/smuggler.

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President James Madison, who was elected as Thomas Jefferson's successor in 1808, was pressured by a faction of young Democratic-Republican congressmen from the South and West of the United States to go to war with Great Britain.

War Hawks

The term "war hawks" was a name used for a historical group of Democratic-Republicans in the early nineteenth century who pushed for war with Great Britain. The war hawks were primarily from southern and western states of the United States. The American West then consisted of the trans-Appalachian states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, as well as territories in the Old Northwest (i.e., the Great Lakes states that did not yet have votes in Congress). 

The term "hawk" was coined by the prominent Virginia congressman and Old Republican, John Randolph (of Roanoke), a staunch opponent to the entry into war. There was never any official roster of war hawks, and no universally acknowledged list exists. Most historians use the term to describe about a dozen members of the Twelfth Congress under President Madison. The primary leaders of the group were Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, both of whom would become major players in American politics for the next several decades. Other notable members included Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, William Lowndes and Langdon Cheves of South Carolina, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and William W. Bibb of Georgia.  

A portrait of Henry Clay, the leader of the war hawks' western faction, painted after the War of 1812.

Arguments for Going to War

The war hawks advocated going to war with Britain for reasons related to the interference of the British Royal Navy in American shipping, which was hurting the American economy and, the war hawks believed, injuring American prestige. War hawks from the western states also believed that the British were instigating American Indians on the frontier to attack American settlements, and so the war hawks called for an invasion of British Canada to punish the British and end this threat. War hawks in both the South and the West also anticipated an easy opportunity for increasing the size of the new republic in the event of war: They hoped for the incorporation of British North America (present-day Canada) into the republic.

Opposition to war came from Federalists, especially those in the Northeast, who knew conflict would disrupt the maritime trade on which they depended. The older members of the Democratic-Republican Party, led by President James Madison and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, also tried unsuccessfully to defeat the war hawks movement, believing that the United States was not prepared for war—which in the end turned out to be true. In a narrow vote, Congress authorized the president to declare war against Britain in June 1812.