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The Old Merchant Marine; A chronicle of American ships and sailors by Ralph Delahaye Paine
page 79 of 146 (54%)
lose them, is it not better as to vessels, cargoes, and seamen,
to keep them at home?"

A people proud, independent, and pugnacious, could not long
submit to a measure of defense which was, in the final sense, an
abject surrender to brute force. New England, which bore the
brunt of the embargo, was first to rebel against it. Sailors
marched through the streets clamoring for bread or loaded their
vessels and fought their way to sea. In New York the streets of
the waterside were deserted, ships dismantled, countinghouses
unoccupied, and warehouses empty. In one year foreign commerce
decreased in value from $108,000,000 to $22,000,000.

After fifteen months Congress repealed the law, substituting a
Non-Intercourse Act which suspended trade with Great Britain and
France until their offending orders were repealed. All such
measures were doomed to be futile. Words and documents, threats
and arguments could not intimidate adversaries who paid heed to
nothing else than broadsides from line-of-battle ships or the
charge of battalions. With other countries trade could now be
opened. Hopefully the hundreds of American ships long pent-up in
harbor winged it deep-laden for the Baltic, the North Sea, and
the Mediterranean. But few of them ever returned. Like a brigand,
Napoleon lured them into a trap and closed it, advising the
Prussian Government, which was under his heel: "Let the American
ships enter your ports. Seize them afterward. You shall deliver
the cargoes to me and I will take them in part payment of the
Prussian war debt."

Similar orders were executed wherever his mailed fist reached,
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