* Henry Adams, History of the United States, IV, p. 110.
It is as clear as day that the British Government was now determined, under pretense of retaliating upon France, to promote British trade with the continent by every means and at the expense of neutrals. Another order-in-council, November 17, 1807, closed to neutrals all European ports under French control, "as if the same were actually blockaded," but permitted vessels which first entered a British port and obtained a British license to sail to any continental port. It was an order which, as Henry Adams has said, could have but one purpose--to make American commerce English. This was precisely the contemporary opinion of the historian's grandfather, who declared that the "orders-in-council, if submitted to, would have degraded us to the condition of colonists."
Only one more blow was needed, it would seem, to complete the ruin of American commerce. It fell a month later, when Napoleon, having overrun the Spanish peninsula and occupied Portugal, issued his Milan decree of December 17, 1807. Henceforth any vessel which submitted to search by English cruisers, or paid any tonnage duty or tax to the English Government, or sailed to or from any English port, would be captured and condemned as lawful prize. Such was to be the maritime code of France "until England should return to the principles of international law which are also those of justice and honor."
Never was a commercial nation less prepared to defend itself against depredations than the United States of America in this year 1807. For this unpreparedness many must bear the blame, but President Jefferson has become the scapegoat. This Virginia farmer and landsman was not only ignorant and distrustful of all the implements of war, but utterly unfamiliar with the ways of the sea and with the first principles of sea-power. The Tripolitan War seems to have inspired him with a single fixed idea--that for defensive purposes gunboats were superior to frigates and less costly. He set forth this idea in a special message to Congress (February 10, 1807), claiming to have the support of "professional men," among whom he mentioned Generals Wilkinson and Gates! He proposed the construction of two hundred of these gunboats, which would be distributed among the various exposed harbors, where in time of peace they would be hauled up on shore under sheds, for protection against sun and storm. As emergency arose these floating batteries were to be manned by the seamen and militia of the port. What appealed particularly to the President in this programme was the immunity it offered from "an excitement to engage in offensive maritime war." Gallatin would have modified even this plan for economy's sake. He would have constructed only one-half of the proposed fleet since the large seaports could probably build thirty gunboats in as many days, if an emergency arose. In extenuation of Gallatin's shortsightedness, it should be remembered that he was a native of Switzerland, whose navy has never ploughed many seas. It is less easy to excuse the rest of the President's advisers and the Congress which was beguiled into accepting this naive project. Nor did the Chesapeake outrage teach either Congress or the Administration a salutary lesson. On the contrary, when in October the news of the bombardment of Copenhagen had shattered the nerves of statesmen in all neutral countries, and while the differences with England were still unsettled, Jefferson and his colleagues decided to hold four of the best frigates in port and use them "as receptacles for enlisting seamen to fill the gunboats occasionally." Whom the gods would punish they first make mad!