Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page 647 of Gordon Wood’s superb 2009 volume, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (footnote deleted):

These seizures [of American ships during the Napoleonic wars] by the belligerents, however, did not do as much damage to American commerce in this period as the United States eventually did to itself. In a desperate attempt to break the stranglehold that Britain and France had on American trade, the United States launched what Jefferson called a “candid and liberal experiment” in “peaceful coercion” – an embargo that forbade all Americans from sending any of their ships and goods abroad. Perhaps never in history has a trading nation of America’s size engaged in such an act of self-immolation with so little reward. Not only did this experiment fail to stop the belligerents’ abuses of America’s neutral rights, but the embargo ended up seriously injuring the American economy and all but destroying the Jeffersonian principle of limited government and states’ rights.