Well, of course, the embargo of 1807 was Jefferson's idea. He thought that the United States could bring enough economic pressure to bear that England would stop the impressment of American sailors thought to be British, and coincidently to discourage the French from harrassing American shipping in pursuit of their war with England (because, I guess, they thought we'd be carrying stuff to England that would strengthen their war effort against the French.) If you can make sense of that statement, you know your history, probably better than does the Muse!
In any case, the Embargo ruined American commerce, and Jefferson ended it just before leaving office, disappointed in the results. Picking up the pieces, the merchant marine once again sailed forth, trying to glean what it could before war actually began (everyone knew it would). What is the connection between Jefferson, Hamilton, and the War?
Well, as I see it, Jefferson thought the franchise should be extended to any man who owned land, because if he owned land he'd no doubt be farming it, and farmers are a pretty good bunch, down-to-earth (literally) and responsible, accustomed to assessing reality and drawing sound conclusions about it. He won, Hamilton lost, and the Federalist position, that would vest leadership in the hands of educated people who knew how to make money, thus keeping a stable and robust economy foremost in mind -- that was no longer the prevailing political sentiment. Certainly promoting a strong economy was good, and no doubt very important to the future of the new nation. But it didn't take into consideration the constitution, which Jefferson had helped to write, about a nation FOR the people and BY the people.
Jefferson's victory meant that citizens of the new territories, quickly settling beyond the mountains, had the vote rather soon. In the years preceeding the war of 1812, eight of them under Jefferson, the new westerners gained quite a lot of power, enough to suggest to James Madison, the next president, that if he'd like to be re-elected in 1812, he'd not only declare war on England over the impressment issue, but he'd announce the goal of annexing Canada in the process.
We can talk about this little party in a later blog, but the point I'd like to make is that the electorate of common men, so favored by both Jefferson and Madison, pushed the United States into a war of much larger dimension than was originally intended. The body politic was already splintered to the point that New England would have seceeded, once the British brought their ships of the line to bear, in order to avoid total destruction (these ships being liberated in the spring of 1814, the subject of another blog). Had they done so, our country wouldn't look as it does today -- (not that many New Englanders would care, at this point!) Not that the Muse thinks New England would have would have become an English commonwealth, but they most likely wouldn't have been part of the United States, either, whose government had brought so much ruin on them. And might yet.
We'll work on these other aspects another day -- why the westerners wanted war with Canada, how it was that Britain could have descimated us, once the Napoleonic Wars were over, why anyone would have thought Canada would have wanted to be annexed, why the American people thought their 12-13 ship navy could defeat the mightiest sea-power in the world...
The common man, sometimes, isn't really down to earth at all.
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