Now the Historic Muse is taking a look at Jefferson's Embargo and how it affected plain ordinary people. The people I know best are those living on the North Shore of Cape Cod, whose livlihood depended on foreign trade. They, of course, weren't the only ones penalized by this law; the whole seaboard was paralyzed by it for better than a year.

By way of review: Jefferson's Embargo was his attempt to force France and England to respect the neutrality of the United States and stop their harrassments. The Chesapeake had been fired on, people were hot for war, and he knew the country wasn't strong enough to take on either antagonist. He hoped, then, that by their having no neutral carriers, France and England would treat us with respect (they were so busy fighting each other that they couldn't carry their own trade, Jefferson thought. So they'd have to change their ways.)

The Embargo was very unpopular with the seaboard folks. (Inland was least affected. 90-95% of the population lived on farms, and were pretty self-reliant. But if you depended on commerce, you were in trouble. So some folks smuggled and a lot of people were paid off to ignore a certain ship that might have been coming or going. But this was very much under the radar. We don't see an awful lot of disobedience. The law was the law, even though the country didn't as yet, have many opportunities to test it. In my novel, This is the House, I create a society that was laid low by the Embargo, its ability to hire servants brought to an abrupt halt. That meant a return to the ways things were done before the Revolution, when everyone was poor.

My heroine, Molly, whose rise and well-being depend on leading a wealthy society, is devastated. She still leads, because she is has acquired a group that will follow her, but now there is no time to continue its activities. Now it's back to the drawing board, up to her elbows in bread dough, laundry, child-care -- the whole nine yards. For people elsewhere, the change probably wouldn't be as drastic. These chores always had to be performed, with help or without it. But for Molly, who has depended on help so that she has time to attend to her social standing, as well as depending on her husband, Elijah, to provide the wherewithal to finance it, the loss is enormous.

Every once in a while the Muse asks: did the wealthy of 1807 really live in a style that was so aristocratic? The Muse has examined the lives of the rich, and yes, it does seem that the Americans who'd become rich by then were reinacting the style of the British upper class, just as did the South. The British influence lasted a long, long time. Look at Newport, Rhode Island, if there is any doubt in the mind of the reader.

And what of Elijah? The original, Elijah Cobb, doesn't tell us what happens at home or abroad once the Embargo is in effect. But, of course, the novelist knows. Wait for the next blog about breaking the Embargo!