History of the United States I / Unit 8 USH1 1099 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Embargo Act
The idea
Jefferson answered with the Embargo Act of eighteen oh seven, a sweeping ban on trade prohibiting American ships from leaving port until Britain and France stopped seizing them. It devastated America rather than Britain or France. American commerce came to a near-total halt, and American business activity declined by seventy-five percent from eighteen oh eight to eighteen oh nine. Farmers lost their markets and seaports saw a huge increase in unemployment and an uptick in bankruptcies.
In practice
Smugglers' Notch in Vermont, named for the trade the ban could not stop.
Where people slip
The embargo is the clearest case in the course of a coercive measure that harmed only the country imposing it. Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act in eighteen oh eight, lifting the ban except against Britain and France, and Madison inherited the problem. Teaching the embargo as pressure on Britain gets the direction of the damage exactly backwards.
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