¹ The immediate provocation for the Embargo was Britain's Orders in Council, passed on November 11, 1807, which declared that any neutral ships that did not stop in British ports were liable to capture. Napoleon subsequently declared in the Milan Decree that any ships that did stop in British ports were liable to capture. But the real target of the Embargo was Great Britain, as the British blockade against Napoleon prevented the United States from trading with France anyway.Google Scholar

² For an exposition of the standard international trade model, including the effect of a tariff on the offer curve, see a text such as Caves, Richard and Jones, Ronald, World Trade and payments (Boston, 1977).Google Scholar

³ North, Douglass, “The United States Balance of Payments 1790–1860,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 24 (Princeton, 1960), p. 595.Google Scholar

⁴ North, ibid., pp. 590–92.

⁵ A second natural question is why the official Treasury figures show any trade at all during 1808, since the year was supposedly completely covered by the Embargo. Evidently some shipping did take place with the knowledge of customs officials, especially in the early weeks of the Embargo before Jefferson and Gallatin had made the necessary provisions for its enforcement. Enforcement was also apparently more lax with imports than exports; Congress amended the Embargo Bill to allow merchants who had already purchased goods abroad to bring them into the country. This explarns why imports did not decline as much as exports. It also explains why the Embargo was called an “embargo” and not a “boycott.”Google Scholar

⁶ Journal of House of Commons, LXIV (1809) Appendix, p. 648. The Real Values appear to be a deflation of Official values “calculated on Average Estimates of Three Years so as to preserve the Comparison of one Year with another.”Google Scholar

⁷ Porter, G. R., The Progress of the Nation (London, 1909), Section III, p. 102.Google Scholar

⁸ The Embargo Act was originally passed by Congress hurriedly, without any provisions for penalties. The first moves to provide for its enforcement were made by Treasury Secretary Gallatin on December 24, 1807, but they did not take hold for a while. Sears, Louis M., Jefferson and the Embargo (Durham, N.C., 1966), p. 60.Google Scholar

⁹ Gallatin to Jefferson, September 16, 1808, as cited ibid., p. 88. Also: “From every information I have received there appears to be a very shameful Traffic carried on about St. Marys River, it is said … that English ships go there, & take in on the Spanish side cargoes of Cotton, Rice &c,” ibid., p. 133.

¹⁰ Figure given by North, “The United States Balance of Payments,” p. 394Google Scholar, for the 1790–1819 period. North's calculations are based on data on net tonnage capacity of vessels entering United States ports from abroad. The proportion of this tonnage representing non-U.S. shipping is even lower during the Napolenomc Wars: 7.23 percent in 1807 (Mitchell, B. R., Abstract of British Historical Statistics, (London, 1962) p. 451), of which only a subfraction would be British. Total tonnage falls by 49 percent in 1808, U.S. shipping about the same as non-U.S. shipping, but this tells us little about smuggling since we have already assumed that little smuggling took place in imports to the United States. Rather, it is consistent with the 56–59 percent decline in reported imports.Google Scholar

¹¹ The Boston Gazette was still publishing rates of duty on imports, insurance rates on voyages, and news of departures and arrivals in its January 2, 1808, issue.Google Scholar

¹² Dazell, William, February 1809s, p. 16 in Sears, Jefferson.Google Scholar

¹³ The only major U.S. export that could be produced domestically in England was grain. But far from making up the loss in grain through an increase in domestic production, Britain suffered a short supply in 1808 due to a poor harvest. (Gayer, Arthur, Rostow, W. W., and Schwartz, Anna, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790–1850, Vol. 1 (London, 1953), pp. 83–84.) Nor was it able to make up the difference through imports from other sources: “the Baltic grain supply had been virtually eliminated by the continental blockade since 1807.” P. 503.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The indices belong to Hoffman and Kondratieff, respectively, and are cited in Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The political debate over the effectiveness of the Embargo includes the Senate speeches of Mr. Giles (Nov. 24 and Dec. 2, 1808), Mr. Goodrich (Dec. 21, 1808), Mr. Lloyd (Nov. 21, 1808 and Sept. 30, 1807), and Mr. Pickering (Nov. 30, 1808).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Daniels, G. W., “American Cotton Trade with Liverpool Under the Embargo and Nonintercourse Acts,” American Historical Review, Vol. 21 (1918–1919), p. 276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ “A Price Index for Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1855,” this JOURNAL, 39 (12 1979), 975–1001.Google Scholar

¹⁸ “American Neutrality and Prosperity, 1793–1808: A Reconsideration,” this JOURNAL, 60 (12 1980), 717.Google Scholar