It is true, agriculture suffered as well as commerce; but agricultural products could be converted into food and clothing; they would not decay like ships, nor would the producers be deprived of employment and sustenance, like those connected with navigation.
Whether this step was intended to paralyze the North or not, it most suddenly and decidedly produced that effect. We were told that it was done to save our commerce from falling into the hands of the English and French. But our merchants earnestly entreated not to be thus saved. At the very moment of the embargo, underwriters were ready to insure at the usual rates.
The non-intercourse was of the same general character as the embargo, but less offensive and injurious. The war crowned this course of policy; and like the other measures, was carried by slave votes. It was emphatically a Southern, not a national war. Individuals gained glory by it, and many of them nobly deserved it; but the amount of benefit which the country derived from that war might be told in much fewer words than would enumerate the mischiefs it produced.
The commercial States, particularly New England, have been frequently reproached for not being willing to go to war for the protection of their own interests; and have been charged with pusillanimity and ingratitude for not warmly seconding those who were so zealous to defend their cause. Mr Hayne, during the great debate with Mr Webster, in the Senate, made use of this customary sarcasm. It is revived whenever the sectional spirit of the South, or party spirit in the North, prompts individuals to depreciate the talents and character of any eminent Northern man. The Southern States have even gone so far on this subject, as to assume the designation of "patriot States," in contra-distinction to their northern neighbors—and this too, while Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall are still standing! It certainly was a pleasant idea to exchange the appellation of slave States for that of patriot States—it removed a word which in a republic is unseemly and inconsistent.
Whatever may be thought of the justice and expediency of the last war, it was certainly undertaken against
