"The Absolute Destruction of their Interest": New England and Jefferson's Embargo.
Knecht, Rachel Eve.
2011
- In December 1807, in response to the wars in Europe, President Thomas Jefferson laid a total embargo on American shipping. Within a year, the policy had pushed the United States to the brink of civil war. The embargo inflamed sectional distrust and animosity toward the south in New England; its citizens perceived the embargo to be a southern attack on their regional interests, an effort to subjugate ... read morethe "commercial states" to Virginian tyranny. In order to win votes, New England's Federalists, whose party had steadily declined in influence since 1800, portrayed themselves as the region's defenders, to popular and electoral success. In using strident sectional rhetoric, however, they threatened to create a partisan-sectional division between the Jeffersonian Republican south and the Federalist northeast. As a result, the New England members of Jefferson's party broke with the president, in order to preserve both the Republican sectional coalition and the American union. By securing the embargo's repeal, they reassured New Englanders of their ability to affect national policy, and staved off the solidification of a regional divide in partisan politics. But they also split their party between north and south. While keeping the embargo crisis from becoming a civil war, the New England Republicans failed to resolve the deep-seated regional division in the United States, ultimately acquiescing to popular sectionalism.read less
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