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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Federalists held no caucus, but agreed among themselves to support C.C. Pinckney and Rufus King. Madison and Clinton were easily elected, and were sworn into office March 4, 1809. The Macon Bill; Non-intercourse.% When Congress met in 1809 one more effort was made to force France and England to respect our rights on the sea. Non-importation had failed. The embargo had failed.
This happily, they could do by bringing pressure to bear upon English merchants by taking money out of THEIR pockets without their consent to be sure but in a manner strictly legal by means of non-importation agreements voluntarily entered into.
When the moment for action arrived, Washington came naturally to the front, and then returned quietly to Mount Vernon, once more to go about his business and watch the threatening political horizon. Virginia did not live up to this first non-importation agreement, and formed another a year later.
It was true the Americans were opposed to the three-penny tax, and they had bound themselves not to import any dutied tea; yet neither the opposition to the tax nor the non-importation agreements entered into had prevented American merchants from importing, during the last three years, about 580,831 pounds of English tea, upon which the duty had been paid without occasioning much comment.
The outburst of seizure upon the plea of a constructively direct trade, already mentioned, had followed, and, with the retaliatory non-importation law of the United States, made the situation acute and menacing.
The non-importation agreement, drawn up by George Mason in 1769, was presented to the members of the dissolved House of Burgesses by Washington. In 1773 he supported the resolutions instituting a committee of correspondence and recommending the legislatures of the other colonies to do the same.
Like the non-importation agreement of 1768 and the embargo of 1808, such a policy was open to the objections familiarly urged against biting off one's own nose. It was injuring one's self in the hope of injuring somebody else. It was perpetuating in time of peace the obstacles to commerce generated by a state of war.
Before the assembly could move on to bolder actions, the meeting was prorogued by President John Blair. The assembly did not meet again until May 1769. In the interim Lord Botetourt arrived to replace Fauquier who had died in March 1768. By the time the burgesses reassembled other colonies had formed non-importation agreements and were boycotting British goods.
The Administration carried the bill through Congress, but Randolph had the satisfaction of seeing his characterisation of the measure amply justified by the course of events. With the Non-Importation Act as a weapon, the President was confident that Monroe, who had once more returned to his post in London, could force a settlement of all outstanding differences with Great Britain.
Still there seemed little hope for any undoing of the past, which probably would never have been wrung from this or any British ministry so long as all the discontent was on the other side of three thousand miles of ocean. But this was ceasing to be the case. The American weapon of non-importation was proving most efficient.
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