S.E. Morison on Thomas Jefferson’s embargo (1807):
From what particular egg in Jefferson’s clutch of theories this chick was hatched it is difficult to say. Probably he was merely carrying out a favorite Republican theory that American trade was so vital to Great Britain that she would collapse if it were stopped. But the embargo was not directed against England alone. Napoleon had issued drastic decrees against neutral trade, confiscating any neutral ship which had touched at a British port. The Republicans defended the embargo as a protection to American shipowners, who wanted no part of it. For they were thriving on trade with England under a system of licensing and inspection far less rigorous than the methods adopted by the United States and her allies in both world wars.
There were plenty of leaks in the embargo. Smuggling of British goods and American products went on over the Canadian frontier, on the Great Lakes, and from Spanish Florida. But there was much suffering in the seaports. Unemployed seamen and shipwrights emigrated in large numbers to the British provinces. The great shipowners who already had fleets abroad survived the embargo well enough; but many others were ruined, and certain small seaports such as Newburyport and New Haven never recovered their earlier prosperity. Agricultural produce fell, and the interior had to live on its own fat; but cotton, tobacco, and wheat could bear storage better than ships. Consequently, the embargo bore most heavily on New England and New York; and it was there that its political effects were felt by the administration.
One of these leaks became legendary. John Jacob Astor, who had branched out from fur trading to the China trade, managed to get his 427-ton ship Beaver out and home through the embargo by playing a trick on Jefferson. A character describing himself as ‘The Honorable Punqua Wingchong, a Chinese mandarin’, requested permission to charter a ship to return from New York to China, ‘where the affairs of his family and particularly the funeral obsequies of his grandfather, require his solemn attention’. Jefferson, thinking this might strengthen American relations with China, ordered [Treasury Secretary] Gallatin, who knew John Jacob Astor, to issue the necessary papers. Gallatin not only did so but allowed Hon. Punqua to take numerous ‘attendants’ and $45,000 worth of specie or merchandise, and permitted the Beaver to bring a return cargo from China. As it turned out, the alleged mandarin was a petty clerk in Astor’s employ, the cargoes were Astor’s speculations; and the Beaver, returning to New York crammed with China goods while the embargo was still in effect, put her owner well on his way to becoming the richest man in America.