After repealing the Embargo, Congress once again passed a non-intercourse act, with a pledge the United States would resume trade with the first nation to repeal its injurious policies toward American commerce. Jefferson’s successor, James Madison, tried diplomacy, working with the British minister in Washington to draft a treaty, but the British foreign minister rejected both the diplomat and the treaty.
Both Congress and Madison were at wit’s end. Madison failed to provide leadership. Congress then passed Macon’s Bill No. 2, which allowed merchants to resume trade with France and Britain, pledging the United States would stop intercourse with the enemy of the first power that granted its rights to neutrality.
Napoleon realized that he had an opportunity to lure Madison and the United States into his continental system. In 1810 Napoleon revoked his decrees with a lie the British were repealing their orders in council. The United States’ savvy ambassador to Russia, John Quincy Adams, advised Madison that Napoleon was setting a trap forcing the country into war with Britain. Nevertheless, Madison fell for Napoleon’s ploy. Despite many reports of French depredations on American shipping, Madison stubbornly resisted resuming trade with Britain.[1]
[1]Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, V. 1, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 401.
