Although Jefferson was re-elected in 1804 by a landslide victory, his popularity diminished greatly during his second term. The source of his troubles lay in Europe, where England and France were involved in the long, bitter Napoleonic Wars. England could not defeat Napoleon on land, but her navy was superior. Hence she blockaded the continent. France retaliated by counter-blockades. The United States, with a large merchant fleet but scarcely any navy, was caught in the middle. Hundreds of American ships were seized and their cargoes confiscated. Both England and France violated American neutral rights, but England, with the world’s strongest navy, was the chief offender. When a British warship, the Leopard, fired on and impressed American seamen from an American frigate, the Chesapeake, off the coast of Virginia, the United States was ready to fight.

President Jefferson, however, was determined to avoid war and answered the Chesapeake incident with a proclamation excluding British warships from American waters, but the British would not agree to stop impressing American seamen. In addition, to deal with the seizure of American ships, Jefferson persuaded Congress to pass the Embargo Act. This act forbade American ships to leave for foreign ports. The result was that American ships rotted in the harbors and depression hit American business. Yet England and France were not hurt enough to come to terms. The Embargo Act had to be repealed.

Washington Irving Satirizes the Embargo Act

About the time the Embargo Act was repealed, Washington Irving, America’s first important man of letters, wrote his History of New York. This book is a burlesque account of the old Dutch period in New York history, a very funny book, full of comic pictures of the Dutch governors and the early settlers. The book also contains some contemporary political satire in the chapters devoted to William the Testy. In the selections which follow you will see obvious references to the Chesapeake incident, the Embargo Act, and President Jefferson’s actions.

As my readers are well aware of the advantage a potentate has in handling his enemies as he pleases in his speeches and bulletins, where he has the talk all on his own side, they may rest assured that William the Testy did not let such an opportunity escape of giving the Yankees what is called “a taste of his quality.” In speaking of their inroads into the territories of their High Mightinesses, he compared them to the Gauls who desolated Rome, the Goths and Vandals who overran the fairest plains of Europe; but when he came to speak of the unparalleled audacity with which they of Weathersfield had advanced their [onion] patches up to the very walls of Fort Goed Hoop, and threatened to smother the garrison in onions, tears of rage started into his eyes, as though he nosed the very offense in question.

Having thus wrought up his tale to a climax, he assumed a most belligerent look, and assured the council that he had devised an instrument, potent in its effects, and which he trusted would soon drive the Yankees from the land. So saying, he thrust his hand into one of the deep pockets of his broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not an infernal machine, but an instrument in writing, which he laid with great emphasis upon the table.

The burghers gazed at it for a time in silent awe, as a wary housewife does at a gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked. The document in question had a sinister look, it is true; it was crabbed in text, and from a broad red ribbon dangled the great seal of the province, about the size of a buckwheat pancake. Still, after all, it was but an instrument in writing. Herein, however, existed the wonder of the invention. The document in question was a PROCLAMATION, ordering the Yankees to depart instantly from the territories of their High Mightinesses, under pain of suffering all the forfeitures and punishments in such case made and provided. It was on the moral effect of this formidable instrument that Wilhelmus Kieft calculated, pledging his valor as a governor that, once fulminated [thundered] against the Yankees, it would in less than two months drive every mother’s son of them across the borders.

The council broke up in perfect wonder, and nothing was talked of for some time among the old men and women of New Amsterdam but the vast genius of the governor and his new and cheap mode of fighting by proclamation.

As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having dispatched his proclamation to the frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and, mounting a tall rawboned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of Dog’s Misery....

Never was a more comprehensive, a more expeditious—or, what is still better, a more economical—measure devised than this of defeating the Yankees by proclamation—an expedient, likewise, so gentle and humane there were ten chances to one in favor of its succeeding, but then there was one chance to ten that it would not succeed: as the ill-natured Fates would have it, that single chance carried the day! The proclamation was perfect in all its parts, well constructed, well written, well sealed, and well published; all that was wanting to insure its effect was, that the Yankees should stand in awe of it; but, provoking to relate, they treated it with the most absolute contempt, applied it to an unseemly purpose, and thus did the first warlike proclamation come to a shameful end—a fate which I am credibly informed has befallen but too many of its successors.

So far from abandoning the country, those varlets [rascals] continued their encroachments, squatting along the green banks of the Varsche River, and founding Hartford, Stamford, New Haven, and other border towns. I have already shown how the onion patches of Pyquag were an eyesore to Jacobus Van Curlet and his garrison; but now these moss-troopers increased in their atrocities, kidnaping hogs, impounding horses, and sometimes grievously rib-roasting their owners. Our worthy forefathers could scarcely stir abroad without danger of being outjockeyed in horseflesh or taken in in bargaining, while in their absence some daring Yankee peddler would penetrate to their household and nearly ruin the good housewives with tinware and wooden bowls....

It was long before William the Testy could be persuaded that his much-vaunted war measure was ineffectual; on the contrary, he flew in a passion whenever it was doubted, swearing that though slow in operating, yet when it once began to work it would soon purge the land of these invaders. When convinced, at length, of the truth, like a shrewd physician he attributed the failure to the quantity, not the quality, of the medicine, and resolved to double the dose. He fulminated, therefore, a second proclamation, more vehement than the first, forbidding all intercourse with these Yankee intruders, ordering the Dutch burghers on the frontiers to buy none of their pacing horses, measly port, apple sweetmeats, Weathersfield onions, or wooden bowls, and to furnish them with no supplies of gin, gingerbread, or sauerkraut.

Another interval elapsed, during which the last proclamation was as little regarded as the first, and the non-intercourse was especially set at naught by the young folks of both sexes, if we may judge by the active bundling which took place along the borders.

Irving concludes this satire of William the Testy’s proclamation by a comic account of how the Yankees captured Fort Goed Hoop. They sneaked into the fort while the Dutch soldiers were sleeping off their dinner, gave the defenders a kick in the pants, and sent them back to New Amsterdam.