In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy. Between 18, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate.

Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and “impressed” into the service of the British Navy. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors.

The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. The first had to do with the nation’s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues.

Yet war with Britain loomed-a war that would galvanize the young American nation. Despite the embargo’s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Soon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships.

American navy war of 1812