Yet peaceful attempts at resolving the conflict with Britain had already been tried—and hadn’t helped the economy much. Five years earlier, when a British ship attacked the U.S. Navy’s Chesapeake, killing three sailors and taking four others from the ship to impress them into service to the Crown, then-president Thomas Jefferson had attempted to retaliate. To protest this blatant hostility, Congress passed the Embargo Act, prohibiting overseas trade with Great Britain. Unfortunately, the act hurt Americans more than the British. In just fifteen months, the embargo produced a depression that
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