"After the Chesapeake incident, Jefferson lost the only chance of declaring war against Great Britain, when such a war would have secured unanimous support. Looking back on 1807 from a period of Hague conferences and arbitration treaties, Jefferson's moderation and restraint at that trying period seems most commendable. But the sequel proved that none of his expedients could prevent a war, which might far better have come in 1807, with the entire nation up in arms over the insult to its flag, than in 1812, after one section of the Union had been led by four years of commercial restriction into an attitude of violent disaffection. Instead of commencing reprisals or encour- aging the war spirit, Jefferson issued, on July 2, 1807, a proclamation closing American ports to British men-of-war, and expressing his confidence that Great Britain would apologize for the Leopard's action. The British government did acknowledge its fault, though somewhat ungraciously, and sent a special envoy to the United States to make reparation for the damage done, but with such conditions attached as to make it impossible for Jefferson to accept the offer."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNon-fiction authors from the United StatesUnited States Navy peopleHarvard University alumniHarvard University faculty
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Eliot_Morison
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Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States na
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