river

Campaigning for civil liberties and limited government, Thomas Jefferson was elected president. Jeffersonians cared more about farmers than about the merchants who carried their produce to Europe and imported European goods-particularly when those merchants operated within established British trade networks and voted for Federalist candidates. Jeffersonians demanded that the United States be free to trade with any nation and that both France and Britain respect American sovereignty and neutral rights. During most of Jefferson's first term, Europe was at peace during a break in the Napoleonic Wars. The one major foreign policy issue was a huge success: Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 .

The purchase gave western farmers free use of the river system that emptied at New Orleans, removed the French presence from the western border of the United States, and provided American farmers with vast new lands on which to expand their rural republic. Ignoring the fact that independent Native American peoples occupied the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson proclaimed his new land a great empire of liberty. Britain and France again went to war a few weeks after the Louisiana Purchase. Americans once again tried to sell food and plantation crops and to carry goods between the warring European powers and their Caribbean colonies. Both sides permitted this trade when it benefited them and tampered with it when it did not. In 1805 the British destroyed the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar off the Spanish coast and became dominant on the ocean. Britain outlawed American trade with France and maintained a loose blockade of the American coast, seizing American ships and often kidnapping American sailors into the Royal Navy.

This happened to as many as 6,000 Americans between 1803 and 1812. The Americans could not fight the British navy, and President Jefferson responded with peaceable coercion.Believing that Britain needed American food more than America needed British manufactures, he asked Congress in 1807 for an embargo that would suspend all U.S. trade with foreign nations. Jefferson hoped to coerce Britain and France into respecting American sovereignty. The embargo did not work, however. Britain found other sources of food, and the American economy-particularly in the seaports-stopped. American exports were valued at $108 million in 1807. They dropped to $22 million the following year. In 1808 James Madison, Jefferson's friend and chosen successor, easily won the presidential election against a Federalist opposition. DThe Threat of a Second War with England The United States declared war on Britain in 1812.

citizens coffee forests independence home life national river states valued weakness western
pokemon crystal