[Footnote 153: Daniel D. Tompkins, 35,074; Morgan Lewis, 30,989.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.] Daniel D. Tompkins had the good fortune to begin his administration at a time when England and the United States were about to quarrel over the former's insistence on impressing American seamen into its service, thus giving the people something to think about save offices, and dividing them again sharply into two parties. Indeed, while the election was pending in April, three deserters from the _Melampus_, a British sloop-of-war, by enlisting on the _Chesapeake_, a United States frigate of thirty-eight guns, became the innocent cause of subjecting the United States to gross insult. The American government, smarting under England's impressment of its seamen, refused to surrender these deserters, inquiries showing that they were coloured men of American birth, two of whom had been pressed into the British service from an American vessel in the Bay of Biscay. When the _Chesapeake_ sailed, therefore, the _Leopard_, an English man-of-war mounting fifty guns, followed her to the high seas and demanded a return of the deserters. Receiving a prompt refusal, the Englishman raked the decks of the _Chesapeake_ for the space of twelve minutes, killing three men and wounding eighteen, among them the commander. The _Chesapeake_ was not yet ready for action. Her crew was undrilled in the use of ordnance, her decks littered, appliances for reloading were wanting, and at the supreme moment neither priming nor match could be found. Under these distressing circumstances, the boarding officer of the _Leopard_ took the deserters and sailed for Halifax. The sight of the dismantled _Chesapeake_, with its dead and dying, aroused the people irrespective of party into demanding reparation or war. "This country," wrote Jefferson, "has never been in such a state of excitement since the battle of Lexington."[154] Immediately the most exposed ports were strengthened, and the States were called upon to organise and equip 100,000 militia ready to march. Among other things, Jefferson ordered British cruisers to depart from American waters, forbidding all aid and intercourse with them. [Footnote 154: Jefferson to Colonel Taylor, August 1, 1807; _Works_, v., 148.] On the day of Governor Tompkins' inauguration the crippled _Chesapeake_ sailed back into Norfolk; and before the New York Legislature assembled in the following January, England had published its Orders in Council, forbidding all neutral trade with France. Napoleon had also promulgated his Milan Decree, forbidding all neutral trade with England, and the Congress of the United States, with closed doors, in obedience to the recommendation of the President, had ordered an embargo forbidding all foreign-bound American vessels to leave United States ports.