Other causes fanned the flame of war. The United States was now almost the only nation neutral in Napoleon's wars. To cripple English commerce, Napoleon forbids neutral nations trading at English ports. By way of retaliation England forbids neutral nations trading with French ports; and the United States strikes back by closing American ports to both nations. It means blue ruin to American trade, but the United States cannot permit herself to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile European powers. Then, sharp as a gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon revokes his embargo in 1810, which leaves England the offender against the United States. Then Governor Craig of Canada commits an error that must have delighted the heart of Napoleon, who always profited by his enemy's blunders. Well meaning, but {337} fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John Henry from Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double purpose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union in touch with British authorities. Craig goes home to England to die. Henry fails to collect reward for his ignoble services, turns traitor, and sells the entire correspondence to the war party in the United States for $10,000. That spy business adds fuel to fire. Then there are other quarrels. A deserter from the American army is found teaching school near Cornwall in Canada. He is driven out of the little backwoods schoolhouse, pricked across the field with bayonets, out of the children's view, and shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an outrage almost the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the _Chesapeake_. Also, in spite of apologies, the war ships clash again. The English sloop _Little Belt_ is cruising off Cape Henry in May of 1811, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears over the sea. The _Little Belt_ pursues till she sights the commodore's blue flag of the United States frigate _President_, then she turns about; but by this time the _President_ has turned the tables on the little sloop, and is pursuing to find out what the former's conduct meant. Darkness settles over the two ships beating about the wind. "What sloop is that?" shouts an officer through a speaking trumpet from the American's decks. "What ship is _that_?" bawls back a voice through the darkness from the little Englander.