The matter of impressments then began to receive the attention which had never yet been given it. Hitherto neither Government nor people had thought necessary to make a _casus belli_ of impressments. Orders in Council and other measures of Great Britain which affected American property had been treated as matters of vital consequence; but as late as the close of 1811, neither the President, the Secretary of State, nor Congress had yet insisted that the person of an American citizen was as sacred as his property. Impressments occurred daily. No one knew how many native-born Americans had been taken by force from the protection of the American flag; but whether the number was small or great, neither Republican nor Federalist had ventured to say that the country must at all hazards protect them, or that whatever rules of blockade or contraband the belligerents might adopt against property, they must at least keep their hands off the persons of peaceable Americans whether afloat or ashore. President Madison had repeated, until the world laughed in his face, that Napoleon no longer enforced his decrees, and that therefore if England did not withdraw her blockade, war would result; but he had never suggested that America would fight for her sailors. When he and his supporters in earnest took up the grievances of the seamen, they seemed to do so as an afterthought, to make out a cause of war against England, after finding the public unwilling to accept the cause at first suggested. However unjust the suspicion might be, so much truth existed in this Federalist view of Madison’s course as warranted the belief that if England in July, 1811, had yielded to the demand for commercial freedom, the Government would have become deaf to the outcry of the imprisoned seamen. Only by slow degrees, and in the doubtful form of a political manœuvre, did this, the worst of all American grievances, take its proper place at the head of the causes for war. Winter drew near, finding the public restless, irritable, more than half afraid of its own boldness, but outspoken at last. British frigates once more blockaded New York, seizing ships and impressing men without mercy, while the British prize-courts, after a moment’s hesitation, declared that the French Decrees were not repealed, and that American vessels sailing to France were good prize. Under these irritations the temper of the American press became rapidly worse, until war was declared to be imminent, and the conquest of Canada became the favorite topic of newspaper discussion.