America had been making no small profit during the Napoleonic wars that wrecked Europe. By wise federal legislation trade and credit gradually righted, and the neutrality of the United States permitted lucrative intercourse with all the belligerents. But American traders took their risks, and by no means came off scatheless: England and France had established mutual blockades; their ships preyed upon the Yankee blockade-runners, their captains impressed captured American seamen. England by the British Orders in Council, France by the Berlin and Milan decrees, all but put an end to our commerce, and the _coup de grâce_ threatened when, in 1807, the United States hoped to save her ships by declaring an embargo on all outgoing shipping. As between England and America, there were accusations and counter-accusations that the other country was not carrying out the provisions of their peace treaty, nor had the old Tory and Whig animosities of the Revolution had time to die; and the whole exasperating state of affairs worked out to a formal declaration of war against England in 1812. Brewster, in solemn town-meeting assembled, had inveighed thus against the Embargo Act: “That imperious necessity calls upon us loudly to remonstrate” against the embargo laws “as unjust in their nature, unequal in their operation, a cruel infringement of our most precious rights.” In impassioned words she memorialized the General Court: “Whilst the mouth of labor is forbidden to eat, the language of complaint is natural. With ruin at our doors, and poverty staring us in the face, we beseech, conjure and implore your honorable body to obtain a redress of the oppressive grievances under which we suffer.” And Brewster, having thus recorded her protest, felt herself free to join in the sport of evading the new law. It was a boat owned there, captured by a revenue cutter and taken into Provincetown, that was recaptured by the owners who had hurriedly fitted up a packet as a man-of-war, and cleared off for her port of Surinam, while the United States Marshal whistled for any satisfaction he could get.