Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States from 1801 to 1809; in the latter year he was succeeded by James Madison, who was President for the ensuing eight years. III THE TRAGEDY THE echoes of the Napoleonic wars raging throughout Europe during the period before and after our war with Great Britain were heard even in this far-away region of the western frontier. England and her continental allies were engaged in a gigantic struggle with France under Napoleon, then at the height of his power. For the purpose of crippling her adversary England issued, in 1807, her famous Orders in Council, which declared that the vessels of neutral nations were liable to seizure if engaged in trade with the enemy. Napoleon retaliated by issuing the equally famous Decrees of Berlin and Milan, which declared Great Britain to be in a state of blockade, and that all vessels bound to or from British ports were liable to capture. To enforce the Orders in Council was a comparatively easy task for the English navy, then as now the most powerful among the nations; and in consequence the ocean commerce of the Americans suffered severely, for at that time every ocean highway was thronged with the merchant ships of the United States. The interference with our commerce was greatly aggravated by the high-handed action of the English in forcibly taking away from our ships many of their seamen and pressing them into the service of the English navy. This grievance especially became so exasperating that the war spirit of the American people was aroused from one end of the land to the other. But the protests of the Americans, though made to both England and France, were disregarded, and it was realized that war could not be avoided with one or the other of those nations. Indeed, the proposal was frequently made in the press and in Congress that the country ought to declare war against both powers in view of the outrages suffered by our people. "The insolence of the powerful belligerents toward the young republic of the United States was hard to endure," says Larned, though "the conduct of the French Government was more insulting, if possible, and more injurious, than that of Great Britain." But the American people, still inspired by the feelings inherited from the Revolutionary strife, seemed more incensed at the treatment they received from the English than from the French. The sparse settlements of the West and the isolated posts on the frontier were confronted with a more serious and imminent menace to their safety than were the inhabitants of the older portions of the country on the Atlantic seaboard. They beheld the war cloud gathering, with a dreadful apprehension of the certainty that it would bring upon them a sanguinary conflict with the savages of the wilderness.