Four years later occurred the encounter between the _President_ and _Little Belt_. The former vessel had been sent out from Annapolis to demand from the _Guerriere_ the surrender of a seaman whom the British were said to have impressed. It encountered instead a ship which showed no colors, and which it overtook just at nightfall. The unknown craft refused to answer the American hail; shots were exchanged--both captains later claimed to have been fired upon first; and at daybreak the _President_ found that it had cut to pieces a little British corvette of half its strength. Again the general excitement was intense. The _Evening Post_ admitted that people were too inflamed to listen to a cool discussion of laws and propriety. But in this instance it inclined to the British view. Not only did Coleman maintain that the _President_ had been sent out with indefensible orders, being instructed to reclaim the impressed sailor by force if necessary; he held that the _Little Belt_ had been justified in requiring the American ship to reveal its identity first, inasmuch as the _Little Belt_ was exposed to a surprise attack by a French cruiser.
As the leading spokesman for the commercial community in New York, the _Evening Post_ of course bitterly opposed the embargo. This stoppage of all foreign trade stunned the city. The day after the news came, Coleman referred to the universal “uncertainty, apprehension, dismay, and distress,” in which “every one is running eagerly to his neighbor to inquire after information.” He declared that it would bankrupt the merchants, and reduce thousands of laboring men to starvation. What! no more ships to leave any Manhattan slips, no more barges of grain to drop down the Hudson for foreign marts, no more droves of hogs and herds of cattle to be driven through Westchester for slaughtering and consignment abroad? The editor hastened to write a stinging article, and then, after consulting leading Federalists, put it aside in favor of an unsigned series by Rufus King.
It was pointed out that the embargo meant a direct loss of fifty millions a year, a sum that would build a navy amply sufficient to protect American rights at sea from France and Great Britain. The _Evening Post_ painted a highly colored picture of the ruin of the city’s shippers and wholesalers, the distress of shipwrights, shopkeepers, clerks, and cartmen, and the despair of Hudson Valley farmers. It ridiculed the notion that the embargo was a valuable implement for negotiation with England. The British markets were well supplied, and Britons were secretly rejoicing that the new American policy gave them a monopoly of the world’s commerce. “Why is the United States like a pig swimming?” asked Coleman. “Because it cuts its own throat.” The embargo certainly had no such effect abroad as its sponsors hoped. From France it brought only the Bayonne decree, by which more than two hundred American ships were seized in French-controlled waters--an outrage of which the _Evening Post_ made much; in England the shipping and farming interests were greatly benefited. As Rufus King predicted, it not only threw whole business communities into bankruptcy, but emptied the national treasury and depleted the strength of the nation. When the spring election came on, the _Post_ announced a motto for Federalists which might have been made into the first American party platform: “No Embargo--No Foreign Influences--No Mystery--Freedom of Debate--Freedom of Suffrage--Freedom of Navigation and Trade--Liberty and Independence.”