Excerpt
An embargo be, and hereby is, laid on all ships and vessels in the ports and places within the limits or jurisdiction of the United States ...Historical wording and forms retained where stated.
A World Already at War
Documentary edition · packet 01
The Embargo Act
Congress tried to use access to American commerce as a substitute for war. The statute's sweeping language helps explain why neutral-rights policy produced intense domestic coercion before it produced leverage abroad.
22 December 1807Federal statuteRead the chapter →
Modernized reading
All ships and vessels within United States jurisdiction were forbidden to depart for foreign trade.Plain-language reading; not a substitute for quotation.
Editorial method: Excerpt from section 1. Capitalization is reduced; the ellipsis marks the omitted remainder of the statutory sentence.
Annotations
- embargoA state prohibition on ships entering or leaving ports for trade.
- jurisdictionThe geographic and legal reach within which the United States claimed authority.
Witness and provenance
- Creator
- Tenth Congress of the United States
- Witness used
- The enrolled act as printed in United States Statutes at Large, volume 2, page 451.
- Repository or edition
- Library of Congress
- Collection
- United States Statutes at Large
- Identifier
- 2 Stat. 451, sec. 1
- Transmission
- Enrolled federal law printed in the Statutes at Large. The repository scan is the cited witness.
- Rights
- Public-domain United States government record.