Sailors marched through the streets clamoring for bread or loaded their vessels and fought their way to sea.

In New York the streets of the waterside were deserted, ships dismantled, countinghouses unoccupied, and warehouses empty.

In one year foreign commerce decreased in value from $108,000,000 to $22,000,000.
After fifteen months Congress repealed the law, substituting a Non-Intercourse Act which suspended trade with Great Britain and France until their offending orders were repealed.

All such measures were doomed to be futile.

Words and documents, threats and arguments could not intimidate adversaries who paid heed to nothing else than broadsides from line-of-battle ships or the charge of battalions.