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Indiana University Studies 
brief debate, in which senators from Louisiana, New York, 
North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire 
supported the measure, it was finally amended so as to extend 
to Lower Canada as well, and was then passed by a vote of 
40 to 1, the one vote in opposition coming from Senator Wil- 
son of New Jersey. It is thus evident that there was no 
sectionalism in the consideration of this restrictive measure. 
The appeal thruout was to the spirit of American nationalism, 
a fact which is admirably shown by the concluding words of 
Senator Barbour of Virginia: ‘Uur success is in our hands. 
To yield is to commit our character, and to entail the yoke 
upon us forever. To persevere is to triumph. Between such 
alternatives an American Senate cannot hesitate in its 
choice.’^®^ 
In the House, the Senate bill superseded that which had 
been reported earlier by the Committee on Commerce, the 
chairman. Representative Newton of Virginia, reporting the 
Senate bill immediately without amendment. With very little 
debate it was finally passed by a vote of 94 to 25. The opposi- 
tion was scattered: eight from the South, four from the 
Middle West, and thirteen from north of the Mason and Dixon 
Line.*^^ 
This act, which was made supplementary to the original 
navigation act of 1818, received the approval of President 
Monroe on May 15, 1820. By its provisions the ports of the 
United States were closed, after September 30, 1820, against 
British vessels coming from ports in Lower Canada, New 
Brunswick, Novia Scotia, Newfoundland, St. Johns or Cape 
Breton, Bermuda, the Bahama Islands, the Caicos Islands, or 
any British possession in the West Indies or in America south 
of the southern boundary of the United States. No goods 
were to be imported from the prohibited places unless they 
were wholly the growth, produce, or manufacture of the colony 
where laden and whence directly imported.®^ It was a non- 
intercourse in British vessels with all the British American 
colonies, and a prohibition of all articles the produce of those 
colonies except the produce of each imported directly from 
itself. Colonial articles might not even be taken to England 
and thence exported to the United States, 
^“Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I, 596, 597. 
63 Ihid., I, 584. 
II, 1822, 1836, 2240. 
63 Public Statutes at Large, III, 602-604. 
