Americans naturally began to take sides with the French.

Worse still, from the American point of view, was the
British Right of Search, which meant the right of searching
neutral merchant vessels either in British waters or on
the high seas for deserters from the Royal Navy. Every
other people whose navy could enforce it had always
claimed a similar right. But other peoples' rights had
never clashed with American interests in at all the same
way. What really roused the American government was not
the abstract Right of Search, but its enforcement at a
time when so many hands aboard American vessels were
British subjects evading service in their own Navy. The
American theory was that the flag covered the crew wherever
the ship might be. Such a theory might well have been
made a question for friendly debate and settlement at
any other time. But it was a new theory, advanced by a
new nation, whose peculiar and most disturbing entrance
on the international scene could not be suffered to upset
the accepted state of things during the stress of a
life-and-death war. Under existing circumstances the
British could not possibly give up their long-established
Right of Search without committing national suicide.
Neither could they relax their own blockade so long as
Napoleon maintained his. The Right of Search and the
double blockade of Europe thus became two vexed questions
which led straight to war.

But the American grievances about these two questions
were not the only motives impelling the United States to