I feel like such an action, especially considering the deaths of 100 us active servicemen, would be a just cause for war, but no such thing happened until after Pearl Harbor, over a month later.
There was some outcry. Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about it. But the Rueben James was escorting a convoy from a belligerent country to another belligerent country. The torpedo was actually meant for a merchant ship. It wasn’t widely seen as an attack on the United States - and Americans at this point staunchly supported neutrality. Pearl Harbor, on the other hand, forced Congress to declare war.