John Jay

John Jay (December 12, 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, and jurist. Considered one of the "founding fathers" of the United States, Jay served in the Continental Congress and was elected President of that body. During and after the American Revolution, he was a minister (ambassador) to Spain and France, helping to fashion American foreign policy and to secure favorable peace terms from the British and French. He co-wrote the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Jay served on the U.S. Supreme Court as the first Chief Justice of the United States from 1789 to 1795. In 1794 he negotiated the Jay Treaty with the British. A leader of the new Federalist party, Jay was elected Governor of New York state, 1795-1801. He was the leading opponent of slavery and the slave trade in New York. His first attempt to pass emancipation legislation failed in 1777, and failed again in 1785, but he succeeded in 1799, signing the law that eventually emancipated the slaves of New York; the last were freed before his death.

Early life

John Jay was born on December 12, 1745, to a wealthy family of merchants in New York City.^{citation needed} The Jay family was of French Huguenot origin, and was prominent in New York City.^{citation needed} Jay had numerous rich and prominent ancestors and relatives including his maternal grandfather Jacobus Van Cortlandt. His great grandfather was Pierre Jay, who left France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes when all his worldly property was confiscated ^[1] because of his Protestant religion. He was the 6th out of 7 births of the family.^{citation needed}

John Jay spent his childhood in Rye, New York, on his family's farm, "The Locusts," then attended King's College, the forerunner of today's Columbia University and began the practice of law in 1768 in partnership with his relative by marriage, Robert Livingston. A successful lawyer, Jay also engaged in land speculation. His first public role came as secretary to the New York committee of correspondence, where he represented the conservative faction that was interested in protecting property rights and in preserving the rule of law while resisting British violations of American rights. This faction feared the prospect of "mob rule." He believed the British tax measures were wrong and thought Americans were morally and legally justified in resisting them, but as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 he sided with those who wanted conciliation with Parliament. Events such as the burning of Norfolk, Virginia, by British troops in January 1776 pushed Jay to support independence. With the outbreak of war, he worked tirelessly for the revolutionary cause and acted to suppress the Loyalists. Thus Jay evolved into first a moderate, and then an ardent Patriot, once he realized that all the colonies' efforts at reconciliation with Britain were fruitless, and that the struggle for independence which became the American Revolution was inevitable.^[2]

His role in the American Revolution

Having established a reputation as a “reasonable moderate” in New York, Jay was elected to serve as delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses which debated whether the colonies should declare independence. He attempted to reconcile America with Britain, up until the Declaration of Independence. Jay's views became more radical as events unfolded; he became an ardent Patriot and was influential in moving New York towards independence.

Jay did not attend the Continental Congress as it debated the independence; he was needed back in New York. There he was quite busy:

Finally, John Jay served as President of the Continental Congress from December 10, 1778, to September 28, 1779. The Continental Congress turned to John Jay, an adversary of the previous president Henry Laurens, only three days after Jay become a delegate and elected him President of the Continental Congress. Eight states voted for Jay and four for Laurens.

Diplomat

On 27 September 1779, Jay resigned his office as President and was appointed Minister to Spain. He was later appointed as one of the commissioners to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain. He was one of the most important diplomats of the new nation, as minister plenipotentiary to Spain, and later as peace commissioner (in which he negotiated treaties with Spain and France). In many ways, John Jay played an indispensable role as an American Patriot during the Revolutionary War and afterwards. As one of the most scholarly and dedicated of the “founders” of the United States, he was one of the three or four most important diplomats in “winning the peace.”

Slavery

Jay was a leader against slavery after 1777, when he drafted a state law to abolish slavery; it failed as did a second attempt in 1785.^[3] Jay was the founder and president of the New York Manumission Society, in 1785. The Society organized boycotts against newpapers and merchants in the slave trade, and provided legal counsel for free blacks claimed as slaves.^[4] The Society helped enact the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York in 1799, which Jay signed into law as governor.

Jay was pushing at an open door; every member of the New York legislature (but one) had voted for some form of emancipation in 1785; they had differed on what rights to give the free blacks afterwards. Aaron Burr both supported this bill, and introduced an amendment calling for immediate abolition. The 1799 bill settled the matter by guaranteeing no rights at all. The 1799 "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery" provided that, from July 4th of that year, all children born to slave parents would be free (subject only to apprenticeship) and that slave exports would be prohibited. These same children would be required to serve the mother’s owner until age twenty-eight for males and age twenty-five for females. The law thus defined a type of indentured servant while slating them for eventual freedom.^[5] The last slaves were emancipated by July 4, 1827; the process may perhaps have been the largest emancipation in North America before 1861,^[6] except for the British Army's recruitment of runaway slaves during the American Revolution.^[7] In the close 1792 election, Jay's antislavery work hurt his election chances in upstate New York Dutch areas, where slavery was still practiced.^[8] In 1794 Jay angered southern slaveowners when, in the process of negotiating the Jay Treaty with the British, he dropped their demands for compensation for slaves owned by patriots who had been captured and carried away during the Revolution.

Jay made a practice of buying slaves and then freeing them when they were adults and he judged their labors had been a reasonable return on their price; he owned eight in 1798, the year before the emancipation act was passed. ^[9]

Secretary of Foreign Affairs

In 1784-90, Jay served as the second Secretary of Foreign Affairs, an office that after 1789 became Secretary of State. He sought to establish a strong and durable American foreign policy: to seek the recognition of the young independent nation by powerful and established foreign European powers; to establish a stable American currency and credit supported at first by financial loans from European banks; to pay back America's creditors and to quickly pay off the country's heavy War-debt; to secure the infant nation's territorial boundaries under the most-advantageous terms possible and against possible incursions by the Indians, Spanish, the French and the English; to solve regional difficulties among the colonies themselves; to secure Newfoundland fishing rights; to establish a robust maritime trade for American goods with new economic trading partners; to protect American trading vessels against piracy; to preserve America's reputation at home and abroad; and to hold the country together politically under the fledgling Articles of Confederation.

Jay's heavy responsibility was not, however, matched by a commensurate level of authority, which helped to convince him that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was unworkable. Thus, he joined Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in attacking the Articles. He argued in his Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the Subject of the Federal Constitution that the Articles of Confederation were too weak and ineffective a form of government. He contended that:

Kaminsky (2002) argues that Jay was the de facto "prime minister" with the primary goal of strengthening the fledgling national government. Jay believed that both at home and abroad Americans must adhere to moral principles, among them honesty, patriotism, duty, and hard work, along with obedience to God's will. At the same time he advocated economic and military strength for the United States and worked to avoid crippling foreign entanglements. Through his domestic policies, Jay hoped to remake Congress into a House of Commons. The weakness of Congress under the Articles, however, frustrated Jay, and by 1786 he became pessimistic about America's future.

During the Transition from Confederation to Constitutional government, Jay continued to serve as Secretary of Foreign Affairs well into the first administration of George Washington, in fact remaining in office until Thomas Jefferson returned from France on March 22, 1790.

Federalist Papers 1788

Jay did not attend the Constitutional Convention, but he joined Hamilton and Madison in aggressively arguing in favor of the creation of a new and more powerful, centralized, but nonetheless balanced system of government. Writing under the shared pseudonym of "Publius," they articulated this vision in the Federalist Papers, a series of eighty-five articles written to persuade the citizenry to ratify the proposed Constitution of the United States. Jay wrote five of these articles:

Jay's essays were shaped most powerfully by his training as a lawyer and his deep grasp of the importance of the figure of the lawgiver in the tradition of republican political thought. Jay combined such elements with a Christian aesthetic vision glorifying the idea of national union, a rhetorical synthesis central to The Federalist's popular appeal in political debate.^[10]

The Jay Court, 1789-1795

In 1789, George Washington nominated Jay as the first Chief Justice of the United States. As chief justice from 1789-95, John Jay was instrumental in establishing the internal procedures of the Supreme Court and setting legal precedents. Jay's most notable case was Chisholm v. Georgia, in which Jay and the Court affirmed that some of the state's sovereignty was subordinate to the United States Constitution. Unfavorable reaction to the decision led to adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, which denied federal courts authority in suits against a state by citizens of a different state or by subjects or citizens of a foreign state. Jay's decision set the groundwork for judicial review under Chief Justice John Marshall in the early 1800s.^[11]

In 1792, he was the Federalist candidate for governor of New York, but he was defeated by Democratic-Republican George Clinton. John Jay received more votes than George Clinton, but on technicalities the votes of Otsego, Tioga, and Clinton, counties were disqualified and not counted, giving George Clinton a slight majority. The state constitution said that the cast votes shall be delivered to the secretary of state "by the sheriff or his deputy," but, for example, Otsego County Sheriff Smith's term had expired, so at the time of the election, the sheriff's office had been legally vacant, and the votes could not be brought to the state capital by anybody legally authorized. Clinton partisans in the state legislature, in state courts, and federal offices were adamant to accept any argument that this would in practice subtract the constitutional right to vote from the voters in these counties, and these votes were disqualified.^[12]

The Jay Treaty of 1794 with Britain

Relations with Britain verged on war in 1794. Madison proposed a trade war, "A direct system of commercial hostility with Great Britain," assuming that Britain was so weakened by its war with France that it would agree to American terms and not declare war. ^[13] Washington rejected that policy and sent Jay as a special envoy to Great Britain to negotiate a new treaty; Jay remained Chief Justice. Alexander Hamilton, always a close collaborator with Jay, selected Jay and wrote the instructions. The main goals were to avert war with Britain, settle financial and boundary issues left over from the Revolution, open trading opportunities with British colonies in the Caribbean, and establish friendly relations with America's chief trading partner. Jay achieved those goals in the Jay Treaty. The British also achieved their main goal, which was to keep the U.S. neutral in the ongoing war between Britain and France. Jay thought, and Washington agreed, that it was the best treaty he could negotiate, and Washington signed it. The Senate, however, would ratify only if a provision restricting American shipment of cotton were removed. When Washington consulted the British minister, it turned out that the British had no objection to removing the clause. Bradford Perkins ^[14] wonders if a "more astute" negotiator might not have gotten better terms in the first place. The treaty did not resolve American grievances about neutral shipping rights and impressment. Elkins and McKitrick concluded that Britain would never have agreed to the neutral rights that Jefferson and Madison sought, and that apart from Jay "no other American could have got anything nearly as good."^[15]

The Republicans (not the modern Republican Party, and in fact would later become the Democratic Party) denounced the treaty up and down the land, but Jay, as Chief Justice, decided not to take part in the debates.^[16] The failure to get compensation for slaves taken by the British during the Revolution "was a major reason for the bitter Southern opposition." ^[17] Jefferson and Madison, fearing a commercial alliance with aristocratic Britain might undercut republicanism, led the opposition. Jay complained he could travel from Boston to Philadelphia solely by the light of his burning effigies. However, led by Hamilton, the new Federalist party strongly backed Jay and Washington, and won the battle of public opinion. ^[18] Washington put his prestige on the line behind the treaty, and Hamilton and the Federalists mobilized public opinion. The Senate ratified the treaty by a 20-10 vote (just enough to meet the 2/3 requirement.) The treaty averted war, resolved the issues of the Revolution, gave America control over its western lands, expanded trade, and brought a decade of peace and prosperous trade between America and the world's strongest naval power, Britain. Peaceful relations broke down in 1805, followed by war in 1812.

Governor of New York

While in Britain, Jay was elected governor of New York State as a Federalist. He resigned from the Supreme Court and served as governor until 1801. As Governor, he received a proposal from Hamilton to gerrymander New York for the Presidential election of that year; he marked the letter "Proposing a measure for party purposes which it would not become me to adopt," and filed it without replying.^[19]President John Adams then renominated him to the US Supreme Court; the Senate quickly confirmed him, but he declined, citing his own poor health and the court's lack of "the energy, weight, and dignity which are essential to its affording due support to the national government."^[20]

Despite Federalist nomination as governor in 1801, Jay declined and retired to the life of a gentleman farmer in Westchester County, New York. His home and part of his farm are now operated as the John Jay Homestead [4] by the New York Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and is located on NY state Route 22 in Katonah, near Bedford.

Jay died at home on May 17, 1829. He chose to be buried in a private family plot that he had established on the Rye property where he grew up, left to him in 1813 by his family and which property he in turn gave to his son, Peter Augustus Jay in 1822. This estate overlooking Long Island Sound remained in the Jay family through 1904, and today a portion of it is managed and its buildings are being restored for educational use by the Jay Heritage Center, located at 210 Boston Post Road in Rye.

Religion

In New York, Jay argued unsuccessfully in the provincial convention for a prohibition against Catholics holding office.^[22]In February

In a famous quote within a letter to John Murray dated October 12, 1816, the Chief Justice wrote, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."