Dec. 12, 1745—
John Jay, who came late to the
cause of American independence but then assured its security by negotiating its
key early treaties, advocating for a strong central government, and serving as
the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was born in New York City.
The son of a New York aristocrat of Huguenot descent and successful lawyer
in his own right, Jay exerted significant influence in the Continental Congress
and in the period between the end of the American Revolution and the
establishment of the federal government. But he was not in Philadelphia for the
two early events that marked the founding of the nation: the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.
That factor meant that his birthday would not be
celebrated by schoolchildren or that he would become the subject of a musical,
in the way that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton have entered the
inner circle of best-remembered Americans of the Revolutionary period.
For instance, before I started researching this post,
what I knew about Jay could be boiled down to a few bullet points:
*his years of birth and date;
*his education at King’s College (later Columbia
University, where a residence hall is named after him);
*his service as governor of New York State;
*his short stint as the first Chief Justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court;
*his negotiation of an extremely controversial treaty
with Great Britain named after him.
In my opinion, few Patriots were held in higher regard
among their peers—or have been as neglected by the general public today—as Jay.
He deserves far better than this, though, and I hope with this post to raise
consciousness, at least among my readers, of his achievements.
A Scottish visitor to the United States, Henrietta
Liston, described him in this way at the height of his career in 1796: “his
appearance is rather singular; in dress and manners strikingly like a Quaker; –His
eye penetrating, his conversation sensible and intelligent.” That was the same impression
he made on those he encountered in the law, government and diplomacy.
As a member of the Continental Congress, Jay had
helped create the “Olive Branch Petition,” a last-ditch attempt at
reconciliation with England. But with independence declared, he cast his lot
irrevocably with the Patriots. He was held in such high regard by other
delegates at the Congress that he was chosen to lead it in 1778.
The four figures carved into Mount Rushmore were
meant, according to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, to commemorate “the founding,
growth, preservation, and development to the United States of America.” But if
a non-President could be added to the group, Jay would deserve serious
consideration.
His triumph in negotiating the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War lay not merely in securing American independence, but also the country’s right
to all the territory east of the Mississippi, south of Canada and north of
Florida. That immediately made the new nation geographically larger—richer in
resources—than Britain, France and Spain.
And Jay did this under challenging circumstances. The
other American treaty diplomats were not there at first to join him (Henry
Laurens had been captured at sea by the British, John Adams was negotiating a
loan with the Dutch, and Franklin came down with a bad case of gout), and
Congress had instructed him to do nothing without involving America’s French
ally. But Jay succeeded in making Spain (France’s other ally) and Britain, go
along with his non-negotiable demand for the area east of the Mississippi.
The best compressed depiction I know of for Jay comes
from historian Joseph J. Ellis’ The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, which praised his “massive probity” and
“persistent geniality.” Even a crankier appraisal, in Forrest McDonald’s The Formation of the American Republic, 1776-1790, before calling him (with
little to no substantiation) “pompous and pathetically vain,” also referred to
him as “a brilliant and almost pathologically honest New York aristocrat, [and]
a dedicated nationalist.”
Jay’s well-known nationalism led to him being frozen
out of the New York delegation at the Constitutional Convention by Gov. George
Clinton, the closest figure at that time to what we consider a political boss.
But he could not be taken out of the fight for long.
Sickness prevented Jay from writing more than five of
the eventual 85 essays in the key pro-Constitution documents, The Federalist Papers, but—as the
politician who had spent the longest time in the public eye and the senior
member of the trio—he was more crucial in lending prestige to the early stages
of the ratification struggle than the younger contributors to the project, James Madison and Hamilton. He and
Hamilton then proved shrewd in delaying New York’s vote until a positive vote
by Virginia persuaded delegates at New York’s convention in Poughkeepsie that
they should not be isolated from the new nation.
With ratification secured, George Washington offered
Jay any position he wanted in the new government. The former Chief Justice of
New York’s Supreme Court took the similar position at the national level.
Due to circumstances largely beyond Jay’s control,
that choice proved frustrating. During Jay’s five years on the court, he and
the associate justices ruled on only four cases. Not only were justices
expected to “ride circuit”—i.e., hold hearings twice a year in one of three
judicial districts—but some (e.g., James Wilson) missed attendance because of
land speculations and the resulting need to avoid debt collectors.
The issues that Jay faced in his quarter-century career
continue, in one way or another, to figure in American political dialogue:
*A strong, united federal government. Jay’s
anxiety in watching the young nation flounder under the Articles of
Confederation led him to press for a stronger form of government, in what
eventually became the Constitution. He warned, in Federalist No. 3,
against the nation fracturing into “three or four independent and probably
discordant republics or confederacies.” He looked to the trans-Allegheny
territory just won at the negotiating table as a means of binding the nation together
further through commerce. When he lost his first race for governor of New York
in 1792 because of questionable vote counting, he urged his supporters to
accept the results with grace. All of this stands in marked contrast to the
current post-election atmosphere in which Presidential vote counts are endlessly litigated
and Rush Limbaugh has talked loosely about secession.
*The proper government response to health
emergencies. As New York Governor, Jay faced a stark challenge during the
yellow fever epidemics of the mid-1790s. In a blog post in March of this year,
Robb Haberman, associate editor of The Papers of John Jay, analyzed how Jay
transitioned state health policy from private philanthropy to government
action, through measures instituting a quarantine and better sanitation.
*Race relations. Jay had inherited slaves from
his father, but by the mid-1780s he had publicly turned against the practice, becoming
the first president of the New York Manumission Society. As governor of the
state, he finally won passage, after five tries, in 1799 of a law calling for
emancipation in the state to take effect in 20 years.
*Congressional opposition to treaties negotiated by
Presidential envoys. The Iranian nuclear deal, concluded by Barack Obama
and abandoned by Donald Trump, does not come remotely close to engendering the
same level of controversy as the Jay Treaty. Jay accepted Washington’s
request to negotiate with Great Britain reluctantly, and only because he
believed it would be the only way to avert war only a decade after the American
Revolution had ended. The outcome of the negotiations— requiring
Britain to stop “impressing” or capturing sailors, but granting “most favored nation” status as trading partners—formed one of the wedge issues spurring the
rise of Thomas Jefferson’s more Gallic-oriented faction, the
Democratic-Republican Party.
As he left office in 1801, John Adams appointed Jay to
return as Chief Justice. But Jay declined, citing his poor health and the lack
of the “the energy, weight, and dignity” needed to support the court. That
opened the door for John Marshall to take the post.
Jay lived another 28 years, but was deeply saddened
that shortly after his retirement from public life he lost his beloved wife
Sarah. Yet now he was content to enjoy, untrammeled, private life as a
gentleman farmer.
