John Jay
Pellew, George, 1859-1892
f ■' TC 7 7 p. ^ «• ^ «■ /; f '■■ y,. V ^' >-^ A >''‘: ’' i'- ’'' ^ ^ ' t& ' 4>- '>■ ^ ^ ' 'te t& ^ ik ^ ^ /^. V\F R f r’‘; 4 ■ St & TV S M F N * J t.j. ^ K.'i- >r X \ '-v V.* > *■ >, 'i ^ -'V*-" •'.*< '4'«" >* » • ft* H V , \ 6 ' ; 'V ■ '« l;.7 * ■WM-Jy 7': MORSE, m REFERENCE LIBRARY OF HOUGH TON MIFFLIN COMPANY 2 Park Street, Boston NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE SHELVES EXCEPT BY PERMISSION CF THE LIBRARIAN \ amencan ^tatejsmen EDITED BT JOHN T. MORSE, JR. Ilmcrican ifetatcifmcn JOHN JAY BY GEOEGE PELLEW BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Cbc Camliribfle Copyright, 1890, Bl GEORGE PELLEW. AU rights restrved. PEEFACE. ■■ ■ The public life of John Jay was so active and varied that it is almost impossible to compress the essential facts into small compass without losing much of their interest and suggestiveness. Moreover, he was by disposition so reticent and unimpulsive, so completely self-controlled, that there is scarcely any material for constructing a history of his inner private life. He was singularly free from those faults which, trivial or serious, attract men’s love by exciting their sympathy or pity. Conscientious, upright, just, and wise, John Jay, like Washington, survives in the popular imagination as an abstract type of propriety ; and his fair fame has been a con¬ spicuous mark for all who are offended by hear¬ ing an Aristides always called the Just, or who, from an a priori notion of history, believe that statesmen have always been as corrupt, civic IV PREFACE. virtue as tainted, and politics as demoralizing as they are in our time. In this belief there is undoubtedly much truth, — but there are excep¬ tions to most rules, or rather what is true of a generation in the average is never true of every individual comprised in it, — and a careful study confirms the contemporary opinion that the character of Jay was, unfortunately for mankind, exceptional. Any life of John Jay must, of course, be based on the two volumes of his Life and Letters by his son. Judge William Jay ; but an undue sense of the sanctity of domestic life prevented then the publication of anything not clearly of a public, almost of an official, nature. Subse¬ quently, as the Works and Letters appeared of Washington, John Adams, Madison, Jeffer¬ son, Fisher Ames, and the other Revolutionary patriots, and the gleanings of Sparks and others from the government papers, more light was thrown on the motives and movements of the time, and Jay’s life was rewritten by Flanders, who dispelled, almost for the first time, the odium, begotten by partisanship of ignorance, PREFACE. that so long assailed the memory of the early Federalists. Certain popular prejudices still survived from the days when blind devotion to France, a veritable “ love frenzy,” was a test of party fealty, and these prejudices obscured any clear view of the peace negotiations of 1782. Sparks, editing official documents, interjected with misleading positiveness a note that Jay’s suspicions of France were unfounded, — and this suggestion, itself unfounded, has until re¬ cently been followed implicitly by historians, even by Mr. Bancroft. A hundred years after the event, papers from the French archives pub¬ lished by De Circourt, the correspondence be¬ tween Vergennes and Luzerne, Fitzherbert and Fox, Oswald and Shelburne, in the “Stevens MSS.” and the revelations in Fitzmaurice’s “ Life of Shelburne,” enabled the Honorable John Jay to prove the absolute correctness of his grandfather’s convictions, and the consequent necessity of the course of action he adopted. This new information has not yet been incorpo¬ rated into any life of Jay. Within the last year the third volume has vi PREFACE. been published of Doniors “ La participation de la France dans I’etablissement de l’ind4pendance des Etats-Unis/’ which contains the official doc¬ uments relating to the treaty of Aranjuez, eluci¬ dating with extreme fullness the relations be¬ tween the courts of Paris and Madrid in the critical years of 1778, 1779. The “Jay MSS.,” from which a selection is now preparing for pub¬ lication, and an elaborate digest, with quota¬ tions, of the “ Stevens MSS.,” have also been studied with minute care ; and to these sources, and to the constant valuable suggestions and criticisms of my uncle, the Honorable John Jay, is due whatever of new or original may be found here. George Pellew. New York, March 1, 1890. CONTENTS CHAFTRB rAGB I. Youth, 1745-1774 . 1 II. Conservative Whig Leader, 1774-1776 . 23 III. Revolutionary Leader, 1776-1779 . . .59 IV. Constructive Statesman, 1778, 1779 . . 76 V. President of Congress, 1779 .... 105 VI. Minister to Spain, 1779-1782 . . . 120 VII. Negotiator of Peace; The Attitude of France in 1782 144 VIII. The Negotiations, 1782, 1783 . . . 166 IX. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1784-1789 . 229 X. Chief Justice of the United States, 1789- 1795 . 262. XI. Special Envoy to Great Britain, 1794, 1795 294 XII. Governor of New York, 1795-1801 . . 318 XIII. In Retirement, 1801-1829 . • • . 340 JOHN JAY. CHAPTER L YOUTH. 1745-1774. John Jay, the eighth child and sixth son of Peter Jay and Mary, the daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt, was born in the city of New York, on the 12th of December, 1745. His father was a wealthy merchant, who retired from business at the age of forty to live at a country house and farm at Rye in Westchester County. The family was of French descent; the great grandfather, Pierre Jay, a Huguenot merchant of La Rochelle, left France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the greater part of his property was confiscated, and died in England. The grandfather, Augus¬ tus, after many hazardous adventures, settled in New York in 1686, where he married Anna Maria Bayard, a descendant of a Protestant 2 JOHN JAY. professor of theology at Paris, who had like¬ wise chosen to leave his country for religion’s sake, making his home in Holland. Through his wife’s relations, the Bayards and Stuyve- sants, and his brother-in-law, Stephen Peloquin, a merchant of Bristol, England, Augustus Jay soon formed a large business connection. From Bristol came invoices of kerseys and mohairs, hats, gloves, and beer ; to the Barbadoes he shipped flour, bread, pork and hams, receiving in return cargoes of sugar and rum ; and occa¬ sionally his ships made adventures to Surinam. Peter Jay soon became a partner with his father ; in 1740 his name appears as one of the aider- men of the city of New York ; and the family was allied with the manorial families of Van Cortlandt and Philipse, to which was soon to be added the most influential of all, the family of Livingston. From Peter Jay, who seems to have been a typical New York merchant of the last century, “ a gentleman of opulence, character, and repu¬ tation,” ^ his son John inherited many marked traits of character, as is testified by the now yel¬ lowing pages of the old merchant’s letter book. In letters to his son James,^ in England, even ^ Jones, History of New York, ii. 223. 2 Afterwards knighted for his success in raising funds in England for King’s College, now Columbia College, a member YOUTH. 3 in the brief business-like notices of the death of relations, is shown the piety of the man and of the family : “ Let us endeavor to adhere to the worship of God, and, observing his holy ordi¬ nances as the rule of our lives, let us disregard the wicked insinuations of libertines, who not only deride our most Holy Religion and the professors of it, but also endeavor to gain prosi- lites to their detestable notions, and so rob the Almighty of the honour and adoration that is due to him from his creatures.” ^ Now and then a casual sentence opens a tiny chink through the shutters that close so tightly round that little family circle. “ When you come home,” his father reminds James, “ don’t forget to bring me Bishop Patrick’s Devout Christian, a book you doubtless well remember, as it contains the family prayers we always use.” ^ “I desire you,” he says a few months later, “to make me a present ... of a box with five or six groce of neat long pipes, but not very long and weighty, and to your mother an oval tortoise shell snuff box, with a joint to the lid, the length of the box not exceeding six of the New York Senate, and a physician of distinction in New York. 1 To James Jay, December 7, 1751, Letter Book of Peter Jay, iii. 2 September 2, 1754. 4 JOUN JAY. inches.” ^ One wonders whether James, when he returned after many years, did remember that snuif box so minutely described, and whether it was the recollection of those “neat long pipes” that made John Jay always so fond of long “ Church wardens.” Occasionally politics are mentioned. There is, however, nothing but loyal enthusiasm for the success of the troops during the French War, honest regard for the successive governors, and regret for their mistakes and mischances, espe¬ cially for the fate of Sir Danvers Osborne, “ our late new Governor,” who “ very unhappily com¬ mitted a violence upon himself, and was found in a melancholy situation fastened with his hand¬ kerchief.” ^ But from the date of the Stamp Act and the measures restrictive of trade, that were passed simultaneously with its repeal, the tone gradually changed. “ Our colonists cannot digest the hard measure they are dealt with in Parliament at home, when at the same time they think the sugar islands are gTeatly in¬ dulg’d to their prejudice. . . . The political views of the great, in measures in disfavour of the Colonyes, are to me impenetrable ; they may, for aught I can conceive, tend to very satisfactory ends, but they are considered here by the most ^ November 26, 1754. ^ To David Peloquin, October 24, 1753. YOUTH. 5 judicious in a very different light, as the un- happy occasion of making very bad impressions on the minds of the people, and the laying a foundation for much trouble, that will sooner or later be the inevitable consequence of too harsh usage. In my situation in life, the measures complained of can very inconsiderably affect me, and thus far they give me no concern, but nevertheless I can’t help having a feeling for the great numbers who are likely to suffer by them.” ^ The hard times that followed are noticed briefly : “ The reasonableness of a gen¬ eral complaint of the difficult times in these Colonyes by the great restrictions lay’d on trade, etc., begins to manifest itself by frequent fail¬ ures, and by a shocking general bad pay among the people ; ” ^ and as the year advances to its close, the language becomes stronger, and the keen-eyed merchant begins to see pretty clearly the meaning of what is taking place. “ The general and spirited resentment that prevails in the Colonyes,” he writes on November 25, 1765, “ gives reason to expect that the enforcing the Stamp Act will be opposed at all events, and then England as well as the Colonyes may both have reason to curse the first promoters of it, who by this impolitick act have effectually ^ To David Peloquin, May 7, 1765. 2 To same, June 4, 1765. 6 JOHN JAY. united the several Colonyes into the strongest tyes of mutual interest and friendship, which political measures of former Ministrys, we al¬ ways thought, tended to prevent.” ^ Peter Jay, then, was a sound Whig from the beginning, and his son naturally took the same independent stand. When the final appeal to arms came, Peter Jay remained true to his Whig principles, though no extremist. “ God grant,” he wrote to John, in the spring of 1776, “ that all attempts of the ministerial troops may be frustrated, and be the means of a happy reconciliation,” 2 a curiously illogical wish, but one that reflected closely the Whig popular opinion of a few months earlier, and which was, even then, the wish of both father and son, and of a majority of the Congress. One letter more may be quoted, full of char¬ acter, and of character that did not die with the writer. It was written in 1771, to his son John, and is about a dispute with a neighbor, in itself unimportant : — ‘‘ Dear Johnny, — Your brother tells me Mr. Bayard and you have agreed about the road. The settlement of our lott never was an object to me, and had that gentleman condescended to ask me for a road as a matter of favour he should have had it. 1 To David Peloquin. 2 AprU 18, 1776, Jay MSS. YOUTH. 7 His attempt to draw me into the measure by regard to my own interest, was a little piece of art which I was determined should not succeed. . . . Design is not his talent, he had better act with candor and openness. His threats of an Act of Assembly and an Application to the Corporation, were better calcu¬ lated to excite ridicule than fear. I have nothing to ask or fear from any man, and will not be compelled into measures. The truth of his former pretences appears now from his consenting to pay so dearly for a road ; tell him he may have his land and a road too.” 1 Piety, independence, and a keen sense of jus¬ tice were natural birthrights in the Jay family ; to these several generations of successful busi¬ ness men had added the more worldly virtues of prudence and perseverance, while from his father John Jay seems to have inherited a firm¬ ness of character which, in excess, would have been obstinacy, and a strength of feeling seldom suspected because united with unusual self-con¬ trol. It is also noticeable that of Jay’s great grandparents not one was English, three were French and five Dutch, so that he was one of the few men of the Revolution who could say, as he did in 1796, “not being of British de¬ scent, I cannot be infiuenced by that tendency towards their national character, nor that par- ^ To John Jay, 1771 Jay MSS. 8 JOHN JAY, tiality for it, which might otherwise be supposed to be not unnatural.” This fact in itself, com¬ bined with the hatred of interference traditional among merchants, may have had no little influ¬ ence in making John Jay a leader in the Amer¬ ican Revolution without his ceasing to be, or rather because he was, a conservative. The year of his birth he was taken to Rye, and there his early childhood was passed in the old Jay house, which at that time was “ a long low building, bufc one room deep,” extended, as the family increased, by some eighty feet in length.^ After surviving an attack of sore throat, of which a younger sister died, and es¬ caping the dreaded smallpox that left his brother Peter and his sister Nancy totally blind, he was taught by his mother “ the rudiments of Eng¬ lish, and the Latin grammar.” “ Johnny is of a very grave disposition and takes to learning exceedingly well,” wrote his father, when the boy was nearly seven years old ; “ he will be soon fit to go to a grammar school ; ” ^ and to a grammar school he accordingly went the next year. “ My J ohnny gives me a very pleasing prospect,” wrote Mr. J ay again in the autumn ; “ he seems to be endowed with a very good ca¬ pacity, is very reserved and quite of his brother ^ Scharf, Hist, of Westchester Co., ii. 672. * To James Jay, July 3, 1752. YOUTH. 9 James’s disposition for books.” ^ The school was kept by the Rev. Peter Stoope, the pastor of the French Huguenot Church, then lately joined to the Episcopal Communion, at New Rochelle. He was by birth a Swiss, an eccentric man, very absent-minded and wholly devoted to mathe¬ matics, so that the parsonage was allowed to fall into decay, and the boys were half -starved under the management of his wife, “ who was as pe¬ nurious as he was careless.” To keep the snow off his bed in winter, John used to stuff the broken panes of his window with bits of wood. But the plain food agreed with him, his health was excellent, and he used to recall afterwards the pleasure he had in the woods picking nuts, which “ he carried home in his stockings.” French was spoken generally at the parsonage and by the people of the village, who were, as its name suggests, chiefly descendants of French refugees ; thus he easily and early learned the language that was to prove so useful to him. At New Rochelle he stayed for three years, when he was taken home to Rye, and prepared for college by a tutor, Mr. George Murray. J ay entered King’s (now Columbia) College, in 1760, when he was but a little over fourteen years old. For admission he was required to read “ the first three of Tally’s orations, and the six 1 To Messrs. D. & L. Peloquin, Oct. 24, 1753. 10 JOHN JA Y. first books of Virgil’s jJEnoids into English, and the ten first chapters of St. John’s Gospel into Latin,” to be well versed in Latin grammar, and to be “ expert in Arithmetick as far as Re¬ duction.” At that time the college was under its first president, the learned and pious Dr. Samuel Johnson, an old friend of Mr. Peter Jay, whose eldest son Augustus had studied reading and writing at the doctor’s parsonage at Stratford. Dr. Johnson was a gentle, studi¬ ous man, who had been one of the first gradu¬ ates of Yale College to desert Congregational¬ ism for the Church of England. Single-handed at first, then with one and afterwards two assist¬ ants, he instructed the few students of King’s College, and was just gaining some success, when he resigned on the death of his wife of the smallpox, which for some years had been epi¬ demic in New York, and for fear of which he scarcely ever ventured out of doors.^ Young Jay early won his regard, and on Dr. Johnson’s resignation in 1763, he learned from his father that the doctor wished to hear from him. “ I would have you gratify him with a letter, which he has a right to expect from you, and, although I believe things go well in the college now,” Mr. Jay suggested with characteristic caution, “yet I would not have you write more than ^ Baird, Jj 'yfe of Dr. Samuel Johnson. YOUTH. 11 may be communicated out of college.” ^ The boy wrote accordingly, and the late president answered promptly, incidentally showing how early, with its unfamiliar strains of wild ro¬ mance, McPherson’s bombastic Ossian charmed the fancy even in America : “ I gave Brooks a much better and more correct copy of what I had added to Ossian’s Address to the Sun than what you had before, from which I wish you and all of them would exactly transcribe for the future.” ^ Of Jay’s college life little is known. During the first two years he lodged at the house of Lawrence Romer, a painter, at “ the corner of Verlettenburgh Hill and Broadway,” and the last two years he had rooms in the college. He set himself at once, of his own accord, to curing certain defects of utterance and rapid reading, and he made an enthusiastic study of English composition, a study that bore fruit in the graceful and easy, but at the same time often laconic style for which he was noted, and which in the first Continental Congress at once placed him in “ the little aristocracy of talents and letters ” with William Livingston and Dickinson.^ “ My son John has now been two ^ Augtist, 1763, Jay MSS. 2 From Rev. Dr. S. Johnson, Oct. 27, 1763, Jay MSS, ® John Adams's Works, x. 79. 12 JOHN JAY. years at college,” wrote Mr. Jay, in 1765, “ where he prosecutes his studyes to satisfac¬ tion. He is indued with very good natural parts, and is bent upon a learned profession. I be¬ lieve it will be the law.” ^ In his last year at college. Jay, then “a youth remarkably sedate and well-disposed ” ^-as his father called him, de¬ termined on the law as his profession, and is said to have begun his preparation for it by carefully reading through Grotius “ De Jure Belli et Pacis,” and its discussion of inter¬ national law and so-called natural rights may have seemed to have a bearing on the perplex¬ ing and pressing problems of the day. His de¬ cision to study law was apparently the result of thought and deliberation, as Mr. Jay wrote to him on hearing of it : “ Your observations on the study of the law I believe are very just, and as it ’s your inclination to be of that profession, I hope you ’ll closely attend to it, with a firm resolution that no difficulties in prosecuting that study shall discourage you from applying very close to it, and, if possible, from taking: a delight in it.” 3 In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded as pres¬ ident by Dr. Myles Cooper, “ a wit and a ^ John Adams's Works, April 14, 1763. ^ To David Peloquin, Letter Book, May 16, 1763. » August 23, 1763, Jay MSS. YOUTH. 13 scholar,” said Verplanck, “ whose learning and accomplishments gave him personal popularity and respect with his pupils, and of course added authority to his opinions, and those were the opinions and prejudices of the high-toned Eng¬ lish University Tory of the last century.” ^ Twelve years later, to escape a mob, this good gentleman was forced to leap over the college fence with an undignified precipitation little be¬ fitting a poet and a Fellow of Oxford, and he sailed forthwith for England ; but at this ear¬ lier time he was not unpopular, and he was al¬ ways spoken of respectfully by Jay, who might naturally have resented what he then deemed a most unjust punishment in the following matter. One day a number of students in the College Hall began to break the table, — such at least is the traditional description of their nefarious enterprise. The president heard the noise, went in, and asked one student after an¬ other ; “ Did you break the table ? ” “ Do you know who did ? ” All answered “ No,” until he came to Jay, who was the last but one. To the first question Jay answered like the others, to the second question : “ Yes, sir.” “ Who was it ? ” asked Dr. Cooper. “ I do not choose to tell you, sir,” was the sturdy reply; and the next ^ Gulian Verplanck, Address before College Societies^ Aug^t 2, 1830. 14 JOHN JAY. and last boy answered as Jay did. These two were called before the professors, when Jay ar¬ gued ingeniously and reasonably enough that, as information against fellow-students was not required by the College Statutes, they were not technically guilty of disobedience in not inform¬ ing; but the professors were unconvinced, and Jay was rusticated only a short time before he was to graduate. His term of suspension over, he returned to college, and at the Commence¬ ment held in May, 1764, in the presence of General Gage, his majesty’s council, and other notables, delivered a dissertation on the bless¬ ings of peace, and received his bachelor’s degree. Two weeks after leaving college. Jay en¬ tered, as a student, the office of Benjamin Kis- sam, a barrister “ eminent in the profession,” ^ binding himself an apprentice, on the payment of <£200, to serve for five years, with liberty to apply the last two years to the study of the law, and to visit the sessions with only occasional attendance then at the office. This arranjre- ment was a happy ending of much anxiety on the part of Mr. Peter Jay, for the lawyers of New York had a few years before made an agreement to take no one as clerk who pro¬ posed to enter the profession, and a new and more liberal agreement “ under such restric- ^ Letter Book^ May 15, 1764. YOUTH. 15 tions,” however, “ as will greatly impede the lower class of the people from creeping in,” ^ was made only in time to prevent Jay from starting for England to get a professional education there. “ The office duties of clerks at that period,” according to Peter Van Schaack, who three years later was studying under William Smith of the same bar, “ were immensely laborious ; everything was written, and the drudgery of copying was oppressive. Printed blank forms, which are now used by the profession with so much economy of time and labor, were then un¬ known. Even the argument of questions of law before the Supreme Court was conducted in writing.” ^ The law books of the time were the ponderous tomes of reports and digests that preceded Blackstone’s Commentaries, which did not reach America till the third year of Jay’s apprenticeship. In this drudgery Jay had as companion for a while Lindley Murray, after¬ wards the famous grammarian, who was soon struck by the unusual qualities of his fellow-* student, qualities which, as he then noted them, were characteristic of Jay throughout a long life. “ He was remarkable,” said Murray, ^ Letter Look, May 15, 1764. 2 Life of Peter Van Schaack, by Henry Van Schaack, ppii 6, 7. 16 JOHN JAY. “for strong reasoning powers, comprehensive views, indefatigable application, and uncommon firmness of mind.” ^ With Mr. Kissam Jay, though very young and only a clerk, was before long on terms of intimacy. Many years after¬ wards, he had the pleasure of introducing Kis- sam’s son to J ohn Adams, with the remark, that tlie father was “ one of the best men I have ever known, as well as one of the best friends I have ever had.” ^ In the sixties the must of the Revolution was already fermenting, but politics were apparently ignored by both master and clerk except so far as concerned their legal business. In April, 1766, Mr. Kissam proposes going “ on a jaunt” to Philadelphia, if the news of the repeal of the Stamp Act does not arrive in the mean time ; for as, he writes, “ on the Repeal of the Stamp Act we shall doubtless have a luxuriant harvest of law, I would not willingly, after the long fam¬ ine we have had, miss reaping my part of the harvest. . . . As soon as it reaches you, I beg you’ll come down, and be ready to receive all business that offers.”^ Kissam, while absent, wrote to ask about the conduct of the office, and J ay replied in a letter that was, as he expressed ^ Autobiography of Lindley Murray. 2 To John Adams, Feb. 16, 1788, Jay MSS. » To John Jay, AprU 25, 1766, Jay MSS. YOUTH. 17 it, “ free enough in all conscience : ” “ If by wanting to know how matters go on in the office, you intend I shall tell you how often your clerks go into it, give me leave to remind you of the old law maxim, that a man’s own evidence is not to be admitted in his own cause. Why ? Because ’t is ten to one he does violence to his conscience. If I should tell you that I am all the day in your office, and as attentive to your interest as I would be to my own, I suspect you would think it such an impeach¬ ment of my modesty as would not operate very powerfully in favor of my veracity. And if, on the other hand, I should tell you that I make hay while the sun shines, and say unto my soul, ‘ Soul, take thy rest, thy lord is journeying in a far country,’ I should be much mistaken if you did not think that the confes¬ sion looked too honest to be true.” ^ The fun of a lawyer of twenty-one in 1766 does not, per¬ haps, bear quoting, but it shows the familiar, pleasant relationship he had already established with his “ master,” and the boyish gayety that was so soon, perforce, concealed by an acquired or natural gravity. It was about this time, too, that Jay by a diplomatic, though not insincere, reply got his father’s leave to keep a horse. “John, why do you want a horse?” “That ^ Jay, Zi/c! of John Jay, i. 18. 18 JOHN JAY. I may have the means, sir, of visiting you fre¬ quently.” The fact was that then, as in after years, Jay suffered from ill health, especially from dyspepsia, and found his best medicine in regular exercise. In 1768 he was admitted to the bar, and be¬ came almost immediately successful, forming at first a temporary partnership with Robert R. Livingston, afterwards Chancellor of the State, and Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Benjamin Kissam, when unable to attend to his own busi¬ ness, would often ask Jay to act for him, and a letter of his shows the nature of the cases : “ One is about a horse race, in which I suppose there is some cheat ; another is about an eloped wife ; another of them also appertains unto horse flesh. . . . There is also one writ of Inquiry.” The practice of a country lawyer to-day could scarcely be less interesting. Indeed, before the Revolution, so far as can be gathered, the chief law business, even in New York, consisted in suing out writs of ejectment, and in collecting debts due to English merchants. It was seldom that a case arose like that of Zenger, involving principles of constitutional law, and establishing the reputation of the victorious counsel. One cause only of some consequence is mentioned, in which Jay was engaged, that of a contested elec¬ tion in Westchester County, in which the right YOUTH. 19 of suffrage was discussed, and questions of evi¬ dence of more than usual intricacy arose. On this occasion J ay was opposed by his friend Gou- verneur Morris. In 1770 Jay speaks of going to Fairfield to try two causes ; ^ and in 1774 he is addressing a jury at Albany. His practice, then, v/as varied, though he was engaged in no great cases, and was at no time noted for brilliant or “ magnetic ” oratory. In after years his “ quiet, limpid style, without gesture,” attracted the at¬ tention of the younger Hamilton during the great debates on the ratification of the Consti¬ tution in the New York Convention, and, as a young lawyer, he must have been unusually clear-headed and tactful. “ All the causes you have hitherto tried,” wi’ote Kissam in 1769, “ have been by a kind of inspiration.” ^ These two still continued great friends, though some¬ times engaged on opposite sides. On one such occasion Kissam, in a moment of embarrassment, complained that he had brought up a bird to peck out his own eyes. “ Oh, no,” retorted Jay, “ not to peck out but to open your eyes.” In November, 1770, a number of lawyers in New York formed “ The Moot,” a club that met the first Friday of every month for the discus¬ sion of disputed points of law. J ay was one of 1 To Dr. Kissam, March 1, 1770, Jay MSS. ^ From Benjamin Kissam, Nov. 6, 1769, Jay MSS 20 JOHN JAT. the younger members, together with his college friends, Egbert Benson, in due time Judge of the New York Supreme Court ; Robert R. Liv¬ ingston, Jr. ; James Duane, Jay’s colleague in the Continental Congress, and first mayor of New York after the Revolution ; Gouverneur Morris, as yet without that wooden leg which he brandished with such happy effect in the face of a Paris mob ; and Peter Van Schaack, whom Jay was to exile from the State, but who loved him to the end, and wrote an epitaph on him ; while among the older lawyers, who attended occasionally, were William Smith, who later be¬ came Chief Justice of Canada, after having been confined in Livingston Manor, and banished as a Tory sympathizer; Samuel Jones, the Chief Justice, whose office was to be the training school of De Witt Clinton; John Morin Scott, the popular orator of the Liberty Boys, lawyer, patriot, and general ; William Livingston, and Benjamin Kissam. The decision of the club on a matter of practice is said to have been followed by the Superior Court ; and its sessions must have been invaluable to the younger members. Party politics of the province were a forbidden topic at the meetings, which were long remem¬ bered with delight ; ‘^a recollection,” wrote Van Schaack to Jay before many years had passed, “ of those happy scenes, of our clubs, our moots, YOUTH. 21 and our Broadway evenings, fills me with pleas¬ ing melancholy reflections, — fuimus Troes^tfuit Ilium. ^ In the mean time the young lawyer’s practice steadily increased, and in the autumn of 1771 he was able to write to Dr. Samuel Kissani, a college friend in business at Surinam : “ With respect to business I am as well circumstanced as I have a right to expect ; my old friends con¬ tribute much to my happiness, and upon the whole I have reason to be satisfied with my share of the attention of Providence.” ^ Not many lawyers of twenty-six can say so much to-day. Two years later his ofiicial or public life began with his appointment, February 17, 1773, as Secretary to the Royal Commission, to determine the disputed boundary between New York and Connecticut. The following year, April 28, 1774, at patriotically named ‘‘Liberty Hall,” Elizabeth, New Jersey, he married “the beauti¬ ful Sarah Livingston,” the youngest daughter of William Livingston, soon to be the famous rev¬ olutionary governor of New Jersey, and already well known for countless literary and political poems, letters, and essays. In the notices of the wedding, Jay, young as he was, could be de¬ scribed as “ an eminent barrister,” ^ — the same ^ Life of Peter Van Sc^aack, p. 100. 2 August 27, 1771, Jay M'SS. ® New York Gazette, May 9, 1774. 22 JOHN JAY. phrase that was applied to him a month or two later by Lieutenant Governor Golden. With this spring closes the first third of Jay’s life, of which, as curiously happened, the second third of twenty-eight years was spent wholly in the public service, and the last third wholly in retirement. So far as can be gathered from the meagre records extant, his twenty -ninth year found him a studious, quiet lawyer, devoted to his profession and but little excited by the poli¬ tics of the day. As a boy he was not precocious ; no brilliant- winged creature like Hamilton, but a lad “remarkably sedate.” His college life won him no sudden reputation like that of so many English statesmen from Pitt to Gladstone, but it did win him the love and esteem of many friends that continued till his death. Carefully and well nurtured, in the comfortable society of honorable relations and friends, occupied in the profession of his choice, successful in the love of his heart, he was now a slender, graceful man, with refined, handsome, serious face ; whose slowly matured character had ripened to well- balanced wisdom unconsciously and apparently unsuspected. By family traditions he was inde¬ pendent of England, and a Whig ; and now by marriage he was connected with the great Whig family of Livingston, which had for generations contested the province with the Tory De Lan- ceys. CHAPTER n. CONSERVATIVE WHIG LEADER. 1774-1776. “ Throughout America the constitutions favored individuality. Under the careless rule of Great Britain, habits of personal liberty had taken root, which showed themselves in the tenacity wherewith the people clung to their habits of self-government ; and so long as those usages were respected, under which they had always lived, and which they believed to be as well established as Magna Charta, there were not in all the King’s dominions more loyal sub¬ jects than W ashington, Jefferson, and J ay.” ^ In 1773, Jay was as loyal as any man “in all the King’s dominions;” in 1776, as chairman of a secret committee, he was punishing with impris¬ onment and exile many men whose only crime was retaining the opinions he himself had held three years before. Yet, in the meanwhile. Jay’s principles of conduct and his mental attitude ^ Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts, pp. 316,-317. 24 JOHN JAY. were unchanged. How such could be the case is worth inquiry ; especially as J ay, rather than impulsive men like Adams, or quick-witted men like Hamilton, was typical of the generation that fought the Revolution. In 1773 the tax on tea was imposed. On October 25th the Mohawks of New York, a band of the Sons of Liberty, were ordered by their old leaders to be on the watch for the tea ships ; ^ and it was merely the chances of time and tide that gave the opportunity of fame first to the Mohawks of Boston. December 15th, soon after the Boston tea party, there was re¬ vived the old organization of the Sons of Lib¬ erty, which had first been formed to put down the Stamp Act, holding together after the repeal of that measure to oppose such acts of Parlia¬ ment as the Mutiny Bill, and which, as late as 1770, established a committee to enforce non-im- portation.2 An “ association ” was now circulated for signatures, engaging to boycott, “ not deal with, or employ, or have any connection with ” any persons who should aid in landing, or “ sell¬ ing, or buying tea, so long as it is subject to a duty by Parliament;”^ and December 17th a meeting of the subscribers was held and a com- ^ Leake, Life of John Lamb, p. 76. ^ Ibid., pp. 2, 69. ® New York Journal, Dec. 16, 1773. CONSERVATIVE WHIG LEADER. 25 mittee of fifteen chosen as a Committee of Cor¬ respondence that was soon known as the Vigi¬ lance Committee. Letters also were exchana-ed between the speakers of many of the houses of assembly in the different provinces ; and Jan¬ uary 20, 1774, the New York Assembly, which had been out of touch with the people ever since the Stamp Act was passed in the year after its election, appointed their Speaker, with twelve others, a standing Committee of Correspondence and Enquiry, a proof that the interest of all classes was now excited. April 15th, the Nancy with a cargo of tea arrived off Sandy Hook, followed shortly by the London. The Commit¬ tee of Vigilance assembled, and, as soon as Cap¬ tain Lockyier of the Nancy landed in spite of their warning, escorted him to a pilot boat and set him on board again, while the flag flew from the Liberty Pole, and cannon thundered from the “Fields.” April 23d, the Nancy stood out to sea without landing her cargo, and with her carried Captain Chambers of the London., from which the evening before eighteen chests of tea had been emptied into the sea by the Liberty Boys.^ The bill closing the port of Boston was en¬ acted March 31st, and a copy of the act reached New York by the ship Samson on the 12th. ^ Leake, Life of John Lamb, pp. 81-84> 26 JOHN JA Y. Two days later the Committee of Vigilance wrote to the Boston Committee recommending vigorous measures as the most effectual, and assuring them that their course would be heart- O ily supported by their brethren in New York.^ So rapid had been the march of events that not till now did the merchants and responsible citi¬ zens of New York take alarm. Without their concurrence or even knowledge they were being rapidly compromised by the unauthorized action of an irresponsible committee, composed of men who for the most part were noted more for enthu¬ siasm than judgment, and many of whom had been not unconcerned in petty riots and demon¬ strations condemned by the better part of the community. The one weapon in which the Sons of Liberty trusted was “ Non-importation,” a prohibition of trade with England, and this was a measure which injured the merchants of New York more than any others, and had been aban¬ doned in 1770 as a failure. “ The men who at that time called themselves the Committee,” wrote Lieutenant Governor Colden the next month, “ who dictated and acted in the name of the people, were many of them of the lower ranks, and all the warmest zealots of those called the Sons of Liberty. The more consid¬ erable merchants and citizens seldom or never ^ Leake, Life of John Lamb, p. 87. CONSERVATIVE WHIG LEADER. 27 appeared among them. . . . The principal inhabitants, being now afraid that these hot¬ headed men might now run the city into dan¬ gerous measures, appeared in a considerable body at the first meeting of the people after the Boston Port Act was published here.” ^ This meeting, convoked by advertisement, was held May 16th, at the house of Samuel Francis, “ to consult on the measures proper to be pursued.” It was proposed to nominate a new committee to supersede the Committee of Vigilance, au¬ thorized to represent the citizens. A committee of fifty. Jay among them, instead of one of twenty -five as at first suggested, was nominated “for the approbation of the public,” “to cor¬ respond with our sister colonies on all matters of moment.” Three days later these nomina¬ tions were confirmed by a public meeting held at the Coffee House, but not until a fifty-first mem¬ ber was added, Francis Lewis, as a representa¬ tive of the radical party which had been as much as possible ignored. The chagrin of the Sons of Liberty at the conservative composition of the committee was intensified by the exultation, unfounded though it proved, of the Tories. “You may rest assured,” wrote Rivington, the editor of the Tory newspaper, to Knox, then a book¬ seller in Boston, and afterwards Secretary for ^ Am. Archives, 4tli Series, i. 372» 28 JOHN JAY. War, “no non-im- nor non-exportation will be agreed upon, either here or at Philadelphia. 