Jay-Jes: Jay through Jessup

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


JAY, John, 1745-1829, New York, lawyer, statesman, founding father, diplomat, anti-slavery leader.  President of the Continental Congress.  First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Governor of the State of New York, 1795-1801.  New York State’s leading opponent of slavery.  Founder and president of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as Have Been Liberated, founded 1785.  Attempted to end slavery in 1777 and 1785.  In 1799, he signed into law the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, which eventually freed all the slaves in New York.  This act was arguably the most comprehensive and largest emancipation in North America before the Civil War. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 64-66, 73-74, 75, 77, 239, 319, 321, 322, 347-348, 350-351; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 28, 47, 87; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 408-411; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 5-10; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 891)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 5-10:

JAY, JOHN (December 12, 1745-May 17, 1829), statesman, diplomatist, was the sixth son, in a family of eight children, of Peter and Mary (Van Cortlandt) Jay, and was born in New York City. He was the younger brother of James Jay [q.v.]. The families of both his father and mother were among the most influential in the colony. His paternal grandfather, Augustus Jay, was a French Huguenot exile who settled in New York about 1686. His father, Peter Jay, was a rich and reputable colonial merchant. John Jay, never of a democratic nature or persuasion, grew up under the most careful family protection. His education went on, with private tutors, under the watchful guidance of his father. Bookish and pious in temperament, the boy is described in contemporary family letters as "serious," "grave," "sedate." Self-confidence and self-satisfaction, rather than ambition, were characteristic of his career. In after life he never once solicited an appointment to public service-except for a successful application for a commission in the New York militia-though he attained, aside from the presidency of the United States, the most important offices which his country could bestow. After graduating from King's College in 1764 he prepared for the bar in the office of Benjamin Kissam of New York. Lindley Murray, a fellow student in the same office, wrote, in his autobiography, of Jay: "He was remarkable for strong reasoning powers, comprehensive view s, indefatigable application, and uncommon firmness of mind" (Pellew, post, pp. 15-1 6). These qualities, with a certain lucidity of literary expression -the styles of Jay and Hamilton were similar -marked him from the beginning as a man of unusual intellectual power. His fellow citizens early sought out his service. As years went on Jay's self-confidence begat a not disagreeable vanity, and literary facility sometimes gave way to pretentious oracular utterance.

Following his admission to the bar in 1768, Jay lived the pleasant life of a serious, well established and well-liked lawyer (he was associated for a time with Robert R. Livingston), prosperously busy, surrounded by friends and clubmates. His was a town-man's life. It drew its principal interest from proper social contacts. There is no indication that he had a liking for sports or strenuous physical exercise, though he was fond of animals, and, of necessity, a horseback rider. Possessed of a fairly wiry and robust constitution, he was nevertheless frequently ailing in health throughout his long life. As a young man he was tall, slender, and graceful, with highly arched eyebrows, a prominent Gallic nose, a pleasing mouth, and a long chin; he had an honest and a refined face, neither grave nor light, with a certain spiritual beauty. He married, on April 28, 1774, Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, the youngest daughter of William Livingston [q.v.], later the revolutionary governor of New Jersey.

Jay's first public employment was as secretary, in 1773, of a royal commission for settling the boundary between New Jersey and New York. The dispute was eventually settled by means of a mixed arbitration, a device which must have appealed to Jay's philosophic disposition; it may have been the example for the mixed commissions which were later such prominent features of Jay's Treaty of 1794 with Great Britain, and were repeated in principle in other American treaties thereafter. The advent of the American Revolution put an end forever to Jay's law practice and started his career of public life. He became a conservative member of the New York committee (of fifty-one) of correspondence and soon was sent as a delegate of his colony to the first, and later to the second, Continental Congress. As an indefatigable worker in the Congress he reflected the interests of the conservative colonial merchants who were opposed to independence because they feared it might be followed by an upheaval of mob rule and democracy. But once the Declaration was adopted, in Jay's absence attending the New York provincial congress, he threw his life and fortune unreservedly into the scales, and no man became more jealous against any imputation of the permanency or completeness of American independence. Jay's part in the peace negotiations of 1782 testified abundantly to his conviction. In the spring of 1776 his energies were absorbed in affairs of the new state of New York rather than in the second Continental Congress. As a member of the provincial congress, he not only helped to ratify the Declaration of Independence, but also provided the guiding hand which drafted the constitution of the state. He served until 1779 as chief justice of New York, interpreting the constitution which he had drafted. He was also a colonel in the state militia, but never saw active service.

Jay resumed his seat in the Continental Congress in December 1778, and on the tenth of that month was elected president of the Congress, a position which he continued to hold until elected minister plenipotentiary to Spain, September 27, 1779. Jay's career as a diplomatist begins-if we omit his experience as a member of the secret committee of the Second Continental Congress, for corresponding with foreign powers-with his departure for Spain. He was the most able and distinguished man whom the Congress could spare for this important mission to plead for recognition and assistance at the Court of Madrid, taking with him, as he did, the prestige of "the first office on the continent." After a perilous voyage by way of the West Indies, Jay reached Cadiz, with his wife, on January 22, 1780. From the beginning the mission was a hopeless one. Spain had no intention of recognizing the independence of the United States, much less of making an alliance with the insurrectionists, or even of joining with her ally, France, in a Franco-American combination. Floridablanca and tied Vergennes to a secret treaty, by the terms of which France had agreed not to make a peace with Great Britain except jointly with Spain, and with Gibraltar secured for Spain. On the other hand, France had agreed with the United States not to make peace with Great Britain except jointly with the United States and on the bas is of the absolute and unlimited independence of that republic. Thus was the cause of American independence chained to the European rock of Gibraltar. With Jay the Spanish ministry would go no farther than to continue its policy of secret assistance in munitions and money in order to keep the American insurrection going; and Floridablanca made a "loan" (without ta king titles for payment) of approximately $170,000. This relieved Jay of the cruel by Congress under the unwarranted expectation that he would have meanwhile gotten some money out of Spain. "His two chief points," Floridablanca wrote, concerning Jay, to the Spanish ambassador at Paris, "were Spain, recognize our independence; Spain, give us more money" (Bemis, Pinckney's Treaty, p. 38).

In the spring of 1782 Jay was summoned to Paris by Franklin to assume his post as joint commissioner for negotiating a peace with Great Britain. Despite "bad roads, fleas, and bugs" he reached the city, after a pleasant journey overland, on June 23. The most controversial question in the study of Jay's diplomatic career is whether he upset the America n diplomatic apple-cart which had been so cleverly trundled along by Franklin in his preliminary conversations with the British peace representatives, before the arrival of Jay. The latter insisted that the British representative, Richard Oswald, be expressly empowered to treat with representatives of the United States of America, not of the "Colonies," which designation had at first seemed sufficient to Franklin, and to Vergennes, whose good faith Jay suspected. Jay privately communicated to Shelburne, the British prime minister, advice to close quickly with the Americans, recognizing them as plenipotentiaries of the United States. His insistence won out in the end, but delayed the negotiations-in the early course of which Franklin had craftily been proposing the cession of Canada, without provoking active opposition-until after the relief of Gibraltar had greatly strengthened the British negotiating position. It is not possible to say that Lord Shelburne would have agreed to Franklin's ideas as to the desirability of ceding Canada, and Shelburne's instructions make it certain that if articles of independence should not have been agreed to, the situation was to remain the same as if the negotiation had never been opened, namely one of warfare against a rebellion of colonies. Whether in that instance the world would have construed unsuccessful negotiations with plenipotentiaries of the United States, as a definitive recognition of American independence is extremely doubtful.

Jay and Adams convinced Franklin that they should sign the preliminary articles of peace, as agreed on with Great Britain, without the privity of the French Minister. In this they certainly violated their own instructions to negotiate only with the full confidence of the French ministry. They did not violate the Franco-American treaty of alliance, for the peace was not to go into effect until preliminaries of peace should also have been ratified between Great Britain and France. France could not make peace till Spain was ready. Undoubtedly the American preliminaries, together with the relief of Gibraltar, opened the way for Vergennes to bring Spain into line. Articles between Spain and Great Britain, and between France and Great Britain, were signed on January 20, 1783, without the cession of Gibraltar. The preliminaries of peace thus became complete. Hostilities ceased. Jay further had participated in the peace negotiations by suggesting to the British the reconquest of West Florida before the armistice; and a secret article was inserted in the preliminaries providing that, in case of such reconquest, the southern boundary of the United States should commence at the latitude of the Yazoo River, instead of thirty-one degrees north latitude. Jay's object in making this suggestion was to keep Spain away from the east bank of the Mississippi by keeping Great Britain in West Florida. In the definitive peace treaty of 1783 this was not included, as Florida had been yielded to Great Britain by Spain.

Jay declined the post of minister to Great Britain after the war, as well as that to France, in order to return home and resume his law practice and the delights of private life. When he arrived in New York, July 24, 1784, he found that Congress had already drafted him into service as secretary of foreign affairs. For the position, which amounted to that of minister of foreign affairs of the United States, Jay was the best qualified man available. He put aside personal desires and accepted the unremunerative responsibility which had been thrust upon him. Jay remained in this office until after the adoption of the Constitution and the organization of the new government. In fact, as secretary ad interim he administered the business of the new Department of State until March 22, 1790, pending the arrival of Thomas Jefferson to be sworn in as secretary. In addition to the negotiation of treaties of commerce with Prussia and Morocco, and discussions of the same with Austria, Denmark, Portugal, and Tuscany, the handling of the hopeless Barbary corsairs question, and negotiation of a consular convention with France, Jay's principal diplomatic problems as secretary of foreign affairs were connected with Great Britain and with Spain. The dispute with the former involved the retention of the Northwest Posts, in which British garrisons had remained in defiance of the terms of the treaty of peace. The British justified their position on the ground that Congress had not complied with its own treaty obligations in respect to facilitating the payment of pre-war debts to English creditors, and to the proper protection of the Loyalists. We know now that, on the day before the proclamation of the treaty of peace by George III, secret orders were sent out from Whitehall not to evacuate the posts. Without going into the controversy which arose, or the mutual recriminations, during a time that Great Britain refused to send a diplomatic representative to the United States, it may be said that Jay-who naturally remained ignorant of secret orders which have only recently been disclosed-was so impressed by the laxity of Congress in enforcing its own obligations that he could not make progress with Great Britain on this issue; it continued into the national period and was not actually settled until Jay's Treaty of 1794.

With Spain the controversy was somewhat similar. Spanish garrisons continued to occupy alleged American soil up to the latitude of the mouth of the Yazoo River, although the boundary of the United States as laid down by the Anglo-American treaty of peace stipulated the line of thirty-one degrees between the Mississippi and the Apalachicola. Spain also closed the navigation of the Mississippi where it flowed between exclusively Spanish banks. In justice to the Spanish contention it should be recognized that Spain's title to the lower east bank of the Mississippi was at least as good as that of the United States, and that her right to close the navigation of the river was not and could not be estopped by anything in the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain. A protracted negotiation between Gardoqui, first Spanish diplomatic representative accredited to the United States, and Jay, between 1784 and 1789, reached no settlement of the question. When in Spain, Jay had not believed in acknowledging exclusive Spanish navigation of the Mississippi, even though, upon instructions received from Congress, he had made such an offer as a condition of Spanish recognition of American independence and the making of a treaty. But during the period of the Confederation Jay became convinced, as did Washington, that the only way to come to terms with Spain was to forbear to use the navigation of the river for a period of twenty-five years or so, while the West could fill up with a population of fighting men. He reached an agreement in principle with Gardoqui on that basis, coupled with some articles of alliance by which each guaranteed the territory of the other power. Congress refused to ratify the Mississippi articles, and Jay never revealed the mutual guaranty clauses to Congress once he saw that the main Mississippi article would not succeed.

Jay's position as secretary of foreign affairs was weakened in power and effect by the impotence of the Union under the Articles of Confederation. He became one of the strongest advocates of a new government under a stronger constitution. After the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 he joined with Hamilton and Madison in the writing of the "Federalist" papers. Illness prevented him from contributing more than five essays-on the Constitution and foreign affairs. When Jefferson arrived to take the post of secretary of state, Jay had already been nominated chief justice of the United States.

The first five years were the formative period of the- Supreme Court so far as procedure was concerned. The most important case decided by Jay was Chisholm vs. Georgia, which involved the stability of a state by a citizen of another state. Jay in his decision pointed out that the Constitution specifically gave a citizen of one state the right to sue another state, and that stability and state sovereignty were incompatible. It v/as a vigorous exposition of nationalism, too vigorous for the day. Georgia lost the case by default, but before any judgment could be executed, her sister states, alarmed, quickly passed the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. While chief justice, Jay was frequently consulted by the President on state decisions, and it was he who wrote (albeit subject to Hamilton's suggestions) a first draft of the famous neutrality proclamation of 1793. After the proclamation, actually indited by Edmund Randolph [q.v.],and before the appropriate legislation by Congress for the enforcement of neutrality, Jay, in making a charge to the grand jury at Richmond, May 22, 1793, laid down 'the principle that the proclamation of the President must implicitly be held declaratory of existing law, that is, of the law of nations (Johnston, post, III, 478).

It was while still holding the office of chief justice that Jay was sent on the celebrated diplomatic mission to arrange a peaceful settlement of existing controversies with Great Britain. The war crisis, which arose in the spring of 1794, was caused principally by the British occupation of the Northwest Posts, and the still pending question of private debts to British creditors, together with the spoliations made by British cruisers on American neutral shipping during the Anglo-French war. By this time Alexander Hamilton [q.v.] had come to be the principal influence in Washington's administration. Hamilton's new credit system depended on tariff revenues, and nine-tenths of these came from imposts on imported British goods. War with Great Britain, or even suspension of commercial intercourse for any extended period, such as the Republicans advocated, would have meant, in Hamilton's words, cutting up credit by the roots; the collapse of credit would have brought the downfall of the new government, and with it the possible end of American nationality. Jay spent the summer of 1794 in England coming to an arrangement with Lord Grenville on terms mainly suggested by Hamilton. The resulting treaty might more appropriately have gone down in history as Hamilton's than as Jay's Treaty. Without securing any acknowledgment of the illegality of British maritime procedure under which the spoliations had been made, the United States agreed that all spoliation claims which should not receive ultimate justice after running the gamut of British courts of law, should go to a mixed claims commission for settlement; similarly all British claims for the collection of private debts should go to a mixed commission, and the United States should be answerable for payment of the awards in sterling money; British troops were to evacuate the Northwest Territory; commissions were to settle boundary controversies on the northeast and the northwest frontier; and the free navigation of the Mississippi, with particular trade privileges for British ships, was guaranteed the citizens and subjects of each nation. By refusing to enforce in the face of Great Britain the rules of international law accepted in the Franco-American treaty of 1778, the United States gave great umbrage to France; this led to a serious but not vital controversy with that country, in which there is something to be said for the French point of view. Jay's Treaty was the price paid by the Federalists for the maintenance of peace and financial stability at a time when both were vitally necessary for the establishment of American nationality under the new Constitution. He was vilified for his part in the negotiation and Hamilton was stoned while speaking in defense of the treaty; but the Senate ratified it, Washington proclaimed it, and history has justified it as a sort of necessary evil.

While chief justice, Jay had already been a candidate of the Federalist party against George Clinton [q.v.] for the governorship of New York, in 1792, and had been defeated by the action of a partisan board of electoral canvassers which threw out many Federalist ballots on technicalities. When he returned home from England in 1795 he found himself already nominated and elected governor. There was little choice but to accept. Jay's two terms, of six years altogether, furnished the state with an upright and conservative administration. Despite the ordinary petty political disputes in which Jay, as a Federalist governor, must needs have his share, no overwhelming political issue arose. In 1800 the victory of the Republicans in the next gubernatorial election was imminent, and Jay had decided to retire from public life. He declined to become a candidate for reelection, and refused to be considered for renomination as chief justice of the United States. In view of John Marshall's subsequent career in that office, Jay's reasons for declining it are interesting if not amusing: he felt that the Supreme Court lacked "the energy, weight, and dignity which are essential to its affording due support to the national Government" (Johnston, IV, 285).

The presidential election of 1800 afforded an opportunity to test the purity of Jay's political virtue. Believing that the presidency depended on the vote of New York, where the newly elected Republican legislature would be sure to choose Jeffersonian electors, Alexander Hamilton urged Governor Jay to call a special session of the expiring (Federalist) legislature that would choose Federalist electors. Jay refused to countenance this trickery. On Hamilton's letter proposing the plan, he wrote the indorsement: "Proposing a measure for party purposes which I think it would not become me to adopt." The remaining twenty-eight years of Jay's life were spent in complete retirement, saddened by the early death of his wife. He settled down at his 800-acre farm at Bedford, Westchester County, New York. Here he died May 17, 1829. He had two sons, Peter Augustus Jay and William Jay [qq.v.]. Only one of his five daughters married and she had no children that survived.

Jay was a very able man but not a genius. His principal and invaluable contribution to American public life flowed from his character as he steadfastly performed the day's work. He brought consistent intellectual vigor and moral tone into every office which he held. He belonged to a school of rigid self-disciplinarians and high-minded men who invested the foundations of American nationality with a peculiar mantle of righteousness and dignity. He was second to none of the "Fathers" in the fineness of his principles, uncompromising moral rectitude, uprightness of private life, and firmness, even fervor, of religious conviction. A communicant of the Episcopal Church, he did not scruple to unite with his fellow Christians of other denominations. He owned slaves; to emancipate them; and as governor of New York he signed the act for the abolition of slavery in that state. In retirement Jay took an active interest in church affairs; he became president in 1818 of the Westchester Bible Society, and, in 1821, of the American Bible Society. As a political sage in retirement at Bedford he left these lines: "The post, once a week, brings me our newspapers, which furnish a history of the times. By this history, as well as by that of former times, we are taught the vanity of expecting, that from the perfectibility of human nature and the lights of philosophy the multitude will become virtuous or wise, or their demagogues candid and honest" (William Jay, post, I, 431).

[The best biography is by a descendant, George Pellew, John Jay (1890), and is based on the Jay family papers which in their entirety have not been exploited by any non-family writer. A selected part of these was published by H. P. Johnston, Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay (4 volumes, 1890-93). There is a group of Jay papers relating to the Treaty of 1794, in the New York Historical Society the son, William Jay, wrote a filial biography, The Life of John Jay (2 volumes, 1833), which published for the first time the papers more fully printed oy Johnston. Wm. Whitelock, The Life and Times of John Jay (1887) is not adequate. Jay as chief justice is portrayed in Henry Flanders, The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the U. S., Volume I (1855). There are two interesting short sketches: W. W. Spooner, Historic Families of America (1907); and Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous People (1922). S. F. Bemis has dealt with Jay's diplomacy in The American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy, Volume I (1927), in Jay's Treaty; a Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (1923), and Pinckney's Treaty; a Study of America's Advantage from Europe's Distress (1926). An account of Jay's participation in the peace negotiations of 1782, written by a descendant, John Jay, is in Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, Volume VII (1888). For the Supreme Court in Jay's time see Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History, I (1922). See also Memorials of Peter A. Jay, Compiled for his Descendants by his Great-grandson, John Jay (1905, reprinted 1929).]

S. F. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 408-411:

JAY, John, statesman, born in New York city, 12 December, 1745; died in Bedford, Westchester county, New York, 17 May, 1829. He was of Huguenot descent, and was educated in part by Pastor Stoope, of the French church at New Rochelle, and was graduated at Kings (now Columbia), New York, in 1766. He studied law with Benjamin Kissam, having Lindley Murray as his fellow-student, and in 1766 was admitted to the bar. When news of the passage of the Boston port bill reached New York, on 16 May, 1776, at a meeting of citizens, Jay was appointed a member of a committee of fifty-one to correspond with the other colonies. Their reply to the Boston committee, attributed to Jay, recommended, as of the utmost moment, “a congress of deputies from the colonies in general.” Jay was a delegate to the congress, which met in Philadelphia, 5 September As one of a committee of three he prepared the “Address to the People of Great Britain,” which Jefferson, while ignorant of the authorship, declared to be “a production certainly of the finest pen in America.” Jay was an active member of the committee of observation in New York, on whose recommendation the counties elected a provincial congress, and also of a committee of association of 100 members. invested by the city of New York with general undefined powers. He was a member also of the 2d congress, which met in Philadelphia, 10 May, 1775, and drafted the “Address to the People of Canada and of Ireland”; and he carried against a strong opposition a petition to the king, which was signed by the members on 8 July. The rejection of this petition, leaving no alternative but submission or resistance, opened the way for a general acquiescence in the Declaration of Independence. Jay was a member of the secret committee appointed by congress, 29 November, 1775, after a confidential interview with a French officer, “to correspond with the friends of America in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world.” While he was attending congress at Philadelphia, Jay's presence was requested by the New York convention, which required his counsel. This convention met at White Plains, 9 July, 1776, and on Jay's motion unanimously approved the Declaration of Independence, which on that day was received from congress. The passage of a part of Lord Howe's fleet up the Hudson induced the appointment by the convention of a secret committee vested with extraordinary powers, of which Jay was made chairman, as also of a further committee for defeating conspiracies in the state against the liberties of America. The resolutions relating to this committee were drawn by him; and its minutes, many of which are in his hand, show the energy with which it exercised its powers by arrests, imprisonments, and banishments, and the vigorous system demanded by the critical condition of the American cause. The successes of the British in New York, and the retreat and needs of Washington's army, had induced a feeling of despondency, and Jay was the author of an earnest appeal to his countrymen, which by order of congress was translated into German and widely circulated.

Jay drafted the state constitution adopted by the convention of New York, which met successively at Harlem, Kingsbridge, Philip's Manor, White Plains, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston. He was appointed chief justice of the state, holding his first term at Kingston on 9 September, 1777, and acting also in the council of safety, which directed the military occupation of the state and wielded an absolute sovereignty. He was visited at Fishkill, in the autumn of 1778, by General Washington for a confidential conversation on the invasion of Canada by the French and American forces, which they concurred in disapproving, chiefly on the probability that if conquered it would be retained by France. Chief-Justice Jay was again sent to congress on a special occasion, the withdrawal of Vermont from the jurisdiction of New York, and three days after taking his seat he was, 1 December, 1778, elected its president. The next September he wrote his letter, in the name of congress, on currency and finance. On 27 September, 1778, he was appointed minister to Spain, and later one of the commissioners to negotiate a peace. He sailed with Mrs. Jay, on 20 October, in the American frigate “Confederacy,” which, disabled by a storm, put into Martinico, whence they proceeded in the French frigate “Aurora,” which brought them to Cadiz, 22 January, 1780. Jay, while received with personal courtesy, found no disposition to recognize American independence, and congress added to the embarrassing position of the minister at a reluctant court by drawing bills upon him for half a million of dollars, on the assumption that he would have obtained a subsidy from Spain before they should have become due. Jay accepted the bills, some of which were afterward protested, the Spanish court advancing money for only a few of them, and the rest were afterward paid with money borrowed by Franklin from France.

While in Spain Jay was added by congress to the peace commissioners, headed by John Adams, and at the request of Franklin, on 23 June, 1782, he went to Paris, where Franklin was alone. The position of the two commissioners was complicated by the fact that congress, under the persistent urgency of Luzerne, the French minister at Philadelphia, had materially modified the instructions originally given to Mr. Adams, and on 15 June, 1781, had instructed its commissioners “to make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the king of France; to undertake nothing in their negotiations for peace and truce without their knowledge and concurrence, and ultimately to govern yourselves by their advice and opinion.” Two arguments were used in support of this instruction: First, that the king was explicitly pledged by his minister to support the United States “in all points relating to their prosperity”; and next, that “nothing would be yielded by Great Britain which was not extorted by the address of France.” An interesting memoir in the French archives, among the papers under the head of “Angleterre,” shows that the interests of France required that the ambition of the American colonies “should be checked and held down to fixed limits through the union of the three nations,” England, France, and Spain. Before the arrival of Jay, Franklin had had an informal conversation, first with Grenville, and then with Mr. Oswald, who had been sent by the cabinet of Rockingham. On 6 August Oswald presented to Jay and Franklin a commission prescribing the terms of the enabling act, and authorizing him “to treat with the colonies and with any or either of them, and any part of them, and with any description of men in them, and with any person whatsoever, of and concerning peace,” etc. This document led to a new complication in the American commission by developing a material difference of opinion between Jay and Franklin. When the commission was submitted to Vergennes, that minister held that it was sufficient, and advised Fitzherbert to that effect. Franklin believed it “would do.” But Jay declined to treat under the description of “colonies” or on any other than an equal footing. Oswald adopted Jay's view, but the British cabinet did not, and Jay's refusal to proceed soon stayed the peace negotiations of the other powers, which Vergennes had arranged should proceed together, each nation negotiating for itself.

During Jay's residence in Spain he had learned much of the aims and methods of the Bourbon policy, and a memoir submitted to him by Rayneval, as his “personal views” against our right to the boundaries, an intercepted letter of Marbois, secretary of legation at Philadelphia, against our claim to the fisheries, and the departure for England with precautions for secrecy of Rayneval himself, the most skilful and trusted agent of Vergennes, convinced him that one object of Rayneval's mission was to prejudice Shelburne against the American claims. As a prudent counter-move to this secret mission, Jay promptly despatched Benjamin Vaughan, an intimate friend and agent of Shelburne, to counteract Rayneval's adverse influence to the American interests. This was done without consultation with Franklin, who did not concur with Jay in regard to Rayneval's journey, and who retained his confidence in the French court and was embarrassed and constrained by his instructions. It appears from “Shelburne's Life” that Rayneval, in his interview with Shelburne and Grantham, after discussing other questions, proceeded to speak about America; and “here Rayneval played into the hands of the English ministers, expressing a strong opinion against the American claims to the fisheries and the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio”; and that Vaughan arrived almost simultaneously, bringing the “considerations” prepared by Jay, which enforced these points: 1. That, as Britain could not conquer the United States, it was for her interest to conciliate them; 2. That the United States would not treat except on an equal footing; 3. That it was the interest of France, but not of England, to postpone the acknowledgment of independence to a general peace; 4. That a hope of dividing the fisheries with France would be futile, as America would not make peace without them; 5. That any attempt to deprive the United States of the navigation of the Mississippi, or of that river as a boundary would irritate America; 6. That such an attempt, if successful, would sow the seeds of war in the very treaty of peace. The disclosure of the grave difference between the Americans and their allies on the terms of peace, with the opportunity it afforded to England, consistently with the pride, interest, and justice of Great Britain, and with the national jealousy of France, seems to have come to the cabinet with the force of a revelation, and its effect upon their policy was instantaneous and complete. A new commission in the form drafted by Jay, authorizing Oswald to treat with “the United States” of America, was at once ordered, and Lord Shelburne wrote to Oswald that they had said and done “everything which had been desired,” and that they had put the greatest confidence ever placed in man in the American commissioners. Vaughan returned “joyfully” with the new commission on 27 September, and on 5 October Jay handed to Oswald the plan of a treaty including the clauses relating to independence, the boundaries, and the fisheries, and Oswald, in enclosing it to his government, wrote: “I look upon the treaty as now closed.” The great success of the English at Gibraltar, however, which determined the ministry to resist the demands of France and Spain, induced them to attempt some modification of the concessions to the Americans, even when they had been made by Oswald with the approval of the cabinet. Strachey and Fitzherbert were therefore ordered to assist Oswald, and on 25 October John Adams arrived from Holland, where he had negotiated a treaty. He expressed to Franklin his entire approval of Jay's views and action, and Franklin, at their next meeting with Oswald, said to Jay: “I am of your opinion, and will go on with these gentlemen without consulting the court”; and Jay, in writing to Livingston, spoke of their perfect unanimity, and specially acknowledged Mr. Adams's services on the eastern boundaries and Franklin's on the subject of the Tories. The provisional articles, signed 30 November, 1782, to take effect on a peace between France and England, were communicated to Vergennes, who wrote to Rayneval in England that the concessions of the English exceeded all that he had believed possible, and Rayneval replied: “The treaty seems to me like a dream.” A new loan from France to America marked the continuance of their good understanding, and Hamilton wrote to Jay that the terms of the treaty exceeded the anticipations of the most sanguine.

          The violation of the instructions of congress displeased a part of that body. Mr. Madison, who had voted for the instruction, wrote: “In this business Jay has taken the lead, and proceeded to a length of which you can form little idea. Adams has followed with cordiality. Franklin has been dragged into it.” Mr. Sparks, in his “Life of Franklin,” contended that the violation of their instructions by the American commissioners, in concluding and signing their treaty without the concurrence of the French government, was “unjustifiable.” By some error still unexplained, he represented the correspondence of Vergennes in the French archives as disproving the suspicions, which it authoritatively confirms. A map of North America, given in the “Life of Shelburne,” showing “the boundaries of the United States, Canada and the Spanish possessions, according to the proposals of the court of France,” shows that obedience by the American commissioners to the instruction to govern themselves by the opinion of Vergennes, would have shut out the United States from the Mississippi and the Gulf, and would have deprived them of nearly the whole of the states of Alabama and Mississippi, the greater part of Kentucky and Tennessee, the whole of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, and the navigation of the Mississippi. The definitive treaty, a simple embodiment of the provisional articles, for nothing more could be procured from the cabinet of Fox and North, was signed 3 September, 1783, and Jay returned to New York in July, 1784, having been elected by congress secretary for foreign affairs, then the most important post in the country, which he held until the establishment of the Federal government in 1789. In that work he had taken a deep interest, as is shown by his correspondence with Washington and Jefferson, and on the formation of the National constitution he joined Hamilton and Madison in contributing to the “Federalist,” and published an address to the inhabitants of New York in favor of the constitution. He was an active member of the New York convention, which, after a long struggle, adopted the constitution “in full confidence” that certain amendments would be adopted, and Jay was appointed to write the circular letter that secured the unanimous assent of the convention. On the organization of the Federal government, President Washington asked Jay to accept whatever place he might prefer, and Jay took the office of chief justice of the supreme court, when he resigned the post of president of the Abolition society. In 1792 he consented to be a candidate for the governorship of New York, but the canvassers declined on technical grounds to count certain votes given for Jay, which would have made a majority in his favor, and Governor Clinton was declared elected. In 1794 Jay was nominated by Washington as a special envoy to Great Britain, with which other relations were then strained, and he concluded with Lord Grenville on 19 November, 1794, the convention known in American history as “Jay's treaty,” which was assailed with furious denunciations by the Democratic party, whose tactics severely tested the firmness of Washington's character and the strength of his administration. The treaty and its ratification against an unexampled opposition avoided a war with Great Britain. An English opinion of the treaty, which in America was denounced as a complete surrender to England, was expressed by Lord Sheffield when, on the occurrence of the rupture with America, he wrote, “We have now a complete opportunity of getting rid of that most impolitic treaty of 1794, when Lord Grenville was so perfectly duped by Jay.” Five days before his return from England, Jay was elected governor of New York, an office to which he was re-elected in April, 1798. On the close of his second term, in 1801, Jay declined a return to the chief justiceship of the supreme court, to which he was reappointed by President Adams, and passed the remainder of his life on his estate in Westchester county, New York, a property which had descended to Mr. Jay through his mother, Mary Van Cortlandt. It is situated some forty-five miles north of New York city about midway between the Hudson river and Long Island sound. The Bedford house, as the mansion is called, is placed on an eminence overlooking the whole beautiful rolling region between the two great bodies of water. It is now the summer residence of his grandson, John Jay. See illustration on page 410. The last office that he filled was the presidency of the American Bible society. Daniel Webster said of him; “When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.” The life of John Jay bas been written by his son, and also by Henry B. Renwick (New York, 1841). See “The Life and Times of John Jay,” by William Whitlock (New York, 1887). He married on 28 April, 1774, Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, eldest daughter of Governor William Livingston. She accompanied her husband to Spain, and later was with him in Paris, where she was a great favorite in society, and they resided with Benjamin Franklin at Passy. John Adams's daughter says of her at this time; “Every person who knew her here bestows many encomiums on Mrs. Jay. Madame de Lafayette said she was well acquainted with her, and very fond of her, adding that Mrs. Jay and she thought alike, that pleasure might be found abroad, but happiness only at home in the society of one's family and friends.” During the week of Washington's inauguration he dined with the Jays, and a few days later Mrs. Washington was entertained at Liberty hall by Governor Livingston, Mrs. Livingston, and Mrs. Jay. During the following season hospitalities were frequently exchanged between the president and the Jays. The portrait of Mrs. Jay is from an original portrait painted by Robert E. Pine, and now in the possession of her grandson, the colleges in America and also “Reflections and Observations on the Gout” (London, 1772). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 408-411.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

THE revocation of the edict of Nantes compelled a large number of the best citizens of France to abandon their country, or apostatize from their religion. Among those Huguenots who sought a home upon a foreign shore was Pierre Jay, the great-grandfather of the subject of this memoir, who emigrated to England in 1685, with, a sufficient property to place him above dependence.
His son, Augustus, was abroad when his family left France, and shortly afterwards returned without being aware of the troubles and flight of his friends. He soon found means to escape from the risk and danger to which he was exposed in his native land, and embarked for America.

He landed at Charleston, South Carolina, but finding the climate unfavorable to his health, he proceeded to the north, and finally settled in New York, where he married the daughter of Mr. Balthazar Bayard, who was also a descendant of a protestant French family. Surrounded by friends who were able and willing to promote his interests, he successfully engaged in mercantile pursuits, and lived in the enjoyment of the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens until 1751, when he died at the age of eighty-six.

He left three daughters, and one son, named Peter, who was married to Mary, the daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt, by whom he had ten children. Peter Jay was a merchant, diligent in business, persevering and prudent; so that by the time he had arrived at the meridian of life, he had acquired a sufficient fortune, and retired to an estate he had purchased at Rye, on Long Island Sound.
His wife was a lady of mild temper and gentle manners, and of a cultivated mind. Both were pious. The subject of this sketch was their eighth child, of whom it will now be our business to speak more particularly.

JOHN JAY was born in the city of New York, on the 12th of December, 1745. From childhood he manifested a grave and studious disposition. He acquired the rudiments of English and Latin grammar under the instruction of his mother; and at eight years of age, was placed at the boarding school of the Reverend Mr. Stoope, at New Rochelle, where he remained two years; after which he had the advantage of a private tutor until he was fourteen. In 1760, he entered King’s, now Columbia college, where he pursued his studies with a devoted application and perseverance, and conducted himself with exemplary propriety. Some defects, which had probably passed unnoticed in the circle of his own family, gave him no little trouble when he came to mingle with strangers. His articulation was indistinct; his pronunciation of the letter L, exposed him to ridicule; and he had acquired such a habit of rapid reading, that he could with great difficulty be understood. These imperfections by a determined effort he corrected. Before he had completed his collegiate course, he had decided to study law, and therefore, paid particular attention to those branches which he considered most useful in his future profession. He graduated on the 15th of May, 1764, with the highest collegiate honors, and soon after became a student in the office of Benjamin Kissam, Esq., a lawyer of eminence. The late Lindley Murray, who was his fellow student for about two years, thus speaks of him. “His talents and virtues gave at that period pleasing indications of future eminence; he was remarkable for strong reasoning powers, comprehensive views, indefatigable application, and uncommon firmness of mind. With these qualifications, added to a just taste in literature and ample stores of learning and knowledge, he was happily prepared to enter on that career of public virtue by which he was afterward honorably distinguished and made instrumental in promoting the good of his country.

In 1768, Mr. JAY was admitted to the bar, and immediately entered on an extensive and profitable practice. He married in 1774, Sarah, the daughter of William Livingston, Esq., afterwards governor of New Jersey. At this time his professional reputation was high, and his prospects bright, but the political horizon was darkened by the approaching storm. He espoused the cause of his country with all the ardor of youth, while the dignity and gravity of his deportment gave him the influence of riper years. Where he was known he was confided in, and the reputation of his talents and sterling qualities went before him. Thus he entered the broad field of politics, not to work his way to eminence by slow and toilsome steps, but to take his stand at once among the sages and chosen fathers of the people.

The first news of the Boston Port Bill roused the patriots of New York. A public meeting was held on the 16th of May, 1774, when a committee of fifty was appointed to correspond with the other colonies. Mr. JAY was one of this committee, and also of a subcommittee to answer the letters received. He was afterwards elected one of the delegates from the city of New York to the first congress, which convened at Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774. He took his seat on the first day of the session. He was not yet twenty-nine years of age, and was the youngest member of that immortal band of patriots. All of them have long since departed; Mr. JAY was the last.

He was a member of the first committee appointed by congress, and was the author of the “Address to the People of Great Britain,” which Mr. Jefferson, without knowing the writer, pronounced “a production of the finest pen in America;” an opinion which it justly deserved, and which must have been generally conceded by his associates, if we may judge by the numerous labors of a similar character which were afterwards awarded to him by congress, and by the New York convention.

The address to the inhabitants of Canada, that to the people of Ireland, the appeal of the convention of New York to their constituents, which congress earnestly recommended to the serious perusal arid attention of the inhabitants of the United States, and ordered to be printed in German, at the expense of the continent; and the address from congress to their constituents, on the state of their financial affairs, were among his subsequent productions; and they all bear the stamp of his genius, and evince the glowing fervor of his patriotism.
It is impossible to read these addresses without being reminded of the wells of classic learning, which supplied the rushing current of his thoughts with a style and language of never failing vigor and attractive beauty. It would scarcely be extravagant to say, they united the eloquence of Cicero with the pious patriotism of Maccabeus; it is certain that they prove their author to have been deeply imbued with the spirit of the ancient patriots, and not less those of Palestine than of Greece and Rome.

After Mr. JAY’S return from congress, he was elected by the citizens of New York, a member of a “committee of observation;” and soon after of a committee of association, with general and indefined powers, which they exercised, in the absence of all legislative authority, by calling on the citizens to arm and perfect themselves in military discipline, and by ordering the militia to patrol the streets at night to prevent the exportation of provisions. The provincial congress assembled in May, 1775, and relieved the committee of their responsibility.
When the second congress assembled in Philadelphia on the 10th of May, 1775, Mr. JAY again attended as a delegate from New York. The battle of Lexington had occurred in the recess, and it was now apparent that hostilities were inevitable. An army was therefore to be organized, and preparations made for defence. To act on the defensive, and “to repel force by force,” was the utmost extent of hostility which this congress would sanction; there were some of the members, and many of the citizens, who were not prepared to throw off their allegiance to the king, at least not until some further efforts were made to obtain redress. That all such might be left without excuse, Mr. JAY advocated another petition to the king, which he succeeded in carrying against a strong opposition. It proved, as he had anticipated, a useless appeal to the monarch, but added numerous friends to the American cause.

The exposed situation of New York, induced congress to recommend to the provincial legislature to arm and train the militia; but unfortunately that province was distracted by a much larger proportion of tories than any other of the northern colonies, and in many instances the commissions for the field officers were declined. In this strait, Mr. JAY accepted of a colonel’s commission, but he never acted under it, as his presence in congress was deemed of more importance. Until the spring of 1776, congress had restrained their measures within the bounds of forbearance, and had kept open the door of reconciliation; it then became apparent that the British ministry were determined to listen to no remonstrances, nor to stop short of a complete subjugation of the colonies. Congress, therefore, determined to abandon their hitherto defensive system, and to employ their arms in annoying their enemies, and especially to assail their commerce by privateers, which could speedily be despatched from numerous ports. This movement they thought, necessary to explain and justify, and the task of preparing a suitable declaration was assigned to a committee of which Mr. JAY was a member. In April, 1776, while attending the general congress, he was elected to represent the city and county of New York in the colonial congress, which assembled on the 14th of May. Subjects of the highest importance were here to be acted on, which required all the firmness and wisdom of the ablest statesmen. The presence of Mr. JAY was required. He attended accordingly, for by appointment of this body he held his seat in congress, and not by an election of the people. The convention therefore had a right to command his presence, and he was directed not to leave them until further orders. He was not permitted to return to his seat in the continental congress, but was constantly and actively engaged during the residue of the year in his native state, and was thus deprived of the honor of being in his seat when the declaration of independence was adopted. Had he been there he would have advocated it; for although he has been “estimated” to have “kept the proceedings and preparations a year behind,”[1] nothing can be more certain than that he was himself at least a year in advance of most of his own constituents.

On the 31st of May, Mr. JAY reported to the New York convention, or congress, a series of resolutions, which were agreed to, calling on the people to elect deputies to a new convention with power to establish a form of government. That he recommended the establishment of a regular government in the state, and thereby renouncing all connexion with the British crown, is sufficiently expressive of his views on the subject of independence, but the following may also be added. The new convention with power to establish a permanent government for New York, met at Whiteplains on the 9th of July, and on the same day the declaration of Independence was received from congress. This important document was immediately referred to a committee of which Mr. JAY was chairman, and he almost instanter reported the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted.

“Resolved, unanimously, That the reasons assigned by the continental congress for declaring these united colonies free and independent states, are cogent and conclusive; and that while we lament the cruel necessity which has rendered this measure unavoidable, we approve the same, and will, at the risk of our lives and fortunes, join with the other colonies in supporting it.”
A few days after this he was appointed a member of a secret committee, for the purpose of obstructing the navigation of the Hudson river. The activity and zeal which he displayed on this occasion were no doubt stimulated by the unbounded confidence which he could not but feel was reposed in his integrity and judgment. He was dispatched by the committee to Connecticut for a supply of cannon and shot, “with authority to impress carriages, teams, sloops, and horses, and to call out detachments of the militia, and generally to do, or cause to be done, at his discretion, all such matters and things as he might deem necessary or expedient to forward and complete the business committed to his care.”

He was successful in his exertions, and in a short time had twenty cannon delivered at West Point. 

So numerous and important were the subjects which claimed the attention of the convention at this eventful period, that the special business of their appointment could not be taken up until the 1st of August, when a committee of which, as usual, Mr. JAY was one, was appointed to report a form of government; but the report was not perfected until the following year. In the mean time the convention exercised all the powers of government with a vigor and firmness, which, when the circumstances of the state are considered, are truly astonishing. The ability, energy, and decision of Mr. JAY, kept him in constant employment, so that we may safely say, whatever was done, he was among the foremost and most industrious performers.

He prepared the draft of the constitution which, with several amendments, was adopted on the 20th of April, 1777, but having been a few days before summoned to attend his dying mother, some articles which he intended to offer as amendments were omitted and some additions made, of which he did not approve. The state of New York being now provided with a constitution, Mr. JAY received the appointment of chief justice of the supreme court, and as the judges of that court were by the new constitution restrained from holding any other office than that of a delegate to congress on special occasions, and no such occasion existing at that time, his seat in congress was vacated.

Before the convention dissolved in May, 1777, they appointed a council of safety, from among their own members, to administer the government until the legislature should be organized. As one of this council, Mr. JAY was almost constantly occupied until the following September. On the 9th of that month, the first term of the supreme court was held at Kingston, and the chief justice presided. This was one of the most interesting periods of his official life: the government under which the people had been born, and which their education and habits had taught them to venerate, had just been abolished, and a new one formed on new principles, in the very seat of war, and in the presence of victorious enemies. Ticonderoga had fallen; one British army was approaching from the north, another from the south; the disaffected, numerous and active, and the friends of their country, sinking in despair. How worthy is the patriot of our admiration, who, at such a crisis, could retain his firmness, and with an unruffled mind and undiverted eye look forward to the end of his labors, with the full assurance of the righteousness of the cause, and of the favor of heaven. Such a patriot was JOHN JAY.

The controversy between the legislature of New York, and the people of Vermont, afforded a “special occasion” to send the chief justice as a delegate to congress. He accordingly took his seat in that body on the 7th of December, 1778, and three days after, was elected president, on the resignation of Mr. Laurens. This office he held until the 27th of September, 1779, when he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Spain. To obtain the acknowledgment of the independence of the United States, to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and to procure pecuniary aid, were the objects of his mission.

He sailed on the 20th of October, in the frigate Confederacy, which had been ordered to France, to carry home the French minister, Mr. Gerard; but on the 7th of November, the ship was dismasted in a storm, and with difficulty reached Martinico on the 18th of December; on the 28th, Mr. JAY embarked at St. Pierres in the French frigate Aurora, and arrived at Cadiz on the 22d of January, 1780. Having communicated his commission to the Spanish court, he was invited to Madrid, but at the same time was given to understand, that the formalities of an official reception must be deferred. He soon found, that although Spain was at war with our common enemy, she was not inclined to form an alliance with us, to grant us aid, or even to acknowledge our independence, unless on conditions which he was little inclined to comply with. The Spanish minister required that the United States should guaranty to Spain the possession of Florida, and the exclusive right of navigation on the Mississippi. To this, Mr. JAY, who looked forward to the future consequences of thus shutting up the mouth of one of our most important rivers, would not consent.[2] To add to the perplexity of his situation, he learned, soon after his arrival in Spain, that congress had adopted a singular expedient for raising money, (on the presumption of a successful negotiation,) by drawing on him for the payment of bills to the amount of half a million of dollars at six months sight.

These bills soon began to be presented for acceptance. He obtained the promise from the Spanish government, of the means to meet drafts to the amount of about thirteen thousand dollars, and this encouraged him to hope for further pecuniary aid; but he was held in suspense until it was probably supposed that his embarrassments had rendered him more docile, when he was again urged to relinquish the claim of the United States, to the navigation of the Mississippi. This he again declined, and he was then informed that Spain would advance no more money. Mr. JAY then came to the resolution of becoming personally responsible, by accepting all future bills which might be presented, and thus at least preserve the credit of the United States, for the next six months, and trust to a change of circumstances for a disembarrassment. By the assistance of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, and some further aid from Spain, all the bills which he accepted were paid, though not all of them as they became due. While thus laboring to overcome the great difficulties of his mission, he had the mortification to learn that congress had authorized him to relinquish the right of navigating the Mississippi below the southern boundary of the United States. According to these new instructions, he presented the plan of a treaty, but at the same time he required, on his own responsibility, that a treaty should be immediately concluded, or that the United States should not in future be bound by the offers now made. This proposal was not accepted, and the negotiation was again deferred.

Early in the summer of 1782, having been appointed one of the commissioners for negotiating a peace with England, Mr. JAY proceeded to Paris, where Count d’Arahda, the Spanish ambassador, was authorized to continue negotiations with him; but these progressed no further than an interchange of the views of their respective governments in relation to the western boundary of the United States. It will not be necessary to explain the instructions which were given to the commissioners of the United States, charged with the important duty of terminating the war, further than to state generally, that they were such as left the terms of peace under the control of the French minister, whose advice and opinions were to govern the American commissioners. These instructions were particularly displeasing to Mr. JAY, who thought the dignity of his country compromised, and her minister degraded, by being placed under the direction of a foreign power. He nevertheless continued to act under the commission, but earnestly requested congress to relieve him from his station. What may have been the motive of the desire to control the negotiations, or what the policy of the French minister in the advice which he gave, and the opinions declared in relation to the American claims of territorial limits, and the fisheries, we shall not stop to inquire; the motives and acts of our own minister, are mote to our present purpose, and these were undoubtedly of the highest and purest character. During his residence at Madrid, he had imbibed suspicions that the French court, though sincerely desirous to render us independent of Great Britain, were not willing to favor our views at the expense of Spain, or even to see us acquire such power and importance as might lead us to dispense with their patronage, and to pursue our own objects without regard to their wishes or advice. These suspicions were strengthened after his arrival at the French capital, by the influence employed to dissuade him and his colleagues from insisting on several points which they deemed of high importance, and which they finally obtained.

His enlarged views of the future greatness of America, his respect for her honor, and his firm determination never to be an instrument to diminish it, led him to disobey the instructions which degraded him to the station of a subaltern agent of a foreign minister, and obedience to which would, in his opinion, endanger the interests, and tarnish the glory of his country.

When the negotiation commenced, Mr. JAY and Dr. Franklin were the only American commissioners present. Mr. Adams and Mr. Laurens were their coadjutors; the former joined them on the 26th of October, the latter on the 29th of November. In July, 1782, Mr. Richard Oswald was authorized by the king of Great Britain, “to treat, consult of, and conclude a peace or truce, with any commissioner, or commissioners, named or to be named by the thirteen colonies or plantations in North America,” &c. According to their instructions, Dr. Franklin and Mr. JAY consulted Count de Vergennes, and he advised them to proceed; but Mr. JAY objected to treat with the British commissioner, unless the independence of his country was first recognised, and he took upon himself, without the concurrence of Dr. Franklin or the knowledge of the French minister, to assure Mr. Oswald of his determination not to enter upon any negotiation in which he should be recognised only as a commissioner from colonies. The British cabinet being informed of this objection replied, that it was intended to recognise the independence of the United States by treaty, but Mr. JAY continued firm in his resolution, and at length Mr. Oswald received a commission authorizing him to treat with the “commissioners of the United States of America.”

The negotiation now commenced, and in a few weeks the preliminary articles were agreed to without the knowledge of the French government, and were signed by Mr. Adams, Dr. Franklin, Mr. JAY, and Mr. Laurens, on the 30th of November, but were not to take effect until peace should be concluded between Great Britain and France. By these articles all the claims of the United States were granted, and France being thus deprived of all pretext for continuing the war, a preliminary treaty was arranged and signed between France and Great Britain, on the 20th of January, 1783; congress proclaimed a cessation of hostilities on the 11th of April, and on the 15th, formally ratified the treaty. In September, the definitive treaties between the belligerant powers were signed at Paris, and the American definitive treaty was ratified by congress on the 14th of January, 1784.

Mr. JAY’S health had suffered severely from the climate of Spain, and his subsequent close application to business had added to his indisposition. By the advice of his physician he visited Bath, and derived essential benefit from the use of the waters. He then returned to Paris, and being freed from the cares of public duty, he had leisure to enjoy the polished and elevated society in which he moved. But his heart’s desire was now to return to the land of his nativity, and a private station. He declined the appointment as a commissioner to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain, and having heard it rumored that he would probably be appointed minister to England, he wrote to the secretary of foreign affairs earnestly requesting not to be considered a candidate for that station. As soon, therefore, as the definitive treaty was signed, he prepared to return home, he resigned his Spanish mission, and having attended to the settlement of his accounts, he left Paris on the 16th of May, 1784, and arrived in New York on the 24th of July. He was greeted by his friends and fellow citizens in the most affectionate and grateful manner, and learned that on the probability of his return having been made known to congress, that body had elected him their secretary for foreign affairs, and soon after his arrival, the state legislature appointed him one of their delegates to congress. He continued at the head of the department of foreign affairs, and in the faithful discharge of its laborious duties until the organization of the government under the federal constitution.

It is generally known that Mr. JAY used extraordinary exertions to secure the adoption of that instrument by the state of New York, where the question was held for some time in suspense. It will not be improper in this plate to review the immediate causes of those exertions, with a sketch of his opinions and views of passing events. Mr. JAY held the office of foreign secretary a little over four years; during that time all the powers of government were vested in congress. It had been perceived even before the conclusion of the war, that this body possessed in fact very little real power, and when the first great object of the contest had been secured, every succeeding occasion for the exercise of sovereignty betrayed the imbecility and insufficiency of the government. The official station of Mr. JAY constantly brought this embarrassing fact to his view to his great mortification and regret. His letters written at this period express his wishes distinctly. His own words will best illustrate his sentiments. In a letter to J. Lowell, in 1785, he says; “It is my first wish to see the United States assume and merit the character of one great nation whose territory is divided into different states, merely for more convenient government. In another to John Adams, in 1786, he repeats the sentiment thus. “It is one of the first wishes of my heart to see the people of America become one nation in every respect.” This was the abstract desire induced by occasions of frequent occurrence. The most prominent of these were, the Algerine war in 1785, when congress could not command the funds to redeem the captives, nor to build a navy which he recommended. In 1786, the negotiations with Spain were renewed in relation to the disputed navigation of the Mississippi below the southern boundary of the states, which broke off unadjusted, as Spain refused to grant the right, and the United States persisted in claiming it. Mr. JAY was an honest minister, he never hesitated to express his opinions, and on this occasion he remarked to congress, that if they insisted on the navigation of the Mississippi at that time, “the Spanish forts on its banks would be strengthened, and that nation would then bid us defiance with impunity, at least until the American nation should become more really and truly a nation than it is at present. For unblessed with an efficient government, destitute of funds, and without public credit, at home or abroad, we should be obliged to wait in patience for better days, or plunge into an unpopular and dangerous war.” About the same time, it was proposed to negotiate a loan in Europe, and the subject being referred to him, he reported against it, considering it improper “because the federal government in its present state, is rather paternal and persuasive than coercive and efficient. Congress can make no certain dependence on the states for any specific sums to be required and paid at any given periods, and consequently are not in capacity safely to pledge their honor and faith for the repayment of any specific sums they may borrow.” When, therefore, a convention was appointed, and a constitution formed and recommended to the states for their approval, which promised, if not all he desired, at least as much as could reasonably be expected, he was better prepared than most men in the country for advocating its adoption. Still, it was for some time doubtful whether it would be approved or not. There was a strong party in the opposition, some of whom thought the old confederation with modifications would be sufficient, and some were unwilling to relinquish any of the rights of the states; thus originated two great parties in the country. Mr. JAY was not a member of the convention by whom the constitution of the United States was framed, but its superiority to the articles of confederation was too obvious to allow of any hesitation on his part; he accordingly united with Mr. Madison and Colonel Hamilton, in the publication of a series of essays in explanation and commendation of the document, when it was submitted to the people for a final decision. These essays, collected in the well known work, “the Federalist,” now form a standard book of reference on most great constitutional questions. After the second, third, fourth, and fifth numbers of these essays were written by Mr. JAY, he was for some time prevented from a continuation by an unfortunate occurrence. Some young physicians, after violating the grave for subjects of anatomical study, had the folly to exhibit parts of limbs at their window to the passengers in the street. A serious riot was the consequence. The magistrates of the city of New York, to protect the physicians from violence, shut them up in prison, but the mob, determined not to be disappointed in their vengeance, assembled for the purpose of executing summary punishment on the culprits. Mr. JAY, and other gentlemen, armed and placed themselves under the command of Colonel Hamilton, to prevent the outrage. This party was attacked by the rioters with stones, one of which struck Mr. JAY on the temple, and nearly deprived him of life. He however recovered, but only in time to write the sixty-fourth number of the Federalist. He also published an address to the people of the state of New York, in favor of the adoption of the constitution, and when the legislature called a convention to decide the question, Mr. JAY was elected one of the delegates from the city. The convention consisted of fifty-seven members, forty-six of whom were understood at the time to be anti-federalists; nevertheless, the constitution was adopted; but only by a majority of three votes.

Mr. JAY received the very gratifying testimony of the respect and confidence of President Washington, who, on the organization of the departments, requested him to select any office he might prefer. He did so, and was accordingly appointed the first chief justice of the United States.

In April, 1794, he was appointed envoy extraordinary to Great Britain, to negotiate a treaty for the regulation of commerce, and a settlement of the disputes between the two countries, in relation to the infractions of the treaty of peace. On the 19th of November following, he concluded and signed with Lord Grenville a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, between his Britannic majesty and the United States. This treaty gave great offence to France, and produced a fearful excitement in the United States. Forty years have since passed away, and at no subsequent period has the stability of the government been placed in more imminent peril. The judgment of Washington, however, approved the treaty, and his firmness carried the country through the crisis, but the minister who negotiated the treaty was assailed and denounced by a numerous and powerful antagonist party. For this Mr. JAY was prepared, as his letters written at that time declare. “I carried with me to Europe,” said he to Edmund Randolph, “and I brought back from thence a fixed opinion, that no treaty whatever with Great Britain would escape a partial, but violent opposition. I did clearly discern that any such treaty would be used as a pretext for attacks on the government, and for attempts to diminish the confidence which the great body of the people reposed in it.” In another letter, addressed to General Henry Lee, after expressing a sentiment similar to the above, he said, “apprised of what had happened in Greece and other countries, I was warned by the experience of ages riot to calculate on the constancy of any popular tide, whether favorable or adverse, which erroneous or transitory impressions might occasion. The treaty is as it is, and the time will certainly come, when it will universally receive exactly that degree of commendation or censure which, to candid and enlightened minds, it shall appear to deserve.” Mr. JAY arrived at New York, in May, 1795, and found that he had been elected governor of the state. He felt bound by the circumstances under which he had been elected, to accept the honor conferred, and accordingly resigned the office of chief justice. He held the station of governor until 1801, when, having declined to be considered again a candidate, he withdrew from public life to the peaceful shades of his paternal estate at Bedford.

President Adams attempted to retain his services for the public, by nominating him to the senate for his former seat on the bench of the supreme court, but he had deliberately made up his mind to retire, and declined the honor, on the ground “that his duty did not require him to accept it.” The public services of Mr. JAY fill a broad space in the history of his country, but the value of them has been variously estimated amidst the zealous strife of contending political parties, and it is perhaps even yet too soon to attempt an adjustment of the balance. We shall therefore be content to leave it to the calm judgment of our readers.

That Mr. JAY, at the age of fifty-six, should have abandoned all participation in public affairs, excited some surprise at the time; but a view of his private character and motives affords a sufficient explanation.

Through all his life, he was influenced mainly by a sense of duty. At no period the creature of impulse, whatever he undertook to do, was the result of cool, dispassionate conviction, so that whatever was the labor or the difficulty of the performance, he pressed forward regardless of the consequences. So long as he believed it to be his duty to serve the public, he remained at his post, and having “borne the heat and burden of the day,” until he saw the institutions of his country, which he had assisted to rear, effective and prosperous, he naturally turned towards a station and mode of life that from early youth had been his desire. Firm in his political principles, and decidedly attached to one of the great parties of his day, he was yet tolerant of the opinions of others; he never deserted his friends, nor sought to purchase an opponent; he never asked a vote nor an office, nor did he ever remove an officer for his political views. Being therefore neither factious, ambitious, nor anxious for distinction, he was willing, when he saw the administration of the government passing out of the hands of his political friends, to give a fair trial to their successors.

In 1802, he had the misfortune to lose his excellent and beloved wife, which left a breach in the family circle at Bedford, that was long and painfully felt.

Mr. JAY’S life exhibited a beautiful illustration of the power of religion. It was never laid aside for convenience, nor brought forward on special occasions for effect, but it was a pervading influence equally acknowledged and obeyed from day to day, in public and in private. In the very storm and tempest of political passion—and there is none more reckless—his private character was always respected by his antagonists. By his friends he was venerated. In his retirement, he devoted much of his time to study and reflection; and while he was prudent, economical and diligent in the improvement of his estate, he lived in constant preparation for “another and a better world.”

He was a plain republican in his manners; warm and enduring in his friendships, and liberal in his benevolence. He was a member of most of the great religious associations of his time, and succeeded Elias Boudinot, as president of the American Bible Society.
For several years before his death, Mr. JAY’S health had gradually declined. In 1827, he was dangerously ill, so that his recovery was not expected. When apprised of his danger by his son, he received the information without any apparent emotion, but in the course of the day he conversed with cheerfulness and animation.

On being urged to tell his children on what his hopes were founded, and whence he drew his consolation, he replied, “they have THE BOOK.” From this attack, however, he recovered, but continued feeble and gradually declining until the 14th of May, 1829, when he was suddenly seized with palsy, which almost deprived him of the power of speech, though his mind remained perfect to the last.

He departed on the 17th of the same month, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.

The public acts of Mr. JAY form an important part of our early national history. A memoir of his life by his son, William Jay, with selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers, has recently been published in two octavo volumes, which we hope will find a place in the library of every American, who designs to set before his children a bright example of public and private virtue.

“It would be difficult,” says a late writer, “to point out a character in modern times more nearly allied to the Aristides drawn by Plutarch, than that of JOHN JAY. Justice, stern and inflexible, holds the first place in his exalted mind.” Yet Plutarch admits, “that although in all his own private concerns, and in those of his fellow-citizens, Aristides was inflexibly just, in affairs of state he did many things, according to the exigency of the case, to serve his country, which seemed often to have need of the assistance of injustice.” In this respect the resemblance fails between the ancient and the modern, JOHN JAY never departed from the strictest rule of right; and the patriot and the Christian may equally point to him with admiration and applause.

J. H.


JAY, John, 1817-1894, New York, diplomat, lawyer.  Grandson of Chief Justice John Jay.  President of the New York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society in 184.  Active and leader in the Free-Soil Party.  “After the enactment in 1850 of the Fugitive-Slave Law he acted as counsel for many black fugitives. At a mass meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle, January 30, 1854, he framed the resolutions that were adopted opposing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In the following year he was an enthusiastic leader in the organization of the new Republican party in New York State.”

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 413-414; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 5-10; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 95, 98)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 5-10:

JAY, JOHN (June 23, 1817-May 5, 1894), lawyer, author, diplomat, grandson of Chief Justice John Jay [q.v.], and the only son who grew to maturity of Judge William Jay [q.v.] and Hannah Augusta (McVickar) Jay, was born in New York City. His early years were spent happily in his grandfather's home at Bedford. Prepared for college at Dr. Muhlenberg's Institute, Flushing, L. I., he was graduated from Columbia in 1836, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and practised in New York City for about twenty years. On the death of his father in 1858 he retired from practice to give the rest of his life to the care of the ancestral estate and to public service.

Oppressed or suffering humanity everywhere had his sympathy. While still a student in Columbia College he was manager of the New York Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society. As a young lawyer he was particularly prominent in the seven-years struggle (1846-53) to procure the admission of St. Philip's Church (negro) to the Protestant Episcopal Convention. He served as secretary of the Irish Relief Committee during the potato famine in 1847. After the enactment in 1850 of the Fugitive-Slave Law he acted as counsel for many black fugitives. At a mass meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle, January 30, 1854, he framed the resolutions that were adopted opposing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In the following year he was an enthusiastic leader in the organization of the new Republican party in New York State. Though he was an exponent of peace like his father, nevertheless when the Civil War became a reality, he declared, in an address to his Mount Kisco neighbors, July 4, 1861, that "a whipped hound should be the emblem of the Northern man who whimpers for a peace that can only be gained by dishonour" (The Great Conspiracy, 1861, p. 48). He favored enlistment of the blacks in the Union army, the proclamation of emancipation, the organization of the Freedmen's Bureau, and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. On the other hand, he showed a liberal attitude toward the defeated South in favoring an allotment in the National Cemetery at Antietam for fallen Confederate soldiers (Documents of the Senate of the State of New York, 1868, no. 82). As minister to Austria, 1869-74, he had the difficult task of bringing order out of a calumniting chaos in connection with the United States Commission to the International Exhibition held in Vienna in 1873 (see his article, "The American Foreign Service," International Review, May-June 1877). After his return he was appointed chairman of a commission to investigate the New York Custom House for the Treasury Department, he was vice-president of the Civil Service Reform Association of the State of New York, a member, 1884-87, of the state Civil Service Commission, and one of the framers of the state's first civil-service law. A stout defender of the public schools, he assailed the Roman Catholic Church for its attempts "to overthrow our common school system, to tax the people for Romish schools where children will be bent like the twig, moulded in the confessional, educated as subjects of the Pope, owing to him their chief allegiance" (Rome, th e Bible and the Republic, 1879, p. 13). In his presidential address before the American Historical Association (1890), he maintained that the only sure guarantee of America's continued greatness was that every teacher in the common schools should be well grounded in American history. That Jay was well grounded himself is evidenced in all of his writings, especially in an excellent piece of historical research, The Peace Negotiations of 1782 and 1783, published by the New York Historical Society in 1884, and under slightly different titles as a chapter in Volume VII of Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America (1888) and in Papers of the American Historical Association, Volume III (1888). In November 1877 he contributed ''Motley's Appeal to History" to the International Review, an article which precipitated a controversy by its criticism of Grant's administration.

Jay was one of the founders of the Union League Club and its president in 1866 and 1877; he was the first president (1883-94) of the Huguenot Society of America, one of the founders (1852) of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, an active member of the New York Historical Society, the Metropolitan Muse um of Art, and the National Academy of Design. He married, June 23, 1837, Eleanor Kingsland Field, of New York City.

[New York Tribune, New York Times, May 6, and (New York) Evening Post, May 7, 1894; J. T. Scharf, History of Westchester County (1886), Volume I; W. W. Spooner, History Families of America (1907); "Slavery and the War," a collection of twenty-one pamphlets by Jay presented by him to various libraries including the Library of Congress; Annual Report American Historical Association, 1894 (1895); Proceedings Huguenot Society of America, Volume III, pt. I (1896); The Union League Club Dinner Given to Hon. John Jay on His Seventieth Birthday (1887).]

A.E.P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 413-414:

JAY, John, diplomatist, born in New York city, 23 June, 1817; died there, 5 May, 1894, was graduated at Muhlenberg's institute, and at Columbia in 1836. After his admission to the bar in 1839 he became well known by his active opposition to slavery and his advocacy of St. Philip's colored church, which was admitted to the Protestant Episcopal convention after a nine years' contest. He was secretary of the Irish relief committee of 1847, and was counsel for many fugitive slaves, including George Kirk, two Brazilian slaves that were landed in New York, Henry Long, and the Lemmons. (See ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN.) In 1854 he organized the meetings at the Broadway tabernacle, that resulted in the state convention at Saratoga on 10 August, and in the dissolution of the Whig and the formation of the Republican party at Syracuse, 27 September, 1855. During the civil war he acted with the Union league club, of which he was president in 1866, and again in 1877. In 1868, as state commissioner for the Antietam cemetery, he reported to Governor Reuben E. Fenton on the chartered right of the Confederate dead of that campaign to burial, a right questioned by Governor John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania, and Hon. John Covode. In 1869 he was sent as minister to Austria, where his diplomatic work included a naturalization treaty, the establishment of a convention on trademarks, and the supervision of the U. S. commission to the world's fair of 1873. He resigned and returned to the United States in 1875, afterward residing in New York city. In 1877 he was appointed by Sec. Sherman chairman of the Jay commission to investigate the system of the New York custom-house, and in 1883 was appointed by Governor Cleveland as the Republican member of the state civil service commission, of which he was made president. Mr. Jay was active in the early history of the American geographical and statistical society, and was long manager and corresponding secretary of the New York historical society. He was also the first president of the Huguenot society, organized in 1855 in New York. In connection with his political career, Mr. Jay delivered numerous addresses on questions connected with slavery, and also bearing on its relation to the Episcopal church, of which he was a leader among the laity. His speeches and pamphlets, which have been widely circulated, include “America Free, or America Slave” (1856); “The Church and the Rebellion” (1863); “On the Passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery” (1864); “Rome in America” (1868); “The American Foreign Service” (1877); “The Sunday-School a Safe-guard to the Republic”; “The Fisheries Question”; “The Public School a Portal to the Civil Service.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 413-414.


JAY, Peter Augustus, 1776-1843, anti-slavery activist.  Son of first Chief Justice of the United States and diplomat John Jay.  President of the New York Manumission Society in 1816, and President of the Anti-Slavery New York Public School Society.  Advocated for suffrage for free African Americans. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 103; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 77; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, p. 11)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, p. 11:

JAY, PETER AUGUSTUS (January 24, 1776- February 20, 1843), lawyer, was the eldest child of John Jay and the brother of William Jay [qq.v.]. His mother was Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, daughter of William Livingston [q.v.], later governor of New Jersey, at whose residence, "Liberty Hall," Elizabeth Town, Peter was born and with whom he lived during his childhood years. He attended school in his native town and also at Poughkeepsie, New York, and in 1790 entered Columbia College, where his father had preceded him, graduating in 1794. The appointment, in the year of his graduation, of his father as special envoy to Great Britain, gave the son an opportunity to visit that country as the envoy's secretary, to meet such celebrities as Pitt, Fox, Lord Grenville, and Lord Mansfield, to watch Erskine in a trial at Old Bailey, and to see Kemble and Mrs. Siddons at Drury Lane in The Merchant of Venice. Returning to New York after his father's negotiation of the treaty, he studied law with his cousin, Peter Jay Munro, with whom, upon his admission to the bar in 1797, he formed a partnership, and he ultimately built up a large and lucrative practice. In the autumn of 1802, on account of pulmonary trouble, he again went abroad, this time to southern Europe. Happening to be in Paris when the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed, he was entrusted with the transmission not only of that document but of Napoleon's order to evacuate the territory. On his way back he visited La Rochelle, the home of his Huguenot ancestors, who, he found, were remembered, and in his diary he deplores the decline of that once prosperous port. On the voyage across the Atlantic his ship was stopped several times by British frigates, but finally, after nearly forty days, he arrived in New York with the precious documents. The following winter he visited Bermuda and on July 29, 1807, he was married to Mary Rutherford Clarkson, daughter of General Matthew Clarkson [q.v.] of New York City, and they had eight children. He was a prominent member of the Episcopal Church and served it in various capacities. He defended, unsuccessfully, those charged with causing a riot during the Columbia College Commencement exercises at Trinity Church in 1811. From 1812 to 1817 and again in 1823 he was a trustee of the college. He was a Federalist in his early years and always remained one at heart; in New York politics he was anti-Clintonian. He was nominated for Congress in 1812 by the "Peace and Commerce" party, but his election was declared void and another contest the following year resulted in his defeat by a narrow margin. He was nevertheless elected to the state Assembly in 1816 as a Federal Republican and supported legislation for the Erie Canal and the abolition of slavery in New York. In 1820 he was appointed by Governor Clinton, though a political opponent, recorder (criminal court judge) of New York City, holding the office for a year only, but receiving a testimonial from the bar. In
1821 he was a member of the convention which framed New York's revolutionary constitution. He voted against the final draft, naming as its chief defects "making the right of suffrage universal, rendering the Judges of the Supreme Court dependent, and vesting the power of appointment, in almost all instances, in the Legislature" (Memorials, post, p. 150). He was president of the New York Hospital from 1827 to 1833 and in the latte r year served as one of th e commissioners who fixed the boundary bet ween New York and New Jersey. In 1840 he became president of the New York State Historical Society and was instrumental in establishing it in a permanent home. Philip Hone described him as "always wise, always honest, but sometimes a little prejudiced" (Diary, post, I, 55).

[Memorials of Peter A. Jay Compiled for His Descendants by His Great-grandson John Jay (1905); The Diary of Philip Hone (2 volumes, 1889), ed. by Bayard Tuckerman; Proceedings New York Historical Society for the Year 1843 (1844); W. W. Spooner, Historic Families of America (n.d.); New York Tribune, February 22, 23, 1843.]

C.S.L.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III:

JAY, Peter Augustus, lawyer, born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, 24 January, 1776; died in New York city, 20 February, 1843, was graduated at Columbia in 1794, and became his father's private secretary, and in that capacity accompanied him when he was sent as minister to England in 1794. On his return he studied law and achieved a high rank at the New York bar. In 1816 he was a member of the assembly, being active in promoting legislation for the building of the Erie canal, and with his brother William supported the bill recommending the abolition of slavery in New York state. He held the office of recorder of New York city in 1819-'21, and was a member of the New York constitutional convention in 1821. Mr. Jay was a trustee of Columbia in 1812-'17, and again in 1823-'43, being chairman in 1832. In 1840-'3 he was president of the New York historical society, and he was connected with several literary and charitable societies. He received the degree of LL. D. from Harvard in 1831, and from Columbia in 1835. His great learning and strength of intellect, his masterly reasoning, his wisdom and his pre-eminent moral excellence, combined with his thorough refinement and dignity as a man, made him a very marked and remarkable jurist and member of society. Mr. Jay was one of the members of the Kent club, composed of prominent members of the bar, and was active in the social affairs of New York city. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


JAY, William, 1789-1858, Bedford, NY, jurist, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery Liberty Party. Son of first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay. In 1819, he strongly opposed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed the extension of slavery into the new territories. Drafted the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Corresponding Secretary, 1835-1838, Executive Committee, 1836-1837, AASS.  Vice President, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS).  He was removed as a judge of Westchester County, in New York, due to his antislavery activities. Supported emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia and the exclusion of slavery from new territories, although he did not advocate interfering with slave laws in the Southern states.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 47, 159, 226, 286, 301; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 73, 107, 199, 251, 253, 295; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 51, 77-81, 96, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 11-12; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 473-475; Jay, W., Life and Writings of John Jay, 1833; Jay, W., An Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Societies, 1834; Jay, W., A View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery, 1837; Jay, W., War and Peace, 1848; Jay, W., Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War, 1849)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 11-12:

JAY, WILLIAM (June 16, 1789-October 14, 1858), judge, author, moral reformer, was born in New York City, the son of John Jay [q.v.] and Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, and a brother of Peter Augustus Jay [q.v.]. Following a thorough classical training under Thomas Ellison, rector of St. Peter's Church in Albany, and preparation for college from Henry Davis, afterwards president of Hamilton College, he entered Yale in 1804. After his graduation (1807) he undertook the study of law in the office of John B. Henry, Albany, but impaired eyesight prevented active practice and he turned to agricultural pursuits on his father's 800 acres at Bedford.

In 1818 he was appointed judge of the court of Westchester County, and with one short interruption held that office until 1843, when he was removed through the influence of pro-slavery Democrats. His charges to the jury always commanded attention because of his "full exposition of the law, without the slightest concession to the popular current of the day" (New York Evening Post, October 15, 1858). Active with tongue and pen in championing the cause of emancipation, he was agitating for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia twenty-two years before congressional action brought it about. The first number of the Emancipator, May 1, 1833, had a contribution from Judge Jay. The same year the New York City Anti-Slavery Society was established with his support, and largely through his persuasive arguments a National Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia inaugurated a country-wide campaign that was based on strictly constitutional grounds. Like Wilberforce he opposed the plan to colonize the former slaves in Africa, declaring that those who favored that plan were not moved by "the precepts of the Gospel" but by "prejudice against an unhappy portion of the human family" (An Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American Colonization, and American Anti-Slavery Societies, two editions, 1835). To the advocates of gradual emancipation he revealed its dangers, arguing that it must be either "immediate emancipation or continued slavery" (Ibid.). In other pamphlets he reproved certain bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which he himself was a communicant, for their use of the Bible to prop up slavery; and he vigorously assailed the American Tract Society, of which he was a life director, for its attempt to sidestep the slavery issue in the interest of harmony. A collection of his arguments, Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery, was published in 1853. He was far in advance of his age in the advocacy of arbitration to settle international disputes. His pamphlet of 1842, War and Peace: The Evils of the First and a Plan for Preserving the Last, was reprinted as a timely contribution during the World War peace discussion of 1919. The American Peace Society continued him as its president for a decade.

Amid his various humanitarian activities, he took time to write The Life of John Jay: with Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers (2 volumes, 1833) and in 1850 published Reply to Remarks of Reverend Moses Stuart . . . on Hon. John Jay, and an Examination of his Scriptural Exegesis, Contained in his Recent Pamphlet Entitled "Conscience and the Constitution" (1850). Other writings are essays on the Sabbath as a civil and divine institution, duelling, temperance, Sunday schools and their development, and a commentary (unpublished) on the Old and New Testaments. His pamphlets in support of Bible Societies (he was one of the founders of the American Bible Society in 1816) brought him into acrimonious controversy with Bishop J. H. Hobart [q.v.]. Jay was also a devoted agrarian with an enthusiasm for experiments in tillage, drainage, horticulture, and stock-raising on the Bedford estate. He married, September 4, 1812, Hannah Augusta McVickar, daughter of a New York merchant. John Jay, 1817-1894 [q.v.], was their only surviving son.

[Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery (1893), containing a list of Jay's writings as an appendix; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, Volume VI (1912), also with a list of writings; G. B. Cheever, The True Christian Patriot (1860); Frederick Douglass, Eulogy of the Late Hon. William Jay (1859); A.H. Partridge, "The Memory of the Just": A Memorial of the Hon. Wm. Jay (1860); newspaper obituaries, particularly those in (New York) Evening Post, October 15, and New York Tribune, October 16, 1858.]

A. E. P.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III:

JAY, William, jurist, born in New York city, 16 June; 1789; died in Bedford, New York, 14 October, 1858, studied the classics at Albany with the Reverend Thomas Ellison, of Oxford, England. Among his classmates was James Fenimore Cooper, with whom he formed a life-long friendship, and who inscribed to Jay “Lionel Lincoln” and some of his “Letters from Europe.” Jay was graduated at Yale in 1808, and studied law with John B. Henry of Albany, but was compelled to relinquish the profession by weakness of the eyes. He retired to his father's home at Bedford, and in 1812 married Augusta, daughter of John McVickar, a lady “in whose character were blended all the Christian graces and virtues.” In 1815 he published a “Memoir on the Subject of a General Bible Society for the United States,” and in 1810 assisted Elias Boudinot and others in forming the American Bible society, of which he was for years an active and practical promoter, and its principal champion against the vigorous attacks of the high-churchmen led by Bishop Hobart. The interest in the controversy extended to England, and Jay's numerous letters and pamphlets on the subject have been commended as models of that sort of warfare. In 1818 Jay was appointed to the bench of Westchester county by Governor DeWitt Clinton. His office as first judge was vacated by the adoption of the new constitution in 1821, but he was subsequently reappointed, without regard to politics, until he was superseded in 1843 by Governor Bouck at the demand of a pro-slavery faction. In 1826, Jay, who in 1819, during the Missouri controversy, had written strongly against the extension of slavery, demanding that congress should “stand between the living and the dead, and stay the plague,” was instrumental in calling the attention of the New York legislature and of congress to the necessity of reforming the slave-laws of the District of Columbia. A free colored man, Gilbert Horton, of Somers, Westchester county, who had gone to Washington, was there arrested as a runaway and advertised by the sheriff to be sold as a fugitive slave, to pay his jail fees, unless previously claimed by his master. Jay called a public meeting, which demanded the interposition of Governor DeWitt Clinton. This was promptly given, Horton was released, and a petition circulated for the abolition of slavery in the District. The New York assembly, by a vote of fifty-seven to thirty-nine, instructed their representatives in congress to vote for the measure. Pennsylvania passed a similar bill, and upon the memorial presented by General Aaron Ward, the house of representatives, after a prolonged debate, referred the subject to a special committee. In 1828-'9 the debate was renewed in congress, and resolutions and petitions multiplied, from Maine to Tennessee.

Among Jay's writings at this time were essays on the Sabbath as a civil and divine institution, temperance, Sunday-schools, missionary and educational efforts, and an essay on duelling, to which, in 1830, while the authorship was unknown, a medal was awarded by the Anti-duelling association of Savannah, by a committee of which Judge James M. Wayne and Governor Richard W. Habersham were members. In 1833 he published the “Life and Writings of John Jay.” Its careful sketch of the peace negotiations of 1782, and its exposition of the hostility of France to the American claims was questioned by Dr. Sparks, but their accuracy was certified by Lord St. Helens (Mr. Fitzherbert), and has since been confirmed by the Vergennes correspondence and the “Life of Shelburne.” In October, 1832, President Jackson appointed Judge Jay a commissioner to adjust all unsettled matters with the western Indians; but the appointment, which was unsolicited, was declined. Judge Jay contributed a paper on the anti-slavery movement to the first number of the “Emancipator,” published in New York, 1 May, 1833. In October of the same year the New York city anti-slavery society was formed, and in December an Anti-slavery convention met at Philadelphia to form the American anti-slavery society. Each of these bodies, at Judge Jay's suggestion, disclaimed the right of congress to interfere with slavery in the states, while claiming for congress power to suppress the domestic slave-trade and to abolish slavery in the territories under its exclusive jurisdiction. The significance of the principles and action of these societies is illustrated by the interesting historic facts: first, that nullification in South Carolina in 1832, when a medal was struck inscribed “John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy,” was the precursor of the secession of 1861, showing that the pro-slavery policy during the interval was a part of the secession scheme; and next, that the anti-slavery movement, organized in 1833 on strictly constitutional grounds, culminated in the Republican party, by which slavery was abolished and the republic preserved. The same year, 1833, was noted for the persecution and trial in Connecticut of Prudence Crandall (q. v.), and for the decision of Judge Daggett that colored persons could not be citizens. Judge Jay's review of that decision and his able enforcement of the opposite doctrine were approvingly quoted by Chancellor Kent in his “Commentaries.” The years 1834 and 1835 were memorable for the attempt to arrest, by threats and violence, the expression of anti-slavery sentiments. Judge Jay, in a charge to the grand jury, called their attention to the prevailing spirit of lawless violence, and charged them that any law that might be passed to abridge in the slightest degree the freedom of speech or the press, to shield any one subject from discussion, would be null and void. He prepared also, for the American anti-slavery society, an address to the public, restating their views and principles, which was widely published throughout America and Europe. In 1834 Judge Jay published his “Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Societies,” which was read “by scholars and statesmen and exerted a powerful influence!” “The work,” wrote Prof. E. Wright, Jr., “sells faster than it can be printed,” and it was presently reprinted in London. In December, 1835, President Jackson, in his message, assailed the character and designs of the anti-slavery movement, accusing the Abolitionists of circulating through the mails “inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, and calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and all the horrors of civil war,” and the president suggested to congress a law forbidding the circulation through the mails of incendiary documents. On 28 December the executive committee addressed to the president what Henry Wilson called “an elaborate and dignified protest from the polished and pungent pen of Judge Jay,” denying his accusations, and offering to submit their publications to the inspection of congress.

Judge Jay's next work, “A View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery” (1837), made a deep impression, and had a rapid sale. This was followed in 1839 by a startling presentation of facts on “The Condition of the Free People of Color in the United States,” in 1840 by an address to the friends of constitutional liberty on the violation by the house of representatives of the right of petition, and a review from his pen of the case of the “Amistad” negroes (see CINQUE) was read by John Quincy Adams in congress as a part of his speech on the subject. In 1842 Judge Jay reviewed the argument by Mr. Webster on the slaves of the “Creole.” The two subjects to which Judge Jay's efforts were chiefly devoted were those of war and slavery. His writings on the first, both before and after he became president of the American peace society, had no little influence at home and abroad. In his volume entitled “War and Peace; the Evils of the First, with a Plan for securing the Last” (New York, 1848), he suggested stipulation by treaty referring international disputes to arbitration, as a plan based upon obvious principles of national policy, and adapted to the existing state of civilized society. The suggestion met with the warm approval of Joseph Sturge, the English philanthropist, who visited Judge Jay at Bedford while the work was still in manuscript, and it was embodied by Mr. Sturge in a volume published by him on his return to England. The plan was heartily approved by Mr. Cobden, who wrote to Judge Jay: “If your government is prepared to insert an arbitration clause in the pending treaties, I am persuaded it will be accepted by our government.” The main feature of the plan, arbitration, after approval by successive peace congresses in Europe (at Brussels in 1848, at Paris in 1849, at London in 1851) was virtually recommended by Protocol No. 23, of the Congress of Paris, held in 1856 after the Crimean war, which protocol was unanimously adopted by the plenipotentiaries of France, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey. These governments declared their wish that the states between which any serious misunderstanding might arise should, before appealing to arms, have recourse, as far as circumstances might allow, to the good offices of a friendly power. The honor of its introduction in the congress belongs to Lord Clarendon, whose services had been solicited by Joseph Sturge and Henry Richard, and it was supported by all of his colleagues in the congress. It was subsequently referred to by Lord Derby as worthy of immortal honor. Lord Malmsbury pronounced it an act “important to civilization and to the security of the peace, of Europe,” and it was somewhat later approved by all the other powers to whom it was referred, more than forty in number. Among Judge Jay's other writings on this subject are his letter on the “Kossuth Excitement” (1852); an address before the American peace society at Boston (1845), and a petition from the society to the U. S. senate in behalf of stipulated arbitration (1853). Perhaps under this head should be included his historic and searching “Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War” (Boston, 1849). In 1846 Judge Jay republished, with an elaborate preface, the concluding chapter of Bishop Wilber-force's “History of the Church in America,” which had been announced by two American publishers who relinquished the design when it was found to contain a reproof of the American church for its course on slavery. This was followed by a letter on the same subject to Bishop Ives, of North Carolina. “The Calvary Pastoral, a Tract for the Times,” rebuked the attempt to convert the Episcopal church into a popish church without a pope. In 1849 appeared “An Address to the Non-Slave-holders of the South, on the Social and Political Evils of Slavery.” This was in part embodied in an address to the people of California, which was effectively circulated on the Pacific coast in English and Spanish. In 1850 Judge Jay addressed a letter to William Nelson, on Clay's compromise measures; and this was followed by a review of Mr. Webster's declaration that slavery was excluded from California and New Mexico by the law of physical geography. Subsequent letters and addresses included one to Samuel A. Elliott, in reply to his apology for the fugitive-slave bill, an address to the anti-slavery Christians of the United States, and in 1853 several letters and reviews of the conduct of the American tract society in the interest of slavery. The same year a volume of Judge Jay's miscellaneous writings on slavery was published in Boston. In 1854 he had the satisfaction of seeing the Republican party founded on the anti-slavery principles that he had early advocated. Of his anti-slavery labors Horace Greeley said: “As to Chief-Justice Jay, the father, may be attributed, more than to any other man, the abolition of negro bondage in this state [New York], so to Judge William Jay, the son, the future give the credit of having been one of the earliest advocates of the modern anti-slavery movements, which at this moment influence so radically the religion and the philanthropy of the country, and of having guided by his writings, in a large measure, the direction which a cause so important and so conservative of the best and most precious rights of the people should take.” He left in manuscript a commentary on the Bible.—Peter Augustus's son, John Clarkson, physician, born in New York city, 11 September, 1808; died in Rye, New York, 15 November, 1891, was graduated at the College of physicians and surgeons in 1831. In addition to his practice of medicine he made a specialty of conchology, and acquired the most complete and valuable collection of shells in the United States. This and his costly library on this branch of science were purchased by Catherine Wolfe and presented, in memory of her father, to the American museum of natural history, where it is known as the Jay collection. In 1832 he became a member of the Lyceum of natural history (now New York academy of sciences), and was its treasurer in 1836-'43. He took an active part in the efforts that were made during that time to obtain subscriptions for the new building, and bore the principal burden in planning and superintending its construction. He was one of the founders of the New York yacht-club, and for some time its secretary. From 1859 till 1880 he was a trustee of Columbia college. The shells collected by the expedition of Com. Matthew C. Perry to Japan were submitted to him for examination, and he wrote the article on that subject in the government reports. Dr. Jay was the author of “Catalogue of Recent Shells” (New York, 1835); “Description of New and Rare Shells” (1836); and later editions of his catalogue, in which he enumerates about 11,000 well-marked varieties, and at 7,000 well-established species. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


JEFFERSON, Thomas, 1743-1826, Virginia, statesman, writer, inventor, member of the Continental Congress, author of the Declaration of Independence, President of the United States, 1801-1809, Vice President of the United States, 1797-1801; although Thomas Jefferson owned slaves himself and never freed his slaves during his lifetime, he tried to prevent the Constitution from legally authorizing slavery in the United States; he always opposed slavery in theory, if not in practice  Jefferson wrote:  “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state.  But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.” He also wrote:  “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.  Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal… The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.”

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 62-64, 75, 244, 246, 319, 323, 324; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 71-72, 83, 85, 112, 115; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 20, 24, 27-28, 84, 113, 127; Hammond, 2011, pp. ii, xiv, xv, 21, 53-54, 58, 69-78, 127, 138-139, 210, 215-216, 298, 129, 165-166; Liscomb & Berg,1903-1904; Mason, 2006, pp. 13-14, 35, 47, 95, 171-172, 174, 177-178, 187, 199, 202, 232, 240-241n21; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 19, 22-23, 25, 31, 38, 55, 104, 130, 152, 209, 233, 279, 284, 296, 350-352, 372, 403-405, 562-565; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 415-423; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 17-35; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 909; American Reformers, pp. 474-479)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 17-35:

JEFFERSON, THOMAS (April 12/13, 1743- July 4, 1826), statesman, diplomat, author, scientist, architect, apostle of freedom and enlightenment, was born at "Shadwell" in Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Virginia, then on the fringe of western settlement. Whether or not the first Jefferson in the colony came from Wales, as the family tradition held, a Thomas Jefferson was living in Henrico County in 1677 and married Mary Branch. Their son Thomas, who married Mary Field, lived at "Osbornes" in what is now Chesterfield County, where on February 29, 1707 /08 Peter Jefferson was born. The family was not aristocratic or wealthy and Peter had largely to shift for himself. Becoming a surveyor, he removed to Goochland County, where by 1731 he was a magistrate. Four years later he patented moo acres on the south side of the Rivanna River and shortly thereafter purchased from William Randolph of "Tuckahoe," for a bowl of punch, 400 acres more, containing the site north of the river upon which he erected a plain frame house. Thither in 1739 he brought his wife and there, Thomas, his third child, was born.

Jane Randolph, who became Peter Jefferson's wife at nineteen, first-cousin of William of "Tuckahoe" and the eldest surviving child of Isham Randolph of "Dungeness" and his wife, Jane Rogers, connected her husband with perhaps the most distinguished family in the province and assured the social standing of his children. Peter Jefferson's career closely followed that of Joshua Fry [q.v.], under whom he served as deputy surveyor in Albemarle, with whom he continued the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina and made the first accurate map of Virginia, and whom he succeeded as burgess and county lieutenant (Harrison, post). Thomas Jefferson had great respect for his father's map and from him doubtless acquired much of his zest for exploring and drawing and his liking for untrodden paths. From him he inherited a vigorous, if less powerful, body, and perhaps his fondness for mathematical subjects. Of the ten children of Peter Jefferson, eight survived his death, August 17, 1757. He left Thomas, the elder of his two sons, 2750 acres of land and an established position in the community.

Seven of the first nine years of Jefferson's life were spent at "Tuckahoe," on the James a few miles above the present Richmond, whither his father removed in pursuance of a promise to William Randolph to act as guardian of the latter's son. Here he began his education at the "English school." The red hills of Albemarle became his permanent home, however, at the age of nine and held ever thereafter an unrivaled place in his affections. At this time he began the study of Latin and Greek under the Reverend William Douglas, who also introduced him to French. Of Douglas' abilities Jefferson later expressed a low opinion. After the death of his father, he studied with the Reverend James Maury, whom he later described as "a correct classical scholar." Whoever may deserve the credit for it, Jefferson gained an early mastery of the classical tongues and ever found the literature of Greece and Rome a "rich source of delight." In March 1760 he entered the College of William and Mary, from which he was graduated two years later. Here, at the seat of the provincial government, he was enabled to view history in the making and politics in practice (H. B. Adams, The College of William and Mary, 1887). His chief intellectual stimulus while a student came from his association with Dr. William Small, who held first the chair of mathematics and then ad interim that of philosophy. Small aroused in him the interest in scientific questions which was destined to remain active all his life, and introduced him to the "familiar table" of Governor Francis Fauquier and to George Wythe [q.v.], most noted teacher of law of his generation in Virginia, under whose guidance Jefferson prepared himself for practice.

During these years he appears to have been a recognized member of the close-knit social group that the children of the great families of Virginia constituted. He visited homes, made wagers with girls, gossiped about love affairs, served at weddings. Tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired, and freckled, he was not prepossessing in appearance, but he was a skilled horseman, played on the violin, and seems to have been a gay companion. The strain of seriousness in his nature, however, w:as soon apparent; it may have been accentuated by the unhappy outcome of his love affair with Rebecca Burwell (Chinard, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 17-18). Before he became a prominent actor on the stage of public life, he had formulated for himself a stern code of personal conduct and had disciplined himself to habits of study as few of his contemporaries ever found strength to do (Chinard, Literary Bible, p. 12). Some time after 1764, perhaps, he began to apply historical tests to the Bible, lost faith in conventional religion, though without questioning conventional morality, and for inspiration turned to the great classical writers (Ibid., pp. 34-35). That he prepared himself with unusual care for his profession, by the study of legal history as well as of procedure, is apparent from the notebook in which he abridged his legal reading (Chinard, The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson, 1927). He was admitted to the bar in 1767, and, despite his dislike of court practice, was quite successful in the law until on the eve of the Revolution he abandoned it as a profession. His legal training, however, left a permanent impress upon him. In his most famous state papers he is the advocate pleading a cause and buttressing it with precedents.

On January 1, 1772, Jefferson was married to Martha (Wayles) Skelton, then in her twenty-fourth year, the daughter of John Wayles of Charles City County and his wife, Martha Eppes. She was the widow of Bathurst Skelton and had borne him a son, who died in infancy. In the ten years of their married life she bore Jefferson six children, only three of whom survived her and only two of whom, Martha and Mary (or Maria), attained maturity. She is reputed to have been beautiful, and certainly her second husband lavished upon her notable devotion. The young couple began their married life in the only part of "Monticello" then finished, the southeastern "pavilion." Jefferson had moved to his adored mountain-top after the nearby house at "Shadwell" burned, together with his cherished library, in 1770, and had begun the building operations which were to extend over a generation. The 2750 acres in Albemarle left him by his father were doubled by 1794 and probably much earlier. From the estate of his father-in-law he acquired in behalf of his wife, soon after his marriage, holdings practically equivalent to his own. With them, however, went a huge debt from the effects of which he never entirely escaped. Throughout most of his mature life he was the owner of approximately ten thousand acres of land and from one to two hundred slaves. Nothing if not methodical, he made periodical records of everything connected with his plantations-his slaves, his horses and cattle, the trees planted, the temperature at "Monticello," the dates at which birds and flowers first appeared.

In 1770 Jefferson was appointed county lieutenant of Albemarle, and in 1773, by the College of William and Mary, surveyor of the county. In May 1769 he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses, as he continued to be until the House ceased to function in 1775, though he did not attend in 1772. He says he had been intimate for almost a decade with Patrick Henry, and appears to have been sympathetic with the orator as the representative of the upper counties against the aristocracy. Never an effective public speaker, Jefferson did greatest service in legislative bodies on committees, where his marked talents as a literary draftsman were employed. Identified from the outset with the aggressive anti-British group, he was one of those who drew up the resolves creating the Virginia Committee of Correspondence and was appointed a member of the committee of eleven, though not of the select committee of three. In 1774 he was one of the champions of the resolution for a fast day, on the day the Boston Port Act was to go into effect, which resolution led to the dissolution of the House. In 1775 he was on the committee appointed to draw up an address to Dunmore rejecting Lord North's conciliatory offer, and says that he drafted the address adopted (Ford, post, I, 455-59). Prevented by illness from attending the Virginia convention of 1774, after he had drawn up the resolutions of his county and been appointed a delegate, he sent a paper, later published as A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Ford, I, 421- 47), which proved to be his greatest literary contribution to the American Revolution next to the Declaration of Independence and which reveals, as perhaps no other document does, his point of view in that struggle. Though approved by many, it was not adopted because regarded as too advanced. Emphasizing the "natural" right of emigration and the right of conquest, exercised by the first English settlers in America as by the Saxons in England, he denied all parliamentary authority over the colonies and claimed that the only political tie with Great Britain was supplied by the King, to whom the colonists had voluntarily submitted. The aids rendered by the mother country, he felt, had been solely for commercial benefit and were repayable only in trade privileges. He advocated, not separation, but freedom of trade in articles that the British could not use, and the relinquishment of all British claims in regard to taxation. This powerful pamphlet, distinctly legalistic in tone, reveals no adequate conception of the value of early English protection or of the contemporary British imperial problem. Throughout his career as a Revolutionary patriot he emphasized "rights as derived from the laws of nature," not a king; and here, as elsewhere, he strove for the "revindication of Saxon liberties" (Chinard, Commonplace Book, p. 57).

Elected by the Virginia convention to serve in Congress in case Peyton Randolph was required at home, Jefferson sat in that body during the summer and autumn of 1775. Though he drew drafts of several papers, these were too strongly anti-British in tone to be acceptable while there was hope of conciliation. He was not present in Congress from December 28, 1775, to May 14, 1776. Probably called home by the illness of his mother, who died March 31, and by the needs of his family, he also had duties to perform as county lieutenant and commander of the militia of Albemarle, to which office he had been appointed by the Virginia Committee of Safety on September 26 (Chinard, Thomas Jefferson, p. 66; Randall, post, I, 140-41). Following the famous resolutions introduced into Congress on June 7 by Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson was elected four days later, with John Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, to draw up a declaration of independence. The reasons for the prominence in this connection of one so young as Jefferson, and especially for his selection over Lee, have been much disputed (Randall, I, 144-59). Now only thirty-three years old, he had been a "silent member" on the floor of Congress, though outspoken and decisive in committees. The "reputation of a masterly pen," however, stood him in good stead and opened the door of dangerous but glorious opportunity.

More changes in his draft of the Declaration were made at the instance of Adams, and particularly of Franklin, than he later remembered, and some were made by Congress itself, but this most famous American political document as a composition belongs indisputably to Jefferson (Fitzpatrick, post; Becker, post). The philosophical portion strikingly resembles the first three sections of George Mason's Declaration of Rights, itself a notable summary of current revolutionary philosophy. Jefferson probably availed himself of this, but he improved upon it. The doctrines are essentially those of John Locke, in which the more radical of the patriots were steeped. Jefferson himself did not believe in TI absolute human equality, and, though he had no fears of revolution, he preferred that the "social compact" be renewed by periodical, peaceful revisions. That government should be based on popular consent and secure the "inalienable" rights of man, among which he included the pursuit of happiness rather than property, that it should be a means to human well-being and not an end in itself, he steadfastly believed. He gave here a matchless expression of his faith; The charges against the King, who is singled out because all claims of parliamentary authority are implicitly denied, are in general an improved version of those that had already been drawn up by Jefferson and adopted as the preamble of the Virginia constitution of 1776. Relentless in their reiteration, they constitute a statement of the specific grievances of the revolting party, powerfully and persuasively presented at the bar of public opinion. The Declaration is notable for both its clarity and subtlety of expression, and it abounds in the felicities that are characteristic of Jefferson's unlabored prose (Becker, post, ch. V). More nearly impassioned than any other of his important writings, it is eloquent in its sustained elevation of style and remains his noblest literary monument.

Desiring to be nearer his family and feeling that he could be more useful in furthering the "reformation" of Virginia than in Congress, Jefferson left the latter body in September 1776, and, entering the House of Delegates on October 7, served there until his election to the governorship in June 1779. While a member of Congress, he had submitted to the Virginia convention of,776 a constitution and preamble, only the latter of which was adopted. His proposed constitution was in some respects, especially in its failure to provide for popular participation in the election of senators, less democratic than the one adopted (W. C. Ford, in the Nation, August 7, 1890, pp. 107-09). With the new constitution and government, which were marked by little change in law and social organization, he was, however, profoundly dissatisfied. To him the Revolution 1neant more than a redress of grievances. Against the continuance of an established church, divorced from England, which the conservatives favored, he desired the entire separation of church and state. He was determined to rid his "country," as he long called Virginia, of the artificial aristocracy of wealth and birth, and to facilitate through education the development of a natural aristocracy of talent and virtue and an enlightened electorate. He felt that the legal code should be adapted to republican government "with a single eye to reason, & the good of those for whose government it was formed." Because of his skill as a legislator, the definiteness of his carefully formulated program, and the almost religious zeal with which he pressed it, he immediately assumed the leadership of the progressive group which Patrick Henry had relinquished when he became governor and which George Mason willingly conceded to a more aggressive man. He deserves the chief credit not only for an unparalleled program but also for legislative achievements that have rarely been equaled in American history.

He struck the first blow at the aristocratic system by procuring the abolition of land-holding in fee-tail. On October 12, 1776, he moved the revision of the laws. Elected to the board of revisors with four others, of whom only Wythe and Edmund Pendleton served to the end, he labored two years with scholarly thoroughness on his share of the revision, including the law of descent and the criminal law. The report of the board (June 18, 1778), comprised 126 bills, the substance of at least 100 of which was ultimately enacted (Lingley, post, p. 188 note; Ford, II, 199-239; Hening, XII). Primogeniture was abolished in 1785. His bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (Ford, II, 237-39), presented in 1779 by John Harvie of Albemarle and passed, with slight modifications in the preamble (Hening, XII, 84-86), in 1786 when Jefferson was in France, was regarded by him as one of his greatest contributions to humanity. In its assertion that the mind is not subject to coercion, that civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions, and that the opinions of men are not the concern of civil government, it is indeed one of the great American charters of freedom.

Jefferson's educational bills, which represented the constructive part of his program, were unsuccessful. Of his extraordinary Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (Ford, II, 220-29), which summarizes his educational philosophy, only the part dealing with elementary schools was acted on, in 1796, and a provision was inserted that in effect defeated its purpose. His attempts to amend the constitution of his old college and to establish a public library (Ibid., II, 229-37) entirely failed. During his governorship,
however, as a visitor of William and Mary, he effected the abolishment of the professorships of Hebrew, theology, and ancient languages and the establishment of professorships of anatomy and medicine, law, and modern languages, the two latter being the first of their kind in America (C. J. Heatwole, A, History of Education in Virginia, 1916, pp. 90- 91). Though he did not originate the idea of removing the capital to Richmond, he framed a bill for that purpose and the measure which was passed in 1779 (Hening, X, 85) included his preamble and provisions for hand some public buildings such as he had favored. His plans for his state were never fully carried out, but he may properly be termed the architect of Virginia government.

His election to the governorship (June 1, 1779) in succession to Patrick Henry was the natural consequence of his preeminence as a legislator and his unchallenged leadership of the progressive group. The philosophical qualities that made him so conspicuous as a planner and prophet were of little avail to him, however, as an executive. Resourceful in counsel, he was ever hesitant and reluctant in th e exercise of authority, the very necessity of which he deplored. His position as a war-governor was rendered the more difficult by the constitutional limitations upon his authority and the diminution of the state's resources. In handling the countless details of his office he was extraordinarily industrious and conscientious (H. R Mcllwaine, Official Letters of the Governors of the State of Virginia, II, 1928). His chief weaknesses were his unwillingness, even in time of acute crisis, to use means of doubtful legality and his characteristic reliance upon the militia (Eckenrode, post, ch. VIII). He managed sufficiently well during th e first year of his governorship and was duly reelected, but in the spring of 1781, when the British seriously invaded Virginia, the state was at the mercy. Richmond being in British hands, the legislature was called to meet at Charlottesville May 24. Jefferson proceeded to "Monticello" and last exercised th e functions of hi  office June 3, interpreting his term to continue only one year and not until his successor qualified. As he put it, he "resigned" the governorship, recommending that the military and civil agencies be combined by the election of General Thomas Nelson, but his act was a virtual abdication. On June 4, Tarleton made a raid on "Monticello." The supposed governor and the legislators who were his guests all escaped, Jefferson the la st among them. He returned the next day, but soon removed his family to " Poplar Forest," where la te in June he was thrown from his horse and disabled. Thus did his administration come to an unheroic end.

What was left of the Assembly, meeting beyond the mountains at Staunton, elected Nelson and ordered (June 12, 1781) that an investigation of Jefferson's conduct as governor be made at the next session. Judging from the heads of charges proposed by his neighbor and subsequent supporter, George Nicholas (Randall, I, 354-55; Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress), there was no allegation of personal cowardice, such as was made later by political enemies. The conduct of the assemblymen, indeed, had been marked by even greater prudence. All the charges had to do with the lack of military precaution and expedition. After the crisis actually arose, Jefferson seems to have done everything possible and with as great speed as could have been expected. Whether or not he had made such previous preparation for an impending crisis as he might have is questionable. By autumn, however, the storm had stilled. On December 12 a committee appointed by the House of Delegates to inquire into his conduct as governor reported that no information had been offered them except rumors, which they regarded as groundless, and on December 19 resolutions of thanks were finally adopted. Though formally vindicated, Jefferson did not for years recover his prestige in Virginia. For a time the state government passed into conservative hands, but during his long absence in France (1784-89) the progressives, under the able leadership of Madison, again gained ascendancy, and Jefferson came to be regarded as the prophet of the new order, as indeed he was.

Persuaded that public service and private misery were inseparable, Jefferson retired to his neglected farms, his cherished books, and his beloved family, convinced that nothing could again separate him from them. He took advantage of the leisure forced upon him by his fall from his horse to organize the careful memoranda about Virginia which he had made over a long period of years. Arranging these in the order of the queries submitted in 1781 by Barbe de Marbois, secretary of the French legation, he somewhat corrected and enlarged them during the winter of 1782-83, and at length had them printed in France in 1784-85. The Notes on the State of Virginia (Ford, III, 68 - 295) went through many editions and laid the foundations of Jefferson's high contemporary reputation as a universal scholar and of his present fame as a pioneer American scientist. Unpretentious in form and statistical in character, this extraordinarily informing and generally interesting book may still be consulted with profit about the geography and productions, the social and political life, of eighteenth-century Virginia. With ardent patriotism as well as zeal for truth Jefferson combatted the theories of Buffon and Raynal in regard to the degeneracy of animal and intellectual life in America, and he manifested great optimism in regard to the future of the country, but he included "strictures" on slavery and the government of Virginia. In 1783 he drafted another proposed constitution for his state (Ford, III, 320-33), which was published in 1786 and ultimately bound with the Notes as an appendix.

But for the death of his wife, September 6, 1782, he might have remained in philosophic retirement. He lavished upon his motherless daughters extraordinary tenderness and solicitude, but he was now glad to abandon "Monticello" and seek relief from personal woe in public activity. Appointed peace commissioner to Europe, November 12, 1782, he was prepared to sail when, his mission having become unnecessary, his appointment was withdrawn. In June 1783 he was elected a delegate to Congress and during six months' service in that body the following winter he was a member of almost every important committee and drafted no fewer than thirty-one state papers (Ford, I, xxviii-xxx). Some of these were of the first importance, especially his Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit (Ibid., III, 446-57), in which he advocated the adoption of1he dollar, to be divided into tenths and hundredth s, and his successive reports on the government of the western territory (Ibid., III, 407-ro, 429-32). The report of March 22, 1784, which has been ranked second in importance only to the Declaration of Independence among Jefferson's state papers (Ibid., III, 430, note), contained practically all the features of the epoch-making Ordinance of 1787. If it had been adopted as Jefferson presented it, slavery would have been forbidden in all the western territory after 1800, and the secession of any part of that region would have been rendered indisputably illegal. Jeffers on had earlier drafted a deed of cession of the northwestern territory claimed by Virginia, and he drew up a land ordinance which failed of adoption. Certainly he was a major architect of American expansion.

As a member of Congress he drafted a report on the definitive treaty of peace which was eventually adopted (Ford, III, 349-50). He drew up, on December 20, 1783, a report which was agreed to as the basis of procedure in the negotiation of treaties of commerce, and was himself appointed, May 7, 1784, to assist Franklin and Adams in this work. Arriving in Paris on August 6 with his daughter Martha, he was appointed in 1785 Franklin's successor as minister to France and remained in that country until October 1789. Rightly regarded in France as a savant, he carried on the tradition of Franklin, but until the end of his own stay he was overshadowed by Franklin's immense reputation. Jefferson 's attitude toward his predecessor, whom he regarded as the greatest American, was one of becoming modesty without a tinge of jealousy. During his ministry he was likewise overshadowed by Lafayette, who was regarded as the French symbol of American ideas and ideals and the protector of American interests. Jefferson took full advantage of Lafayette's invaluable cooperation and associated with him on terms of intimacy and affection, content to be relatively inconspicuous if he might be useful.

Though he later characterized his official activities in France as unimportant, Jefferson proved a diligent and skilful diplomat. He and his colleagues succeeded in negotiating, in 1785, a treaty of commerce with Prussia. Early in 1786 he joined Adams in London, but their efforts to negotiate a treaty were futile. He made careful note of English domestic gardening and mechanical appliances, but of their architecture and manners had no kind word to say. He supported Thomas Barclay in the negotiation of a treaty with Morocco in 1787, but was convinced that the Barbary pirates could be restrained only by force and worked out a scheme for concerted action on the part of a league of nations. This was accepted by Congress, but aroused no enthusiasm in Europe. He negotiated with France a consular convention, signed November 14, 1788, which was the first of the sort agreed to by the United States (Woolery, post, ch. IV). Though he could not hope to make much of a breach in the wall of commercial exclusiveness, he gained some relaxation of French duties on American products, and by his arguments against the tobacco monopoly of the Farmers General, which he attacked as a system, made a definite impression on Vergennes and his successor, Montmorin (F. L. Nusbaum, in Political Science Quarterly, December 1925, pp. 497-516). Jefferson left Europe with the feeling that the French had granted all the commercial concessions possible, that they had few interests in America, and that they had great sentimental attachment to the young Republic. He was convinced that the United States should be friendly to France, both because of gratitude and because of her value as a counterpoise against the British, whom he regarded as ho stile in sentiment and entirely selfish in policy. He gained the impression, however, that Great Britain and Spain would pay much for American neutrality if they should become involved in European controversy. The hope that the United States would ultimately gain great advantages from the troubles of Europe profoundly affected his subsequent foreign policy, predisposing him to ways of peace (Bemis, American Secretaries of State, II, 9- 13).

At a time when there was a flood of sentimental French writings about America, Jefferson endeavored to present the American cause adequately and accurately. These motives in part caused him to distribute his own Notes on the State of Virginia, and the Virginia statute of religious freedom. Appealed to for information by many writers, he furnished extensive materials in particular to his former neighbor, Philip Mazzei [q.v.], whose Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les Etats-Unis (4 volumes, I 788) was the most accurate work of the period on America, and to Demeunier, whose article, "Etats-Unis," in the Encyclopedie Methodique: Economie Politique et Diplomatique (1786), greatly embarras sed the American minister by its inaccuracies and its fulsome praise of him. To interested friends at home, he wrote about inventions in dozens of letters; and for the younger Madison, Monroe, and others he continually purchased books. In 1787 he went into northern Italy to see the machines used there for cleaning rice, smuggled out samples of rice seed to South Carolina and Georgia, forwarded information about the olive tree, and at Nimes gazed for hours at the Maison Carree, "like a lover at his mistress." To his native Virginia he sent a plan for the new state capitol, modeled on this temple, and thus served to initiate the classical revival in American architecture. On another tour in 1788, he made numerous observations in Germany (H. A. Washington, post, IX, 373). This keen-eyed, serious-minded, reflective traveler purposed that his mission should prove educative to his fellow citizens as well as himself and never lost sight of his obligation to be useful.

Though greatly impressed with French manners, he was strongly opposed to any aping of them by Americans. He was attracted by the cuisine and wines and found the French a temperate people, but thought their life lacking in domestic happiness and on the whole rather futile. Life for him was empty when not purposeful. He thought little of French science, but was enthusiastic about their arts-architecture, painting, and, most of all, music, which he valued the more perhaps because a fractured wrist had ended his days as a violinist. It is doubtful whether he ever mastered French as a spoken language, but he read it well enough. Distressed by the inequality of conditions, he came to think less than ever of royalty, nobility, and priests. His experiences and observations did not give him a new philosophy, for, like the French reformers, he had already drunk at the fountain of liberal English political thought. Many of the writings of Condorcet (see especially A. O'Connor, Oeuvres de Condorcet, 1847, VIII, 1-13), might have come from Jefferson's own pen; he shared with Du Pont de Nemours the passionate desire to remove economic and intellectual barriers; like the early revolutionists, he had profound faith in the indefinite perfectibility of mankind and made a veritable religion of enlightenment. From his stay in France he gained, not new doctrines, but an emotional stimulus, returning to America strengthened in his civic faith.

The course of the Revolution until his departure Jefferson followed closely and reported in detail. Though he strove to maintain strict official neutrality, this skilled political architect suggested to Lafayette's aunt, Mme. de Tesse, a desirable course of procedure for the Assembly of Notables (H. A. Washington, II, 133-34), and to Lafayette himself he submitted a proposed charter for France (June 3, 1789, Ford, V, 199-202). A meeting of the leaders of the Patriot party, arranged by Lafayette, met at Jefferson's house in the effort to arrive at a compromise on the questions of the royal veto and the constitution of the Assembly (H. A. Washington, III, q6-17; Ford, I, 143). Intimate and sympathetic with the moderate reformers, he deplored the violence of later days but retained the conviction that the Revolution had done far more good than ill; and, in his ripe old age, he declared that every traveled man would prefer France as a place of residence to any country but his own.

Having been granted a leave of absence to settle his private affairs and to take home his two daughters, the younger of whom, Mary, had joined him in Paris in 1787, Jefferson sailed in October 1785, and arrived at "Monticello" two days before Christmas, to be welcomed tumultuously by his rejoicing slaves. Soon after he landed, he received from Washington the offer of the appointment to the Department of State, then being temporarily administered by John Jay [q.v.]. Jefferson's dislike for publicity and shrinking from censure made him reluctant to enter the storm of politics, from which in France he had been relatively aloof, but on patriotic grounds he at length accepted the eminently appropriate appointment. After giving his daughter Martha in marriage to her cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph [q.v.], he proceeded to New York, where, on March 22, 1790, he became the first secretary of state under the Constitution.

Though he had kept in close touch with American developments through extensive correspondence, Jefferson was not fully aware of the conservative reaction which had taken place in his own country while he was in the. midst of political ferment in France. He had seen nothing threatening in the commotions that had marked the l st years of the Confederation, but thought dangerous liberty distinctly preferable to quiet slavery and had regarded the government, despite its imperfections, as "without comparison the best existing or that ever did exist" (Ford, IV, 423-25). None the less, he had viewed with distinct favor the movement for strengthening the federal government and had given the new Constitution his general approval, objecting chiefly to the absence of a bill of rights, which was later supplied, and the perpetual re-eligibility of the president. He had denied that he was of the party of federalists, but had stated that he was much farther from the anti-federalists (Ford, V, 75-78). He cannot be justly charged with factiousness because he came to be regarded, before his retirement from office, as the leader of the group opposed to the policies of
Alexander Hamilton [q.v. ]. To distinguish themselves from their opponents, whom they termed monarchists, Jefferson and his sympathizers soon called themselves Republicans. They may have subsequently exaggerated their charges for political effect, but he believed until the end of his life that his early fears of an American monarchy were warranted and it would seem that they were at the time not unnatural and not without foundation (Ford, I, 156-57; Dunbar, post). Undoubtedly he was distressed by the social atmosphere in which he found himself. He had enjoyed a considerable social experience in monarchical France, where theoretical democracy and even republicanism were fashionable, but in the aristocratic Federalist court, at first in New York and soon in Philadelphia, he was ever ill at ease.

With Hamilton, nearly fourteen years his junior, who had already assumed the first place in the counsels of the government, he strove at the outset to cooperate. His subsequent statement that he was duped by his colleague in connection with the Assumption Bill is unconvincing as well as uncomplimentary to his own intelligence. His contemporary letters show clearly that he was at the time convinced that some compromise was essential for peace and the preservation of the Union. When at length better provision for Virginia was made in the bill, and the location of the Federal City on the banks of the Potomac was agreed to, he gave his approval to the measure. He did not yet fully perceive that Hamilton's whole financial policy was least advantageous to the agrarian groups in which-for broad social rather than narrow economic reasons-he himself was most interested.

The first serious difference of opinion between the two men was over a question of foreign policy. Fully convinced that the British would not yield the Northwest posts or grant commercial privileges unless forced to do so, Jefferson favored the employment of commercial discrimination as a weapon against them. This policy, advocated in Congress by Madison, was opposed by Hamilton, who feared the loss of revenue from British imports. The movement in Congress for discrimination was strengthened by successive able reports of Jefferson on matters of commercial policy, but thanks to Hamilton it was blocked in February 1791 and ultimately abandoned (Bemis, Jay's Treaty, chs. I-IV). Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Treasury had maintained a surprising intimacy with George Beckwith, the unofficial British representative (1789-91), with whom the Secretary of State properly refused to have anything to do.

In February 1791, at the request of his chief, Jefferson drew up an opinion on the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States (Ford, V, 284-89) to which Hamilton replied, though neither paper was published until long afterward. Jefferson, who opposed monopolistic tendencies anyway, argued that the powers assumed by Hamilton's bill were not among those enumerated in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government, nor within either of its general phrases, which he interpreted narrowly and literally. He subsequently declared that he did not view constitutions with "sanctimonious reverence," and he favored their periodical revision, but this critic of the Scriptures here set up the Constitution as a sort of sacred law. His fears that liberal construction might result in the unbridled power of the federal government were undoubtedly heightened by his growing distrust of Hamilton, and this perhaps led him to go to extremes in the statement of his own theoretical position. Strict construction had its uses as a check on the tyranny of the national majority, but thoroughgoing application of Jefferson's arguments would have rendered the federal government feeble and inflexible, as he himself in practice later found. None the less, he had suffered a second defeat at the hands of Hamilton.

In the spring of 1791 Thomas Paine's Rights of Man appeared in America, with an extract from a private note of the Secretary of State as a preface. Jefferson's statement that he was glad that something was to be said publicly against "the political heresies" that had sprung up was interpreted both as an approval of Paine, who was anathema to the Anglomen in America, and as a reflection upon John Adams [q.v.], whose expatiations on the faults of democratic systems, indeed, Jefferson had definitely in mind. His statement of regret (Ford, V, 353-55) that he and his old friend had been "thrown on the public stage as public antagonists," may be accepted as sincere by others, as it was by Adams. The incident, however, identified Jefferson with criticism of the aristocratic tendencies of the government and in the end was politically advantageous to him. Fortuitous circumstances thus served to make a popular figure of one who abhorred controversy, who preferred to work behind the scenes, and who lacked the personal aggressiveness commonly associated with political leadership.

In May-June 1791 he and Madison made a trip to New England, during which they doubtless gave thought to politics; and, on October 31, Philip Freneau [q. v.] published in Philadelphia the first number of the National Gazette, in opposition to the Gazette of the United States, published by John Fenno [q.v.]. Jefferson, knowing Freneau to be an ardent democrat, had given him the small post of translator in the Department of State, as Hamilton had already given Fenno the more lucrative printing at his disposal and was later to give him personal financial assistance. With the increasingly bitter criticism of Hamilton in Congress during the winter of 1791-92 Jefferson afterward claimed that he had nothing to do, except that he expressed hostility in conversation with and letters to his friends. His leadership even at this time was probably less active than has been commonly supposed, but he had undoubtedly become the symbol of anti-Hamiltonianism, and, though more scrupulous of proprieties than his colleague, served to inspire forces which he did not now or ever essay to command.

Hamilton had established with George Hammond, who presented in November 1791 his credentials as British minister, an intimacy similar to that which Beckwith had enjoyed. Hammond, forced by Jefferson to admit that he had no power to negotiate a new treaty, unwisely undertook to debate with the American Secretary the infractions of the treaty of peace. Jefferson's magnificent reply of May 29, 1792 (American State Papers, Foreign Relations, I, 1832, pp. 201-37), which completely demolished the mediocre case of the Britisher, was submitted in draft to Hamilton in advance, and, with the latter's relatively minor criticisms, to Washington, who heartily approved it. To Hammond, however, the Secretary of the Treasury lamented the "intemperate violence" of Jefferson, and stated that the reply had not been read by Washington and did not represent the position of the government. Thus fortified by assurances which nullified Jefferson's arguments, the British minister submitted the matter to his superiors at home, who felt safe in ignoring it (Bemis, Jay's Treaty, ch. V). The full extent of Hamilton's intrigue has only recently been disclosed, but Jefferson was undoubtedly aware that he owed his undeserved defeat to his colleague.

By the summer of 1792 the hostility of the two men had become implacable. In the spring Jefferson had expressed in no uncertain terms to Washington his opinion that the causes of public discontent lay in Hamilton's policy, particularly in the "corruption" that had accompanied the financial measures of the latter and that had extended to the legislature itself (Ford, I, 176-78). A formal li st of the objections Jefferson had cited was submitted by the President to Hamilton on July 29 and was replied to by the latter three weeks later. In the meantime, Hamilton, smarting under the barbs of Freneau, had made an anonymous attack on the democratic editor and through him upon Jefferson. Washington's letters to his two secretaries, deploring the dissensions within the government, elicited lengthy replies in which each man presented his case, not only to his chief but also to posterity (see J. Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, X, 1836, pp. 249-55, 515-26; The Works of Alexander Hamilton, 1904, II, 426-72, VII, 303-06; Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VI, 101-09, 123-24). Washington did not succeed in stilling the troubled waters. Hamilton, indeed, during the autumn of 1792 published in the Gazette of the Unit ed States a series of ferocious anonymous attacks on his colleague, with the definite object of driving him from office. Jefferson, with greater dignity or greater discretion, refrained from newspaper controversy, leaving his defense to his friends. He played a direct part, however, in drafting the resolutions of William Branch Giles [q.v.], presented early in 1793, which were severely critical of Hamilton's conduct of the Treasury (P. L. Ford, in the Nation, September 5, 1895; Writings of Jefferson, VI, 168-71).

His hostility to Hamilton, apart from his justifiable resentment at the interference of the latter in the conduct of his department, was like that of a religious devotee to an enemy of his faith. He was convinced that Hamilton's system "flowed from principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic, by creating an influence of his department over the members of the legislature." Hamilton's hostility to Jefferson, apart from resentment that his power had been challenged, was like that of a practical man of affairs who found specific projects impeded by one whom he regarded as a quibbling theorist. Washington, reluctant to admit the existence of parties, valued both men and wanted both to remain in office, utilized both, and follow ed the policies of neither exclusively. The invaluable service rendered by each in his own field of activity vindicates the judgment of the patient President.

Yielding to the request of his Chief, Jefferson remained in office until the last day of 1793, during a critical period of foreign affairs. Though the course of the Revolution in France had been followed with growing concern by the conservative groups in America, popular opinion was still rather favorable to the French when war broke out in Europe (February 1, 1793) and a new minister, Edmond Charles Genet [q.v.], came to the United States. Jefferson was determined that his country should take no action that would imply opposition to the principles of the French Revolution, but he fully shared the feeling of Washington and Hamilton that American neutrality was imperative. He successfully urged the avoidance of the word "neutrality" in Washington's proclamation, however, in order to offend the French as little as possible and in the hope of gaining from the British some concessions in the definition of contraband. He also prevailed upon Washington to receive Genet without qualification and to postpone consideration of the treaty until the French should demand execution of the guarantee, which he thought they would not do. He finally yielded to the opinion of Hamilton that payments on the debt to France should not be anticipated, but urged a softening of the refusal. Though he received Genet kindly, rejoiced in the popular enthusiasm for democracy that the fiery emissary kindled, and, through letters of introduction, came dangerously near conniving with the Frenchman in his projected expeditions against Canada and Louisiana, he strove with diligence to maintain neutrality and bore with patience the immense labors that the American position imposed upon him. When Genet persisted in intolerable practices and criticisms Jefferson lost patience with him and joined his colleagues in asking his recall.

Though he protested vigorously against British infringements of American neutral rights during the war, Jefferson was unable as secretary of state to solve the problem of British relations, and he regarded Jay's Treaty, which was later negotiated under the influence of Hamilton, as an ignominious surrender of American claims. The negotiations instituted by him with Spain were equally unsuccessful during his term of office, though the American objectives which he had formulated were attained in the treaty of 1795. His tangible achievements as secretary of state were not commensurate with his devoted labors, but he had fully justified Washington's confidence in him. If in the heat of the controversy with Hamilton he was at times guilty of extravagant assertion, he performed an inestimable service to the Republic by calling attention to the dangers of his colleague's policy, by formulating the chief grounds of opposition to it, and by inspiring the forces that were to effect its modification after it had achieved its most significant results.

Now in his fifty-first year, Jefferson felt that his second retirement from public life was final. Soon he gathered all the members of his immediate family under the paternal roof, and he at length resumed building operations at "Monticello," following revised plans that had grown out of his architectural observations abroad. By a system of crop rotation he tried to restore his lands, he experimented with mechanical devices, built a grist-mill, set up a nail-factory, and directed his large but relatively unprofitable establishment with characteristic diligence and attention to minute details. His renewed and increased enthusiasm for agriculture quite got the better of his love of study. At no other period of his mature life did he read so little and write so rarely. His days on horseback soon restored his health to the vigor that he feared it had permanently lost, and he brought some order into his tangled finances. During his years as an office-holder he had largely lived upon his small salary, yet the profits from his plantations and even sales of slaves and lands had been insufficient to rid him of the old Wayles debt, which in 1795 was increased by a judgment against the executors as security for the late Richard Randolph. Like so many of his fellow Virginians, Jefferson was unable to realize upon his assets and was eaten up by interest to British creditors. His personal generosity, however, which had been manifested in Philadelphia by loans to friends more distressed than he, continued unabated.

To Madison, whom he regarded as the logical Republican candidate for the presidency, he wrote, April 27, 1795, that the " little spice of ambition" he had had in his younger days had long since evaporated and that the question of his own candidacy was forever closed (Ford, VII, 10). He remained, however, the symbol and the prophet of a political faith and when the leaders of his party determined to support him in 1796 did not gainsay them. He would have been willing to go into the presidency for a while, he said, in order "to put our vessel on her republican tack before she should be thrown too much to leeward of her true principles" (January 1, 1797, Ford, VII, 98), but he was surprisingly content to run second to Adams, who was his senior and whom he perhaps regarded as the only barrier against Hamilton. After it appeared that Adams had won, and that he was second by three votes, he even suggested that some understanding in regard to future elections be reached with the President-Elect (Randall, II, 320-28). He proved himself a more realistic observer and a better political strategist, however, when he wrote Madison: "Let us cultivate Pennsylvania & we need not fear the universe" (Ford, VII, 109).

The vice-presidency provided a salary which Jefferson undoubtedly needed, enabled him to spend much time at "Monticello," and afforded him relative leisure. The chief significance of his service as presiding officer of the Senate lies in the fact that out of it emerged his Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1801), subsequently published in many editions and translated into several languages, and even now the basis of parliamentary usage in the Senate. Despite the conciliatory spirit that marked his early relations with Adams, Jefferson played no part in the conduct of the administration, in which the hand of Hamilton was soon apparent. Since the Vice-President belonged to the opposing group, his complete abstention from politics was not to be expected. He was characteristically discreet in public utterance, but his general attitude toward the questions of the day was undoubtedly well known; and he was inevitably the target of the Federalist press, which continued to regard him as the personification of his party. The publication in the United States in May 1797 of a private letter of his to Philip Mazzei (April 24, 1796, Ford, VII, 72-78), which originally appeared in a Florentine paper and was somewhat altered in form by successive translations, gave wide currency to his earlier criticisms of the Federalists. Certain vehement phrases were interpreted as reflecting upon Washington and served to alienate the latter from his former secretary. Jefferson made no effort to disavow a letter which was in substance his (Ford, VII, 165), and suffered in silence while the Federalist press termed him "libeler," "liar," and "assassin" (Bowers, p. 352), and he was practically ostracized by polite society.

He had approved of Monroe's conduct in France, which aroused so much hostile Federalist comment, and felt that the bellicose spirit which swept the country after the publication of the "X. Y. Z. despatches" was aggravated by the Hamiltonians, with a view to advancing their own interests and embroiling the United States on the side of the British. He himself was sympathetic with Elbridge Gerry [q.v.], the Republican commissioner who proved more amenable than his colleagues to French influence, and suggested that Gerry publish an account of his experiences. At all times, however, Jefferson was a patriotic American, and he had now no enthusiasm for the existing order in France. He was glad to drop the disastrous French issue when, at the height of the war fever, the Federalists provided a better one by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson rightly regarded hysterical hostility to aliens, such as his friends Volney and Joseph Priestley, and attacks upon freedom of speech as a menace to the ideals he most cherished. Since the Sedition Law was applied chiefly to Republican editors, partisan as well as philosophical motives were conjoined in his opposition.

His most notable contribution to the campaign of discussion consisted of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which, it appeared years later, he drafted. The Virginia Resolutions, drawn by Madison, were similar in tenor. The constitutional doctrines advanced in these famous documents- that the government of the United States originated in a compact, that acts of the federal government unauthorized by the delegated powers are void, and that a state has the right to judge of infractions of its powers and to determine the mode of redress-were in later years emphasized as their most important feature. The dominant purpose of the framers, however, was to attack the offensive laws as an unconstitutional and unwarranted infringement upon individual freedom, a denial of rights that could not be alienated. The language of what was in effect a party platform was in the nature of the case extravagant, but Jefferson and Madison had no intention of carrying matters to extremes, and such indorsement as their party ultimately received was of their protest, not of their method (F. M. Anderson, in American Historical Review, October 1899, pp. 45-63, January 1900, pp. 225-52). More important from the practical point of view than any promulgation of constitutional theory was the immense stimulus given by Jefferson and the other Republican leaders to the establishment of newspapers such as their opponents had attacked.

Nominated by a congressional caucus for the presidency and by no means indifferent to the outcome as he had been four years earlier, Jefferson owed his success in the election of 1800 as much to Federalist dissensions as to any formal issues that had been raised. To the Republican victory, his running mate, Aaron Burr [q.v.], also made no small contribution. By fault of the electoral machinery, soon to be remedied, the two Republicans received an identical vote and the choice of a president was left to the Federalist House of Representatives. Despite the personal hostility of many of the Federalists to Jefferson, the feeling, to which Hamilton greatly contributed, that he was the safer man of the two, and a tacit understanding that he would not revolutionize the government, caused Congress ultimately to yield to the undoubted desire of the Republicans and to elect him (Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, pp. 402-14). His own reference to the "revolution" of 1800 was one of his political exaggerations, but the elevation to the highest executive office of one who, almost twenty years before, had unheroically relinquished the reins of gubernatorial power undoubtedly marked a revolution in his own political fortunes. The popular success of Jefferson, whose diffidence and lack of spectacular qualities would have constituted in a later day an insuperable handicap, and whose relative freedom from personal ambition makes it impossible to characterize him as a demagogue, was due in considerable part to his identification of himself with causes for which time was fighting, and to his remarkable sensitiveness to fluctuations in public opinion, combined with an ability to utilize and to develop agencies of popular appeal. As a practical politician he worked through other men, whom he energized and who gave him to an extraordinary degree their devoted cooperation. His unchallenged leadership was due, not to self- I assertiveness and imperiousness of will, but to the fact that circumstances had made him a symbolic figure, and that to an acute intelligence and unceasing industry he joined a dauntless and contagious faith. The long struggle between his partisans and the Federalists has been variously interpreted as one between democracy and aristocracy, state rights and centralization, agrarianism and capitalism. His election, however, had more immediate significance in marking the vindication of political opposition, the repudiation of a reactionary regime, and the accession of more representative leaders to power.

Jefferson, the first president inaugurated in Washington, had himself drawn a plan for the city, part of which survives in the Mall. As secretary of state, to whom the commissioners of the District were responsible, he had suggested the competition for the new federal buildings and he was considerably responsible for the selection of classical designs. As president he created for Benjamin H. Latrobe [q.v. ] the office of surveyor of public buildings and fully cooperated in planning for the future development of a monumental city. In his day, pomp and ceremony, to which on principle and for political reasons he was opposed, would have been preposterous in the wilderness village. Remaining until the last at Conrad's boardinghouse, where his democratic simplicity was almost ostentatious, he walked to the nearby Senate chamber of the incompleted capitol, to receive the oath of office from his cousin and inveterate political foe, Chief Justice John Marshall. Though aware of the last efforts of the Federalists to renew the Sedition Act and entrench themselves in the judiciary, he felt that after the long "contest of opinion" the danger of monarchy was now removed, and in his benevolent inaugural (Ford, VII, 1-6) he sought to woo the more moderate of his opponents by making acquiescence in the will of the majority as easy as possible. Though he challenged the assertion that a republican government could not be strong, he defined its functions as essentially negative. It should restrain men from injuring one another, he said, but otherwise leave them to regulate their own concerns. He declared against special privileges and urged encouragement, not of industry, but of agriculture and of commerce "as its handmaid." He reiterated his conviction that the federal government should chiefly concern itself with foreign affairs, leaving to the states the administration of local matters. War, he felt, could be avoided by peaceable coercion through the weapon of commerce.

Inaugurated in his fifty-eighth year, he made  his official residence in the boxlike and incompletely plastered Executive Mansion, though he continued to spend as much time as possible at "Monticello," where he was still directing building operations. His beautiful second daughter, now the wife of her cousin John Wayles Eppes [q.v.], though far less prolific than her sister, had also by this time made him a grandfather. She was to sadden her father's life by her untimely death in 1804. Generally deprived of adequate feminine supervision while in Washington, Jefferson lived there in sartorial indifference and dispensed generous but informal hospitality, as he was accustomed to do at home, to the consternation of diplomats jealous of precedence (Ford, VIII, 276-77; Henry Adams, post, II, ch. XVI; American Historical Review, July 1928, pp. 832-35). His manners, after he had overcome his constitutional diffidence, were easy though not polished. To hostile observers his democratic simplicity was a pose, to his friends the naturalness of one who had achieved and thought enough to dare to be himself. His loose gait and habit of lounging, together with his discursive though highly informing conversation, doubtless contributed to the common but erroneous impression among his foes that this most scholarly of politicians was a careless thinker. "His external appearance," according to an admirer, "had no pretensions to elegance, but it was neither coarse nor awkward, and it must be owned that his greatest personal attraction was a countenance beaming with benevolence and intelligence" (Margaret Bayard Smith, First F arty Years of Washington Society, 1906, pp. 385-86).

Chief in his harmonious official family were Madi son, the secretary of state, and Gallatin, who as secretary of the treasury was to carry out with considerable success his program of economy. Jefferson found nearly all the minor offices filled by Federalists and, though anxious to conciliate his former foes, sympathized with his own followers in their insistence that the balance be re stored. This could only be done 'by removals, for, as he said, vacancies "by death are few; by resignation none." He proceeded to treat as null and void Federalist appointments which seemed to him of questionable legality, such as those of the "midnight judges" and others made by Adams after the latter's defeat was apparent. Finding his policy a political success, he extended it, until by the summer of 1803 the balance was restored and removals ceased. No non-partisan standard was adopted, however, and the Republicans came to dominate the civil service as the Federalists had done. Since Jefferson's appointments involved some recognition of party service, they constituted a technic al introduction of the spoils system. The standards of the federal service, however, were not perceptibly lowered, and, except in New England, the people were generally satisfied (Fish, post, ch. II).

Though Jefferson, whose voice could hardly be heard upon a public occasion anyway, abandoned the custom of delivering messages in person, he maintained over Congress indirect and 'tactful but efficacious control. The repeal of the Federalist Judiciary Act of 1801 was distinctly a measure of the administration. The severe rebuke administered to him and Madison by Marshall in Marbury vs. Madison (1803) did not predispose him to concede the right of the Supreme Court to invalidate an act of Congress. Indeed, in pardoning victims of the Sedition Law, he himself pronounced that statute unconstitutional, as he felt he was called upon to do (Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, III, 605-06). He thoroughly approved of the u se of the weapon of impeachment against offensively partisan judges and deeply regretted its practical failure, notably in the case of Justice Samuel Chase [q.v.]. Though the federal judges learned better to observe the proprieties, Jefferson never receded from his position that the Federalists, from the battery of the judiciary, were endeavoring to beat down the works of Republicanism and defeat the will of the people, as in a sense they were.

Rumors of the retrocession of Louisiana by Spain to France led Jefferson to write the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston [q.v.], on April 18, 1802, that the possessor of New Orleans was the natural enemy of the United States and that by placing herself there France assumed an attitude of defiance (Ford, VIII, 143-47). Following the independent announcement by the Spanish intendant, October 16, 1802, of the closure of the Mississippi and Federalist talk in Congress of warlike measures, he despatched Monroe to France as special minister. The purchase which Livingston and Monroe made, and for which Jefferson gave them full credit, was a diplomatic triumph of the first magnitude but it required him to disregard many scruples and to compromise cherished constitutional principles. In his proper anxiety to preserve the freedom of navigation of the Mississippi, he felt compelled at one time to consider a rapprochement with Great Britain, his traditional foe, and ultimately to increase the debt which he was striving so hard to reduce. He was confident that the Constitution did not empower the federal government to acquire or incorporate territory, and that broad construction would make blank paper of that supreme safeguard against tyranny. After the treaty was negotiated he favored the submission of a constitutional amendment, but yielded to the insistence of his political friends that no amendment was necessary and that delay was perilous, doubtless consoling himself with the thought that in Republican hands the Constitution was safe. The ratification of the treaty, effected in response to overwhelming public opinion, has been interpreted as a death-blow to strict construction (H. Adams, post, II, 90-91). The Louisiana Purchase marked the lowest, or highest, point of Jefferson's pragmatic statesmanship. He had assured the physical greatness of his country and the future success of his party, which was symbolized by his own triumphant reelection. Western discontent was stilled and the Federalists were reduced to sectional impotence. For all of this his momentary theoretical inconsistency seemed to his partisans a small price to pay, but his subsequent silence about the greatest constructive accomplishment of his presidency implies that he viewed it with little pride. The purchase served, however, to facilitate the expedition for which he had already commissioned Meriwether Lewis [q. v.] and prepared elaborate instructions (Ford, VIII, 192-202). He himself wrote for the History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark (1814), the best biography of his former secretary, and no one more than he rejoiced in the discoveries the explorers made.

Livingston and Monroe had bought a vaguely defined region which they soon persuaded themselves included West Florida as well as Louisiana. Jefferson subsequently embodied similar views in a pamphlet which determined the attitude of the administration and its supporters (in Documents Relating to the Purchase & Exploration of Louisiana, 1904; Cox, post, pp. 8o-87). The Mobile Act of February 24, 1804, assumed the acquisition of West Florida, but Jefferson, finding that the Spanish were not acquiescent as he had expected, practically annulled its offensive features by proclamation and soon afterward sent Monroe on what proved to be a futile mission to Spain. In his public message to Congress, on December 4, 1805 (Ford, VIII, 384-96), he adopted an uncharacteristic tone of belligerency, apparently with the idea of frightening the Spanish, then, by revealing to Congress his purpose to acquire Florida by what John Randolph of Roanoke [q.v.] regarded as a bribe to France, confounded his supporters and alienated that vitriolic leader, already incensed by the settlement of the Yazoo claims. A proposal went to Napoleon too late to be of any use and the perplexing question of Florida remained unsettled during Jefferson's administration. His tortuous and uncandid policy had served only to diminish his influence in Congress and weaken his hand against the British (Cox, pp. 660-68).

His policy of peaceable negotiation did not extend to the Barbary pirates, to whom he applied more force than had any previous American president. Following the repudiation of his treaty by the Bey of Tripoli in 1801, Jefferson dispatched against him a naval force which blockaded his ports. Subsequently Jefferson also employed naval force against the Sultan of Morocco. The treaty at length negotiated with Tripoli, though it included provisions for the ransom of American prisoners, granted the United States the most favorable terms yet given any nation by that piratical power (Woolery, post, ch. II).

Long before the trial of Aaron Burr [q.v.] in 1807 on charges of treason, Jefferson had lost faith in his former associate, but he gave little heed to the mystifying western expedition of the adventurer until it was well on its way. On November 27, 1806, Jefferson issued a proclamation of warning against an illegal expedition against Spain, and, after Burr's arrest, publicly expressing himself as convinced of the latter's guilt, exerted powerful influence to bring about his conviction. Burr's trial in Richmond before John Marshall [q.v.] developed into a political duel between the Chief Justice and the President. Burr's counsel, including Luther Martin [q.v.], raised against Jefferson a cry of persecution which echoed through the land, and, attacking the credibility of the chief witness for the prosecution, the vulnerable James Wilkinson [q.v.], through him assailed the man who had appointed him to command the army and had sent him to protect Louisiana against the Spanish. Marshall was distinctly hostile to Jefferson throughout the proceedings and, by his definition of treason, made the conviction of Burr impossible. Jefferson wished to press the charge of misdemeanor, in order to find grounds for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, but had to abandon his plans because the whole case rested on Wilkinson. Though Marshall's conduct was by no means unexceptionable, this famous trial proved more discomforting to Jefferson than to the Chief Justice and strengthened the hands of his political enemies, who not improperly charged him with an original indifference which gave way to credulity, and with a measure of vindictiveness wholly inconsistent with his expressed convictions in regard to the sacred rights of the individual.

The difficulties which Jefferson faced during his second administration as the head of a neutral nation in a time of ruthless general European war, were unescapable and could probably have been successfully met by no American statesman. During his first term, though he had done little to prepare for a possible conflict of arms, he had managed sufficiently well by employing ordinary diplomatic methods. Until 1805 the British had in practice granted sufficient concessions to permit large prosperity to the American carrying trade, and in effect they later modified the Rule of 1756 (1805) The impressment of seamen, however, remained a grievance, which the British would do nothing to remove. Then, in the battle of Orders in Council and Napoleonic decrees, the neutral American Republic, unable to meet both sets of requirements and threatened with the confiscation of commercial vessels in case either were violated, was placed in an intolerable position.

Of the possible courses of action open to him, w ar never commended itself to Jefferson, who did not want to take sides with either of the European rivals, though, after the Leopard fired on the Chesapeake in June 1807, a declaration against the British might have been supported by the American people. In this instance, Jefferson's belligerency vented itself in a proclamation, regarded by his foes as pusillanimous, denying to British armed vessels the hospitality of American waters (Ford, IX, 89-99). He had previously sent William Pinkney [q.v.] to London to serve with Monroe on a mission extraordinary, and had tried to strengthen the hands of the negotiators by the Non-Importation Act of 1806, which was to become effective some months later. His reliance was on diplomacy, supplemented by the threat of economic pressure, and when diplomacy failed he fell back on economic pressure. The only other apparent a1ternatives were intolerable submission or some sort of cooperation with the British against Napoleon. The Embargo constituted perhaps Jefferson's most original and daring measure of statesmanship; it proved to be his greatest practical failure (Sears, post). Adopted in December 1807, after an inadequate debate and by an overwhelming vote because of his political dominance and still enormous popularity, the measure, which Jefferson is thought to have drawn, combined with the Non-Intercourse Act to bring about a theoretical suspension of foreign commerce for an indefinite period.

The attempts to enforce the Embargo involved an exercise of arbitrary power by the federal government and an inevitable and increasing infringement on individual rights which were contrary to Jefferson's most cherished ideals. He opposed war in large part because of the corruption and repression which were its accompaniments, little realizing that his peaceful substitute would be attended with the same evils and that negative heroism would in the end prove galling. He counted too heavily on British liberal opinion, which had opposed the Orders in Council as affecting the United States, and he did not anticipate the developments in Spain and the Spanish colonies which did so much to relieve the pressure on Great Britain. He claimed, with considerable justification, that the Embargo was not in effect long enough to attain its objective, and it may w ell be that under other circumstances some measure of the sort might prove an efficacious weapon. But in 1808- 09, employed by a weak power, it served chiefly to impoverish the sections that supported Jefferson most loyally, to give a new lease on life to partisan opposition in New England, and to bring his second executive venture to an inglorious consummation. Forced to yield to a rebellious Congress, on March 1, 1809, he signed the Non-Intercourse Act, which partially raised the Embargo, and shortly afterward retired to Albemarle, discredited and di s illusioned, though unconvinced that he had erred in policy. He correctly described himself as a wave-worn mariner approaching the shore, as a prisoner emerging from the shackles, and declared that Nature had intended him for the tranquil pursuits of science, in which he found infinite delight (Memorial Edition, XII, 258-60).

During the past eight years this earnest advocate of the freedom of the press had been subjected to a flood of personal calumny. Long regarded in ecclesiastical circles, especially in New England, as the embodiment of foreign infidelity, he not unnaturally aroused a storm of indignation, soon after his first inauguration, by offering to Thomas Paine [q.v.] passage to America on a sloop-of-war and by expressing the hope that his "useful labours " would be continued (Ford, VIII, 18-19). The following year an indefensible assault was launched by a disgruntled pamphleteer, whose pen Jefferson himself had previously subsidized. To the charges of cowardice, dishonesty, and personal immorality made in 1802 by James Thomson Callender [q.v. ] in the Richmond Recorder almost every subsequent story reflecting on Jefferson's private life can ultimately be traced. Given nationwide currency by the Federalist press, these were discussed in 1805 in the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, where a motion to dismiss the printers of the House for publishing in the New-England Palladium (January 18, 1805) libels on the President failed of adoption. One only of these charges was admitted by Jefferson (W. C. Ford, Thomas Jefferson Correspondence, 1916, p. 115). This referred to an instance of highly improper conduct on his part, while yet a young man and single, for which he made restitution. Of the other allegations of immorality, it is quite sufficient to say that Jefferson, a model husband and father, was "more refined th an many women in the delicacy of his private relations" (Henry Adams, I, 324).

For the wide acceptance, by persons of the better sort, of the extravagant charges of an unscrupulous drunkard, the sensitive President was disposed to blame his old theological foe s, especially in New England. There his followers were assaulting the ancient alliance between church and state, for the final overthrow of which they deserve considerable credit. It may well be, as Henry Adams says (History, I, 310), that Jefferson did not understand the New Englanders, but it is certain that they did not understand him. Though sanguine in temperament, he was as serious-minded and almost as devoid of humor as any Puritan; and had he lived a generation later he would have been more at home in liberal religious circles in New England than anywhere else in America. He loathed Calvinism, but he objected to Unitarianism only because it also was another sect. At many times he paid grateful tribute to Epicurus and Epictetus, but as early as 1803 he began to select from the Gospels the passages which he believed came from Jesus. Toward the end of his life this amateur higher critic placed parallel texts, in four languages, in a "wee-little book," which he en- 1 titled the "Morals of Jesus" (published in 1904 as House Doc. No. 755, 58 Congress, 2 Session). This f proved, he felt, that he was "a real Christian, that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus" (Ford, X, 5-6).

During the remaining seventeen years of his life, Jefferson ventured only a few miles from r his haven at "Monticello." The Embargo and its aftermath were ruinous to him, as to so many Virginia planters, and because of the demands of incessant hospitality he could not live as simply as he desired. After the War of 1812, however, the sale of his library of some 10,000 volumes to the government, for the Library of Congress, served for several years to relieve his  financial burdens; and his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph [q.v.], took over the management of his lands. Laborious correspondence occupied a disproportionate amount of his time, but he enjoyed exchanging ideas with John Adams (with whom his old friendship was beautifully restored), his friends in France, Thomas Cooper, and others, and has left in the letters of these years a mine of treasure. He gave his counsel to his disciples Madison and Monroe, when they asked it; and some of his expressions on public policy, as, for example, on the Missouri Compromise (to John Holmes, Ford, X, 157), and on the attitude of the United States toward Europe and the Latin-American republics (October 24, 1823, Ford, X, 277-79) are notable.

The chief public problem to which he addressed himself, however, was that of education in Virginia, which he again called his "country. V He never ceased to advocate a comprehensive state-wide plan of education; such as he had proposed in 1779. "Enlighten the people generally," he wrote Du Pont de Nemours in 1816, "and tyranny and oppressions of both mind and body will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day" (Memorial Edition, XIV, 491). Popular education, however, he regarded as more than a defensive weapon and a guarantor of freedom. His proposals of 1779 had been marked by a unique provision whereby youths of great promise were to be advanced from one grade of instruction to another without cost, and he hoped that these "geniuses ... raked from the rubbish" would serve the state as governors or enlarge the domains of human knowledge. He formulated, as perhaps no other American of his generation, an educational philosophy for a democratic state; and in his last years he declared himself in favor of a literacy test for citizenship (Washington Edition, VI, 343; Memorial Edition, XIV, 491-92).

Having failed in his earlier efforts to transform the College of William and Mary, by 1800 at least Jefferson had hopes of establishing in the more salubrious upper country a university on a broad, liberal, and modern plan. Whatever interest he may have had, during his presidency, in the creation of a national university contingent upon the amendment of the Constitution (Honeywell, post, p. 63), after 1809 Virginia was central in all his thoughts. Indeed, his regret that so many of his "countrymen" went to be educated among "foreigners" (as at Princeton) or were taught at home by "beggars" (Northern tutors) was partly due to the fear that their political principles were being contaminated. His representations may have stimulated Governor John Tyler to send to the Assembly in 1809 his strong message on education (Bruce, post, I, 85) which resulted in the establishment, the following year, of the Literary Fund. Jefferson regarded this as an inadequate provision for general education but it later made possible the creation of an institution of higher learning.

By happy chance, Jefferson in 1814 became associated as a trustee with the unorganized Albemarle Academy. Transformed into Central College, this became the germ from which the University of Virginia developed, under his adroit management at every stage. His letter of September 7, 1814, to Peter Carr (Cabell, post, pp. 348 ff.), outlining in masterly fashion his views of a state system, probably inspired the resolution, adopted by th e General Assembly on February 24, 1816, which required a report on a scheme of public instruction. Shortly thereafter, Jefferson himself drafted a bill (Honeywell, appendix H), which contained most of the features of his more famous proposal of 1779 and included a provision for a university. This was rejected and for a time it appeared that, after an appropriation for elementary schools (which Jefferson always felt should be supported loc ally), no funds would be available for a higher institution. At length, in 1818, by a compromise, appropriations were authorized for elementary, but not for intermediate, schools and for a university.

Jefferson was appointed a member, and became chairman, of the Rockfish Gap Commission, empowered to recommend a site. By skilful use of geographical arguments, he gained the victory for Central College in August 1818. The report, which he had drafted before and, incorporated his ideas of what a university should be and remains one of his greatest educational papers (Cabell, pp. 432 ff.). After a legislative battle in which he acted only behind the scenes, the report was adopted, and in 1819 the University of Virginia was chartered. Though the services of Joseph C. Cabell and John H. Cocke [qq.v.] in launching the institution were invaluable, Jefferson, who was inevitably appointed a member of the first board of visitors and elected rector, remained until his death the dominant factor in its affairs. He received architectural suggestions from Benjamin H. Latrobe and to a lesser extent from William Thornton [qq.v.], but the plan of an academical village was his own. Many of the specifications were drawn up by him and the "pavilions," "hotels," dormitories, colonnades, and arcades were constructed under his immediate supervision. At his death, only the Rotunda, modeled by him on the Pantheon at Rome, was incomplete.

The courses of study followed closely those of Jefferson's suggestions that seemed immediately practicable and at no later time went far beyond his anticipations. Upon the organization of the institution, he left his most characteristic impress perhaps in the establishment of independent, diploma-conferring "schools," capable of indefinite expansion, in the provision for entire freedom in the election of courses, in the complete disregard of the conventional grouping of students into classes, in the arrangement for a rotating chairmanship of the faculty, without a president, and in the prohibition of honorary degrees (Bruce, I, 321-34). Despite his insistence that Republican, rather than Federalist, principles be taught in the school of law, to a remarkable extent he freed the institution from hampering restrictions and made it in spirit a university. He can hardly be blamed that it subsequently suffered because of the lack of contributing colleges, the need of which he clearly envisaged, and that circumstances combined to make it a more aristocratic institution than he had anticipated or desired. Though he was disappointed in his full hopes of drawing from Europe to the faculty "the first characters in science," the mission of Francis Walker Gilmer [q.v.] was measurably successful, the new institution had from the outset a flavor of cosmopolitanism, and several of the first professors achieved distinction. The "Old Sachem" lived to see the university opened and for more than a year in operation.

During his own lifetime, Jefferson received not only American but also international recognition as a man, and as a patron, of learning. Elected president of the American Philosophical Society on January 6, 1797 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, IV, 1799, pp. xi-xiii), he remained the head of this notable organization until 1815 and actively cooperated with it in the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. By introducing to his colleagues, on March 10, 1797, his megalonyx he fired the "signal gun of American paleontology" (Ibid., IV, no. XXX; Science, April 19, 1929, p. 411). To them he read on May 4, 1798, a description of a mould-. board of least resistance for a plow (Ibid., IV, no. XXXVII), for which invention he received in 1805 a gold medal from a French society (Memoires de la Societe d'Agriculture du Departement de Seine et Oise, VII, xlix-lviii). In due course he became associated with an extraordinary number of important societies in various countries of Europe, as he had long been with the chief learned, and almost all the agricultural, societies of America. Much but by no means al1 of his recognition was due to his political prominence. His election, December 26, 1801, as associe etranger of the Institute of France, if due to his position at all, was due to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society. This signal honor, which during his lifetime was shared by no other man of American birth and residence, may best be attributed to his reputation in France as the most conspicuous American intellectual. He himself interpreted it as "an evidence of the brotherly spirit of Science, which unites into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of the globe" (Chinard, Jefferson et les Ideologues, p. 21). He corresponded throughout his life with an extraordinary number of scientists and philosophers in other lands, as well as in America, and sought to make available in his own country the best of foreign thought and discovery.

Modern scholars have recognized Jefferson as an American pioneer in numerous branches of science, notably paleontology, ethnology, geography, and botany. Living before the age of specialization, he was for his day a careful investigator, no more credulous than his learned contemporaries, and notable among them for his effort in all fields to attain scientific exactitude. In state papers he is commonly the lawyer, pleading a cause; in the heat of political controversy he doubtless compromised his intellectual ideals and certainly indulged in exaggeration; but his procedure in arriving at his fundamental opinions, the habits of his life, and his temperament were essentially those of a scholar. As secretary of state, he was in effect the first commissioner of patents and the first patent examiner (Wyman, post). He himself invented or adapted to personal uses numerous ingenious devices, the best known of which is his polygraph.

At home in French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as Greek and Latin, he wrote An Essay towards Facilitating Instruction in the Anglo-Saxon and Modern Dialects of the English Language (1851), and during a generation he amassed an extraordinary collection of Indian vocabularies, only to have them cast upon the waters by thieves in 1809. He owned one of the best private collections of paintings and statuary in the country, and has been termed "the fir st American connoisseur and patron of the arts" (Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect, p. 86). Besides the Virginia state capitol, "Monticello," and the original buildings of the University of Virginia, he designed wholly or in part numerous Virginia houses, among them his own "Poplar Forest," "Farmington," "Bremo;" "Barboursville," and probably the middle section of "Brandon." Before the advent of professional architects in America, he began to collect books on architecture and discovered Palladio, from whom his careful and extensive observations abroad never weaned him. Always himself a Romanist, he did more than any other man to stimulate the classical revival in America. His own work, while always ingenious, is academic, precise, and orderly, but, -because of the fortunate necessity of using brick and wood, the new creation was a blend, with a pleasing domesticity (Ibid., pp. 82-83). He created a definite school of builders in Virginia, sought to establish formal instruction in architecture, stimulated and encouraged, among others, Bulfinch and Thornton, and, except for the fact that he accepted no pay for his services, was as truly a professional as they. It is probably no exaggeration to say that he was "the father of our national architecture" (Ibid., p. 89).

Few other American statesmen have been such careful and unremitting students of political thought and history as was Jefferson, or have been more concerned with ultimate ends. Yet he has left no treatise on political philosophy, and all general statements about his theoretical position are subject to qualification. It is impossible to grant eternal validity to the "principles" adduced by him to support his position in particular circumstances; he was always more interested in applications than in speculation, and he was forced to modify his own philosophy in practice. But, despite unquestionable inconsistencies, the general trend of his policies and his major aims are unmistakable. A homely aristocrat in manner of life and personal tastes, he distrusted all rulers and feared the rise of an industrial proletariat, but, more than any of his eminent contemporaries, he trusted the common man, if measurably enlightened and kept in rural virtue; though pained and angered when the free press made him the victim of its license, he was a passionate advocate of human liberty and laid supreme stress on the individual; though he clearly realized the value of union, he emphasized the importance of the states and of local agencies of government; an intellectual internationalist, he gave whole-hearted support to the policy of political isolation, and anticipated the development on the North American continent of a dominant nation, unique in civilization. He is notable, not for his harmony with the life of his age, but ra ther for his being a step or several steps ahead of it; no other American more deserves to be termed a major prophet, a supreme pioneer. A philosophical statesman rather than a political philosopher, he contributed to democracy and liberalism a faith rather than a body of doctrine. By his works alone he must be adjudged one of the greatest of all Americans, while the influence of his energizing faith cannot be measured.

Regarded by Hamilton as ambitious and temporizing, by Marshall as untrustworthy, love d by John Adams despite rivalry and misunderstanding, honored as a kindly master by a group of disciples the like of which has assembled around no other American statesman, Jefferson, by the very contradictions of his subtle and complex personality, of his bold mind and highly sensitive nature, has both vexed and fascinated all that have attempted to interpret him. As Henry Adams said: "Almost every other American statesman might be described in a parenthesis. A few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early Presidents with this exception, ... but Jefferson could be painted only touch by touch, with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semitransparent shadows" (History, I, 277).

The last years of this most enigmatical and probably the most versatile of great Americans were marked by philosophical serenity in the face of impending financial disaster. Ruined by the failure in 1819 of his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas [q.v.], whose note for $20,000 he had indorsed, he tried vainly to find a purchaser for his lands, and secured legislative permission, in the last year of his life, to di spose of most of them by the common method of a lottery. The public strongly protested against this indignity to him and some voluntary contributions were made, so the project was abandoned. Jefferson died believing that his debts would be pa id, fortunately not realizing that "Monticello" was soon to pass from the hands of his heirs forever. A beloved and revered patriarch in the extensive family circle, he retained extraordinary intellectual vigor and rode his horse daily until almost the end of his ordered and temperate life. His death occurred, with dramatic appropriateness, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, shortly after noon and a few hours before that of John Adams. His daughter, Martha Randolph, with ten of her children and their progeny, and his grandson, Francis Eppes survived him. On the simple stone over his grave in the family burying-ground at "Monticello" he is described as he wished to be remembered, not as the holder of great offices, but as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia.

[The Jefferson manuscripts in the Library of Congress comprise, in addition to other important items, 236 volumes of correspondence (c. 40,000 pieces), partially calendared in the Calendar of the Correspondence of Thos. Jefferson (Parts I-III, 1894-1903). The collection in the Massachusetts Historical Society consists of 67 volumes (c. 10,000 pieces), and some of his most interesting personal records, including account books, his Garden Book, his Farm Book, and the catalogue of his library. Other papers are in the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, the library of the University of Virginia, and various other depositories, and some are still in private hands.

P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thos. Jefferson (10 volumes, 1892-99) is the most useful edition, but this should be supplemented by the more extensive Memorial Ed. (20 volumes, 1903-04), and by the edition of H. A. Washington (9 volumes, 1853-54). Both the "Autobiography" and the preface to "The Anas" were written in old age and carry less authority than contemporary documents. The following are valuable sources:  "The Jefferson Papers," Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 7 series, Volume I (1900); Thos. Jefferson Correspondence, Printed from Originals in the Collections of Wm. K. Bixby, with notes by W. C. Ford (1916); G. Chinard, The Commonplace Book of Thos. Jefferson (1927), The Literary Bible of Thos. Jefferson (1928), The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson (1929), the Correspondence of Jefferson and Du Pont de Nemours with an Introduction on Jefferson and the Physiocrats (1931); Dumas Malone, Correspondence between Thos. Jefferson and P. S. du Pont de Nemours, 1798-I8I7 (1930); P. Wilstach, Correspondence between John Adams and Thos. Jefferson (1925). Numerous letters to and from Jefferson are contained in G. Chinard, Volney et L'Amerique (1923), Jefferson et Les Ideologues (1925), and Trois Amities Francaise de Jefferson (1927). John P. Foley, The Jefferson Cyclopedia (1900) is a useful compilation.

Of the older biographies, H. S. Randall, The Life of Thos. Jefferson (3 volumes, 1858), though eulogistic, is still extremely valuable, as is S. N, Randolph, The Domestic Life of Thos. Jefferson (1871), which contains many family letters. The most important of the recent biographies are G. Chinard, Thos. Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism (1929) and A. J. Nock, Jefferson (1926), both of which emphasize the intellectual aspect of his career. More general treatments are P. L. Ford, Thos. Jefferson (1904); D. S. Muzzey, Thos. Jefferson (1918). A hostile Federalist work is Theodore Dwight, The Character of Thos. Jefferson, as Exhibited in His Own Writings (1839). C. G. Bowers, Jefferson and Hamilton (1925), is dramatic and favorable; F. W. Hirst, Life and Letters of Thos. Jefferson (1 926), is eulogistic.

For genealogical materials, the family background, and his early life, see Tyler's Quarterly History and Genealogy Magazine, January, April, July, October 1925; January, July 1926; Wm. C. Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke (1922), I, 9 ff.; E. Woods, Albemarle County in Virginia (1901); Wm. and Mary Quarterly History Magazine, January 1921, p. 34, and F. Harrison, Ibid., January 1924,p. 15. For his public career and political position. see J out. of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1766-76 (3 volumes, 1905-06); W. W. Hening, The Statutes at Large ... of Virginia (13 volumes, 1809-23); Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (1922); J.C. Fitzpatrick, The Spirit of the Revolution (1924), chs. I, II; H.J. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia (1916); C. R. Lingley, "The Transition in Virginia from Colony to Commonwealth," Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Volume XXXVI, no. 2 (1910); B. Fay, L'Esprit Revolutionnaire en France et aux Etats Unis a la Fin du XVII Siecle (1925); L. B. Dunbar, A Study of "Monarchical" Tendencies in the U. S. (1922); S. F. Bemis, Jay's Treaty (1923), Pinckney's Treaty (1926), The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, II (1927), 3-93; W. K. Woolery, "The Relation of Thos. Jefferson to American Foreign Policy, 1783-1793." Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, Volume XLV, no. 2 (1927); Chas. A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915); C.R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (1905); A. J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (4 volumes 1916); I. J. Cox, The W. Florida Controversy, 1798-1813 (1918): L. M. Sears, Jefferson and the Embargo (127); Henry Adams, History of the U. S. of American, volumes I-IV (1889-90); C. E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (1910), ch. IV; V. L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, I (1927), 342-56; E. S. Brown, Wm. Plumer's Memorandum of Procs. in the U. S. Senate (1923); The Defense of Young and Mims, Printers to the State ... (Boston, 1805).

For the University of Virginia, see N. F. Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia as Contained in the Letters of Thos. Jefferson and Jos. C. Cabell (1856); P.A. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, volumes, I, II (1922); R. J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thos. Jefferson (1931). For architecture, see Fiske Kimball, "Thos. Jefferson as, Architect:  Monticello and Shadwell," Architectural Quarterly of Harvard University, June 1914, Thos. Jefferson and the First Monument of the Classical Revival in American (1915), Thos. Jefferson, Architect (1916); W. B. Bryan, A History of the National Capital, Volume I (1914). For his scientific work, see Wm. E. Curtis, The True Thos. Jefferson (1901), ch. XII; Alex. F. Chamberlain, "Thos. Jefferson's Ethnological Opinions and Activities," American Anthropologist, July-September 1907; Geo. T. Surface, "Thos. Jefferson: a Pioneer Student of American Geography," Bulletin of the American Geog. Society, December 1909; F. A. Lucas, "Thos. Jefferson-Paleontologist," Natural History, May-June, 1926; H. F. Osborn, "Thos. Jefferson, The Pioneer of American Paleontology," Science, April 19, 1929; Wm. I. Wyman, "Thos. Jefferson and the Patent System," Journal of the Patent Office Society September 1918. For a personal picture, see D. Malone, "Polly Jefferson and Her Father," Virginia Quarterly Review, January 193 I. Probably better than any portrait is the life mask of Jefferson, reproduced in C. H. Hart, Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans (1899).]

D. M. (Dumas Malone)


JENCKES, John, abolitionist, Providence, Pennsylvania, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-37.


JENCKES, Thomas Allen, 1818-1875, lawyer.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island.  Served as Congressman from 1863-1871.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 425-426; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 41-42; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, pp. 41-42:

JENCKES, THOMAS ALLEN (November 2, 1818-November 4, 1875), jurist and legislator, born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, was the son of Thomas B. and Abigail W. (Allen) Jenckes, and a descendant of Joseph Jenks [q. v.]. He was educated at Brown University, from which institution he graduated with distinction at the age of twenty. For one year thereafter he served as a tutor at Brown, meanwhile pursuing the study of law. He was admitted to practice in 1840, and having formed a partnership with Edward H. Hazard of Providence, he rose rapidly in his profession. In due course he gave special attention to patent law, a field in which he proved to be peculiarly qualified by his mechanical aptitudes, and was retained as counsel in much of the important patent litigation of his time, including the suits which arose out of the Sickles and Corliss patents relating to the steam-engine and the more famous Day and Goodyear rubber controversies. At an early age he disclosed a flair for politics; he served as one of the secretaries in the "Landholders Convention" of 1841 and in the Rhode Island constitutional convention of 1842. In the same year, 1842, he was appointed secretary of the governor's council and subsequently did service in both houses of the state legislature. This service led to his election as a member of the national House of Representatives in 1862, and he took his seat at the opening of the Thirty-eighth Congress. He was three times reelected to represent the first Rhode Island congressional district.

During his four terms Jenckes served on two important committees-patents and judiciary. His services in connection with the revision and improvement of the laws relating to patents and copyrights were of great and enduring value. He was actively associated with civil-service reform in its earliest stages and indeed he has a fair claim to be ranked as the first American legislator to grasp the significance of this reform. In 1865 he introduced a bill for the selection of public employees by competitive examinations, a measure which he had framed after a study of the English practice and after an elaborate correspondence with Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote, both of whom had played an important part in the English movement for civil-service reform. This bill was defeated, but Jenckes persisted and in 1866 obtained the appointment of a joint committee to study the subject of retrenchment in governmental expenditures. This committee appointed a sub-committee on civil service, with Jenckes at its head, and a bill based on its recommendations was presented to the House in 1868; but this too was defeated, although by a narrow margin.

Meanwhile, however, President Grant had been persuaded to take an interest 1n the movement. In his second annual message the President expressed himself in favor of a law which would govern "the manner of making all appointments." This executive approval led Congress in 1871 to attach a rider to the appropriation bill giving the president authority "to prescribe such rules and regulations for the admission of persons into the civil service of the United States as will best promote the efficiency thereof" (The Statutes at Large, XVI, 1871, 514). This rider also authorized the appointment of a civil-service commission and made an appropriation therefor. But the victory for civil service reform was not yet won, for Congress presently declined to continue the appropriation for the commission's work.

Jenckes was also closely identified with the movement for a national bankruptcy law and was successful in securing the enactment of such a measure after several years of effort. He initiated competitive examinations for admission to West Point. When the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was voted by the House, his name was proposed as one of the managers to prosecute the impeachment proceedings before the Senate, and he came within a few votes of being chosen. By reason of his independence, integrity, and sound judgment, he became one of the outstanding members of the Fortieth and Forty-first congresses, becoming widely recognized as one of the best lawyers in the House. Consequently, when it was decided to undertake an investigation of the Credit Mobilier charges against various members of Congress, Jenckes, who was now no longer a member of the House, was selected as one of the counsel to assist in the prosecution of the inquiry. Much was expected of him in this capacity, by reason of his legal talents and high reputation; but ill health prevented him from assuming a leading part in the proceedings. He died on November 4, 1875. To his contemporaries he was a somewhat austere figure, aloof and objective, but with intellectual power and legal acumen that commanded the highest respect everywhere. He was always in earnest and rarely lost his temper or self-control. In spite of a large legal; practice which made heavy demands upon his time he gave much of his energy to the public service for more than thirty years and by his great capacity for work was able to make his mark in both fields. He married in 1842 Mary J. Fuller of Attleboro, Massachusetts. They had seven children.

[For biographical information see In Memoriam: Thos. Allen Jenckes, Born November 2, 1818-Died November 4, 1875 (n.d.); G. E. Jenks, Genealogy of the Jenks Family of Newport, New Hampshire (n.d.); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); the Providence Journal, November 5, December 13, 1875, January 5, June 21, 1876. References to his work in the cause of civil-service reform may be found in C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (1905) and in the various biographies of the period.]

W.B.M-o.


JENKINS, David, 1811-1877, free African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor and publisher, writer, lecturer, community activist.  Publisher of anti-slavery newspaper, Palladium of Liberty, in Columbus, Ohio.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 6, p. 355)


JENKINS, Huron, abolitionist, Delaware, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-40.


JENNINGS, Jonathan, abolitionist, Delaware, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-38.


JESSUP, William, 1797-1868, Pennsylvania, jurist, abolitionist, temperance activist.  Leader of the Republican Party.  Wrote party platform for election of 1860. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 431)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 431:

JESSUP, William, jurist, born in Southampton, New York, 21 June, 1797; died in Montrose, Pennsylvania, 11 September, 1868. He was graduated at Yale in 1815, removed to Montrose in 1818, and was admitted to the bar there. From 1838 till 1851 he was presiding judge of the 11th judicial district of Pennsylvania, and in April, 1861, was one of the committee of three that was sent by the governors of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio to confer with President Lincoln relative to raising 75,000 men. He was a pioneer in the cause of education and temperance in northern Pennsylvania, and the chief founder of the County agricultural society. In 1848 Hamilton college conferred on him the degree of LL.D. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 431.

[1] Jefferson’s Correspondence, Letter CLXXIV.

[2] Dr. Franklin approved of Mr. JAY’S resistance to this proposition, observing, “poor as we are, yet as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great price, the whole of the Mississippi, than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my front door.”

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.