Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,057

Through the fence in the distance is the grave of John Jay (this is as close as one can get).

Born in 1745 in New York City, Jay grew up in Rye, which is today a rich suburb, but then was just another town. Jay grew up wealthy but family tragedy defined his early years. A smallpox epidemic washed through New York when Jay was born. Jay did not get it or at least was not overly affected, but two of Jay’s siblings went blind. This led to the move out of New York. But the family was still a leading merchant family and that didn’t change. Jay got the best possible education at that time. In 1760, he enrolled at King’s College, which is today Columbia University. He did very well, graduated in 1764, and went into the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1768 and quickly established his own law practice.

By the early 1770s, more colonists were moving toward thinking about resistance to London and maybe even independence. Jay’s father was one of them and more importantly, so was Jay himself. Now, at first, Jay was something of a moderate. He certainly disagreed with Parliament. But he was a rich guy who came from a rich guy and so felt the need to defend wealth. More importantly, he was highly distrustful of the mob and nothing about the Boston Massacre and the mob that started it made him feel better about that. So at the First Continental Congress in 1774, Jay was a moderate voice. That began to change by early 1776. By that year, he believed that all future negotiations with the British were pointless and that independence was the only answer for the colonies.

Jay spent the Revolution in the Continental Congress and was president of it in 1778-79. But there were more important jobs, such as getting European support for the Revolution. Most of the major political figures at the time were involved in this–Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson. So was Jay. He was named minister to Spain, tasked with getting Spanish support. Maybe it wasn’t quite as critical as France, but it was still pretty dang critical. Spain was super hesitant, for the obvious reasons that it was worried that these revolutionary ideas were spread south, as indeed they would. So they didn’t get too involved, but they did throw the new nation $100,000 in support. Jay then went to Paris to work with Franklin and Adams to work out the final treaty with the British. Jay was very difficult here; Lord Shelburne offered the American independence, Jay said that America was already independent and needed to be negotiated with as such. This impasse stalled the whole thing for months. But Adams among others gave Jay a huge amount of credit for being the most skilled negotiator in the room.

Upon returning to the United States, Jay was Secretary of Foreign Affairs until the ratification of the Constitution. George Washington offered Jay the role of Secretary of State, but he turned it down. Jay of course was a huge proponent of the Constitution and was the third wheel in the Federalist Papers. Of course Alexander Hamilton and James Madison deserve most of the credit here, but Jay’s writings were also really important. Instead of taking Secretary of State, Jay wanted the new position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The Court was really just figuring out what it was doing at this time and so much of his legacy is just getting it on his feet. Despite being on the Court, he was also the Federalist candidate for New York in 1792 but lost. He left the Court in 1795.

Like most of the founders, Jay really struggled with not being a hypocrite. People forget that New York was a major slave state well after the Revolution and that included Jay. The family money largely came from the slave trade, as did most early American wealth. Jay kind of backed off active involvement in the slave trade, but he owned quite a few. When one escaped while he was in Paris and was then caught, he urged authorities to keep her in prison longer to teach her a lesson about leaving his ownership. Now, the hypocrisy was super real here–Jay helped found the New York Manumission Society and owned slaves at the same time! Yes, he was working toward some kind of solution that would fit him without hurting his comfort and finances. It took time. At the same time, Jay did argue on the national level for the end of slavery, even if slowly.

Jay’s Treaty was very unpopular in the United States, but this reflected how Americans were completely out of touch with reality in terms of their power vis-a-vis the British. The state of affairs between the U.S. and British were still quite tense, neither side had really lived up to its obligations from the 1783 treaty. James Madison and others wanted to be aggressive with the British. Washington rightfully saw that as a very bad idea. So he sent Jay to London. Alexander Hamilton completely sabotaged Jay’s positions by just caving to the British behind his back. So the final treaty was mostly a status quo treaty, including around impressment and neutral rights, which really meant selling arms to the French. But the British did agree to finally leave its forts in the Northwest. The slaveowners hated this treaty, believing Jay was not protecting their interests. The Jeffersonians were outraged by it. They would have been happy with war. But in reality, Jay did the best he could.

Jay left the Court in 1795 and became governor of New York. He was there for six years. When he left, John Adams nominated him for the Supreme Court again, but Jay declined. He was done. Unlike almost every other Founder, Jay actually lived the Roman ideal of retiring from politics and living life as a farmer. He lived far longer than I would have guessed given that he totally disappears from politics after 1801. But it turns out, he just chose to disengage entirely and live his life as a rich farmer in Westchester County, New York.

In the last nearly thirty years of his life, he found himself compelled to speak out about politics exactly one time, which was to oppose Missouri being admitted as a slave state in 1819 and breaking the balance between slave and free states. That was the moment of the “fire bell in the night,” as Jefferson put it, so even Jay had to comment then. I’m not sure anyone really cared what he had to say and probably they had to remember who he was and expressed some surprise that he was still alive. After that moment, he went back to his silence. He died in 1829, of a stroke. He was 83 years old.

John Jay is buried in Jay Cemetery, Rye, New York. This is the land of whoever owns the estate today, so you can’t get on it, but you can get pretty close, good enough for a bad picture anyway.

If you would like this series to visit other so-called Founding Fathers (and damn Warren Harding for coining that awful term), you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Henry Laurens is in Moncks Corner, South Carolina and Patrick Henry is in Red Hill, Virginia. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.