Chapter I: Preface: By John Jay

A prolonged illness, added to other causes, has disappointed my hope of completing an elaborate biography of my father.

This memoir by Mr. Tuckerman is devoted chiefly to the part borne by Judge Jay in the antislavery work, to which his time and thoughts were so long given. In this connection the memoir develops his personal characteristics, with the constitutional principles and national policy advocated by him in that historic contest; while of necessity it touches but lightly on his home life, his varied correspondence, and his judicial charges, one of which assisted to avert the passage of a pro-slavery legislative act infringing the liberty of speech and of the press; and the scope of the volume forbids its dwelling on his writings on other topics, some of which are still subjects of discussion.

Judge Jay's memoir on the formation of a National Bible Society, which in 1816 so warmly encouraged the hopes of the venerable Boudinot, was followed by spirited controversial pamphlets with an antagonist as able and eminent as Bishop Hobart. The correspondence after Jay's first letter was marked by an unusual sharpness, which happily did not prevent my cherished and lamented friend, the son and namesake of the Bishop, from becoming in later years sincerely attached to his father's antagonist. It was a contest in which Jay vindicated the right of Churchmen to assist in the distribution of the Bible, and anticipated in this his similar efforts for a lifetime to secure the united action of all good citizens, without regard to creed or politics, in practicable schemes for the elevation and happiness of mankind. Among his earlier essays were two on "Sunday: Its Value as a Civil Institution, and Its Sacred Character"; while a third, upon "Duelling as a Relic of Barbarism," was honoured, when the authorship was still unknown, by a medal from an anti-duelling association at Savannah.

THE LIFE OF JOHN JAY.

Judge Jay, in the life of his father, which was welcomed as an important addition to our American biography of the Revolution, vindicated, by a careful presentation of the historical evidence then available, the soundness of the judgment of Jay and Adams, as peace commissioners at Paris in 1782-83, regarding the policy of the French court as unfriendly to the American claims to the boundaries, the fisheries, and the Mississippi. That judgment, afterwards acquiesced in by Dr. Franklin in the joint violation by the commissioners of the instructions of Congress--a violation that enabled them to obtain from England boundaries and concessions far greater than either Congress or France expected--had been roughly criticised and denied, even in volumes of diplomatic correspondence claiming an official sanction. Its vindication by Judge Jay has recently been more than confirmed by the ample proofs published by M. de Circourt in the secret correspondence of the Count de Vergennes with his able corps of diplomatic agents, as well as by the interesting revelations in Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's "Life of Lord Shelburne"; and these volumes have dissipated a cloud of error which for half a century travestied the facts and dimmed the glory of the closing act of the American Revolution.[A]

JAY'S "WAR AND PEACE," AND INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.

Judge Jay's little book on "War and Peace," with a plan of stipulation by treaty for international arbitration which subsequently led to his becoming the president of the American Peace Society, and which before its publication attracted the attention of that sturdy advocate for peace, Joseph Sturge, during his visit at Bedford, seems entitled to special notice as one whose scheme is still agitated in the governmental and national councils of Europe. The plan promptly received the approval of the Peace Society of London, and of English statesmen like Richard Cobden and the indefatigable Henry Richard. It exercised a European influence in the highest quarters when its spirit, under the leadership of Lord Clarendon, received the sanction of the great powers of Europe who signed the Treaty at Paris in 1856. Its endorsement, while cautiously expressed, was recognized as having a new and profound significance. The Protocol No. 23 declared the wish of the signatory governments that 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; it being understood that the wish expressed by Congress should not in any case oppose limits to that liberty of appreciation which no power could alienate in questions that touched its dignity. With that limitation the recommendation, in advance of a resort to war to have recourse to a friendly power, was introduced by the Congress to the International Code of Europe; and among those great diplomatists were the Count Walewski and Baron Bourgueny, on the part of France; Count de Buol-Schauenstein and Baron de Hubner, on the part of Austria; Lord Clarendon and Lord Cowley, on the part of Great Britain; Count Orloff and Baron de Bruno, on the part of Russia; and Count Cavour and the Marquis de Villamarina, on the part of Sardinia. The action of the Congress was subsequently confirmed by that of the lesser states of Europe. Mr. Gladstone pronounced the protocol "a very great triumph, a powerful engine in behalf of civilized humanity." The late Earl of Derby referred to it as "the principle which to its immortal honour was embodied in the protocols of the Conference at Paris"; and the Earl of Malmesbury pronounced the act "one important to civilization and to the security of the peace of Europe." The idea that this scheme is more and more regarded as widely applicable to international disputes, as easily practicable and profoundly important to the peace of nations, would seem probable from the extent to which, as the century approaches its completion, the scheme has occupied more and more the attention of both the statesmen and of the masses who are the most interested in discovering a substitute for war.

For a time after the Geneva award, the moral weight and value of international arbitration seemed to be more doubted than ever. It was said that while the scheme had in that case avoided war, it had suggested the probability of claims so extravagant and inadmissible as almost to force the opposing party to break the treaty under the cover of which they were advanced, even at the risk of increased hostility and a resort to war; and that the escape of both nations from such a catastrophe by the action of the Genevan Court in dismissing without argument the American claims for indirect damages was but a happy accident. But this idea seems to have been succeeded by the happier thought that an appeal to international arbitration is an appeal to the fairness of the world, and that the question for the parties, judges, and spectators is so clearly one of honour, that no nation can afford to ask what the justice of the world candidly disapproves. In the case of the Geneva Congress, while the rejected claims were presented in the name of the President, General Grant himself subsequently denied their justice and approved their rejection. Sir Lyon (now Lord) Playfair, who perhaps appreciates the entire subject of arbitration as thoroughly as any living statesman, gave an interesting sketch of its recent progress, both in Europe and America, in a paper entitled, "A Topic for Christmas," in the _North American Review_ for December, 1890. Three years before, Sir Lyon had headed a deputation of members of the English Parliament who came to present to the President of the United States a memorial from 234 members of the House of Commons, with delegates from English Trades Unions representing 700,000 workingmen. Congress in response concurrently resolved to invite from time to time, as fit occasion might arise, negotiations with any government with which the United States has or may have diplomatic relations, to the end that any differences or disputes arising between the two governments which cannot be settled by diplomatic agency may be referred to arbitration and be peacefully adjusted by such means. Although Europe is supposed by many to be awaiting a war of gigantic magnitude, Sir Lyon, referring to the approval of arbitration by the Pan-American Congress by continental parliaments and international assemblies at Paris and London, said that the legislatures which had already passed resolutions in favor of arbitration represented 150,000,000 of people, and remarked that the extension of that feeling would be a better force than an international police to secure the observance of treaties. The excess of war preparation already endangering national credit and threatening national bankruptcy is quoted as proving that the arbitration idea will be insisted upon, and in the anticipated movement the United States is described as fitted to be the leading champion of arbitration. Sheridan is quoted among others as saying: "I mean what I say when I express the belief that arbitration will rule the world." The scheme is now represented as likely to be accepted by thinkers who reject the thought of Kant, Bentham, and Mills for an international Congress; and Sir Lyon Playfair, in connection with the idea of arbitration, quotes the remark of Mazzini that "thought is the action of men and action the thought of the people."

"THE WAR WITH MEXICO," AND ANTISLAVERY PAPERS.

The "Review of the War with Mexico" stands among Judge Jay's volumes unexcelled by exactness of congressional, diplomatic, and, to some extent, military research; and by plainness of speech in regard to national outrages and perfidy without a name, perpetrated in the cause of slavery; and his writings generally on this subject show the same accurate inquiry and outspoken frankness. It was on the varied phases of our treatment of the coloured people, free and slave, at our own doors, the cruel wrong so full of injustice to the blacks, of scandal to Christendom, and of menace to the republic, that Jay wrote with deepest earnestness, the most exacting research, and a fearless pen. His inquiry into "The American Colonization and the Antislavery Societies" and "The Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery," developed facts which implicated prominent politicians of both parties, and aroused at once their surprise and indignation, while the disclosure directly appealed to the pride and conscience of the American people. The same judicial, dauntless, and defiant spirit marked the appeals which he prepared for the Antislavery Society against the calumnies of the press, and the dignified protest against the libellous charges so unworthily made by President Jackson in his message to Congress. The same spirit animated his address on "The Condition of the People of Colour in the United States"; the "Appeal to the Friends of Constitutional Liberty, on the Violation by the House of Representatives of the Right of Petition"; his supplement to "The Reproof of the American Church," by Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford; the exposure in the letter to Bishop Ives of the clerical efforts to sanctify slavery and caste; and his earnest demand for the equal admission of the coloured churches to the Diocesan Council of New York. So, too, with the critical analysis of Mr. Clay's "Compromise Bill," including the Fugitive Law and Mr. Webster's "Theory of Physical Geography"; his address to the inhabitants of New Mexico and California, so timely distributed in English and Spanish, and so happily followed in California by a free constitution, urging them to resist the domination of slavery with its ignorance and degradation, and to secure, by their own manly independence and just statesmanship, a glorious future of power and happiness; his address to the antislavery Christians; and his plain reminders to the Protestant Episcopal Church, and to the Tract and other societies, of the inconsistency and evil influence of their compromising pro-slavery policy.

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES--AN HISTORIC PARALLEL.

The part of Jay's life pictured by Mr. Tuckerman not only exhibits these characteristics, but shows the Antislavery Society to have been founded by his care, in 1833, on constitutional principles so just and so clearly defined, that in 1839 sixteen hundred and fifty auxiliary societies had been established on the same basis, educating the rising generation, on whom was to rest the destiny of the country in the near future. It was an education of the quiet and effective influence of which the pro-slavery leaders seemed unconscious, although to some it may recall the thought of Dr. Storrs, when he said:--"When I think of a millennium in our time, in our civilization, my thought rests and fastens on the promise, 'a little child shall lead them.'" The charge had already been made against the opponents of slavery of a disregard of constitutional obligations--of a desire to dissolve the Union and to encourage slave insurrection. The society declared the exclusive right of each slave State to legislate in regard to slavery; the constitutional right of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, to prohibit it in the Territories and new States, and to control the domestic as well as the foreign slave trade; and it disclaimed the idea of countenancing the slaves in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force. And here is suggested, by the action and the anticipation of the Slave Power, an interesting historic parallel. The formation of the Antislavery Society in December, 1833, followed closely upon Mr. Calhoun's Nullification in South Carolina in 1832, when, as Mr. Pollard tell us, a medal was struck inscribed, "John C. Calhoun, First President of the C. S. A." A counterpart of this medal in gold is said to exist at Richmond, with the name of Jefferson Davis as the first president of the Southern Confederacy, and "1861" on the reverse side.

These incidents seem to emphasize the fact that the constitutional principles adopted by the Antislavery Society in 1833, and so widely circulated by the press and its auxiliaries before the war, although often assailed, were, in 1854, made the basis of the Republican party, which, as Americans of all sections may now with mutual regard and affection thank God, maintained the Union and abolished slavery. Such a revolution in public opinion is a forcible reminder of the truth that every principle contains within itself the germ of a prophecy, and it is a thought fraught with hope and confidence to reformers even when they seem to be threatened with disaster and defeat.

THE EARLY SCHEME FOR A SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

The determination to found a confederacy with slavery as its cornerstone appears as a fundamental feature in the policy of the Slave Power for some thirty years before the outbreak of the Civil War. Mr. Calhoun's idea of secession, apparently suggested by the tariff, General Jackson predicted would be renewed on the question of slavery. The novel of Prof. Beverly Tucker in 1835, entitled, "The Partisan Leader; or, Twenty Years After," foreshadowed the steps at home and abroad which were taken in forming the new confederacy; and in the South Carolina Convention in 1860, Southern politicians like Rhett, Parker, Keith, and Inglis said that the matter had nothing to do with Mr. Lincoln or the Fugitive Law, but had been culminating for a long series of years. The thought of a Southern Confederacy may have stimulated the policy of using the power of the Republic, while it lasted, in the interest of the Confederacy that was to succeed it; supplying a motive for the Texan Rebellion, the War with Mexico, the effort to secure Cuba, the filibustering expeditions to Central America, the determination to reopen the African slave-trade, and the pro-slavery action of the Buchanan administration.

NORTHERN AND EUROPEAN SYMPATHY WITH SLAVERY.

It would be hardly fair to the Southern leaders to assume that they found no reason for their hope of effecting the dissolution of the Union in the sympathy and aid promised from the North and from Europe. The secret conferences with Lord Lyons of Northern sympathizers with slavery were disclosed by the despatches of that eminent diplomatist. Mayor Fernando Wood's proposition that New York should become a free city, independent both of the States and the nation, showed in no slight degree the temper of the citizens whom he represented; while the later appeal of so eminent and popular a leader as Governor Horatio Seymour to the citizens of the State was equally significant when he said, "In the downfall of the nation, and amid its crumbling ruins, we will cling to the fortunes of New York." Such utterances enforced by leaders of the prominence of Franklin Pierce and Vallandingham; the political action of sympathizers with slavery and the anti-draft riots in New York, supplemented by the unfriendliness of European governments; and the escape of the "Alabama"--all these circumstances tended to encourage the hopes that were doomed to disappointment. Nor in considering the antislavery movement should we overlook the effect of the antislavery opinion of our country in ending the danger of European intervention, which had been unwittingly encouraged by Mr. Seward's too hasty assurance to our minister in France (April 22, 1861), that "the revolution was without a cause, without a pretext, and without an object; and that the condition of slavery in the several States would remain just the same, whether it should succeed or fail." The antislavery policy, first of enlistment and then of emancipation, so earnestly urged upon Mr. Lincoln and adopted by him with conscientious caution, enlightened Europe as to the true meaning of the contest in our recognition of the equal right to freedom and the equal dignity of labour, and forbade its rulers to assist in the establishment of a slave confederacy; and the historian Lessing, when alluding to the cordial reception by his holiness the Sovereign Pontiff of the diplomatic agents of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and the Papal letter recognizing and commending "the illustrious President of the Southern Confederacy," remarks that this was "the only official recognition of the chief conspirator by the head of any government." Nor should the right appreciation by the abolitionists of the prospect of freedom for the slaves be forgotten. The fidelity of the negroes during the war, both to the families with whom they lived, to which Vice-President Stephens bore distinct testimony, and to the Northern army, from which they expected emancipation, was no less honourable and conspicuous than the devotion and gallantry they constantly exhibited in the war, as at Fort Hudson and Fort Wagner, at Milliken's Bend and Lake Providence, at Newbern and at Olustee, where their rear-guard saved the army. Their conduct, whether at home or in the field, justified the conviction of their steadfast friends in the safety of immediate emancipation, and added untold force to the sacredness of the pledges so often given during the war, and still, to the national discredit, unfulfilled--of national aid to State education, so as to secure to every child of our coloured citizens the ability to read his Bible and the Constitution, to fulfill his duties and protect his rights.

As time and reflection impress upon the American mind a clear comprehension of the changes, national, social, and political, that a triumph of the Slave Power would have brought to America and its effect as a set-back to the civilization of the world, an increased interest will be felt in the beginnings of the contest, and in the men and causes that shaped its end.

THE LESSON FOR TO-DAY.

I cordially recommend Mr. Tuckerman's memoir to the students of the antislavery contest, as throwing light on that interesting and but partially written chapter of American history, in which my father bore a part; and on the character and policy of the sturdy band with whom he was associated, including Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Joshua Leavitt, James G. Birney, Gerrit Smith, and their true-hearted compatriots; while a wider view would include a group of noble women, who, if differing as to means, were united in devotion, headed by the honoured names of Maria Weston Chapman and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, and the sisters Grimke.

Among our citizens who will be long remembered as early and fearless opponents of slavery, leading and acting with energy and independence, according to their personal convictions and occasionally in differing ways, were the venerable Isaac T. Hopper, William Lloyd Garrison, whose life has been so faithfully recorded by his sons, John Greenleaf Whittier, whose old Huguenot spirit lives in his verse as in his name, Ellis Gray Loring, Lovejoy, the martyr of the west, Wendell Phillips, with his matchless eloquence, Theodore D. Weld, with his trenchant pen, Elizur Wright, Jr., Samuel R. Ward, William Goodell, S. S. Jocelyn, Gamaliel Bailey, Jr., Edmund Quincey, S. H. Gay, Oliver Johnston, James S. Gibbons, and others, who opened the way--sometimes by devious and diverging paths--for the party of the Union and Emancipation.

As the contest advanced from the field of politics to that of war, came Union men from different points whose names will live in our history with those of John A. Andrew, John C. Fremont, John P. Hale, Chase, Sumner, Seward, Preston and John A. King, Wilmot, Giddings, Wade, Holt, and Edwin D. Stanton. In New York, where mob law had prevailed, the Union League Club upheld the loyalty of the city, the credit of the nation, and the sanitary commission; raised troops for Hancock in addition to its own coloured regiments; stimulated the ardour of our soldiers and the patriotism of the country; welcomed, of the army, Grant and Sherman, Mead and Sheridan, Hancock and Hooker, Warren and Burnside, and of the navy, Farragut, Dupont and Rogers, Winslow and the youthful Cushing; verifying in its spirit and action the remark of Vice-President Colfax that on the Union League Club Lincoln had leaned in the darkest hours.

The Club did not forget, neither will the truthful historian forget, that amid the European plots and intrigues in the interest of slavery, we had friends high and low, from Alexander of Russia, the emancipator of twenty millions of serfs--who, like Lincoln, fell by assassination--to the humble peasants, who instinctively recognised the hostility to the rights of labor inherent in the slavery system, whose vicious features had been exposed by John Bright with such masterly effect.

Goldwin Smith, the historic scholar of Oxford, who at home had denounced those who would have made England an accomplice in "the creation of a great slave empire, and in its future extension from the grave of Washington to the Halls of Montezuma," in his reply to the greetings of the eminent citizens who had asked him to the club and who assembled to meet him,[B] said, "Your cause is ours; it is the cause of the whole human race." The same idea, in almost the same words, was expressed by the Count de Cavour a few days before his death, in a despatch to the Italian Minister at Washington, when he said "that ours was the cause not only of constitutional liberty, but of all humanity."

The antislavery story from the Calhoun medal, struck to commemorate the supposed birth of a slave empire to the constitutional abolition of slavery, concerned humanity, and has lessons of warning and encouragement for the men and women of to-day, on whom rest the hopes of the country, and who, against odds that seem as formidable as those presented by the Slave Power at its culmination, are bravely striving for the advance of humanity, the purification of our politics, and the preservation of American institutions. They may well adopt the inspiriting legend of Geneva to which the antislavery contest of America has given a new radiance, "Post tenebras lux." Our institutions, no longer endangered by slavery, are assailed with skilful intrigue in their own strongholds, the public school and the polls, especially of our great cities, where a corrupt, irresponsible, secret rule recalls the Council of Ten and the Lion of Saint Mark, and now it is charged that our very legislation at times is not simply partisan but fraudulent. The incompatibility of such proceedings with American principles and American rights recalls with emphatic force the warning so distinctly and repeatedly given us by Dr. Orestes A. Brownson, that eminent and philosophic representative of our citizens of the Roman Catholic faith who stand squarely by the American constitution and American institutions, of the danger of allowing foreigners to meddle with our public schools when he said that American civilization was "the farthest point in advance yet reached by any age or nation, and that foreigners who come to educate according to their civilization necessarily educate for a civilization behind the times and below that of this country."

The enlightening effect of an impartial study of the antislavery contest on an independent and philosophic critic can be read in the interesting and instructive pages of Von Holst; and a review of that contest, from the first presentment of the principles of the Antislavery Society to the parting scene of Grant and Lee at Appomatox, and the adoption of the constitutional amendment of emancipation, affords, step by step, amid whatever mistakes and blunders, evidence which becomes the more striking and conclusive, as time passes, of what was accomplished in the antislavery struggle for humanity and the world in shaping the future of the Republic, by calm resolve, a faithful adhesion to truth and principle, patient perseverance, unflinching courage, faith in the triumph of right, American manliness, and far-sighted Christian statesmanship.

BEDFORD HOUSE, Katonah,
New York, May, 1893.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Birth and Education of William Jay.--His Early Philanthropic
Interests.--Appointed Judge of Westchester County. 1

CHAPTER II.

Early Opposition to Slavery.--Growth of the Slave Power.--The
Missouri Compromise.--Jay begins Political Agitation for the
Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. 18

CHAPTER III.

Development of the Antislavery Movement.--Organization of
Antislavery Societies.--Anti-Abolition Riots.--Jay publishes his
"Inquiry." 39

CHAPTER IV.

Continued Efforts to suppress the Antislavery Movement by Force and
Intimidation.--Favourable Effect upon the Public Mind produced by
Jay's Writings. 63

CHAPTER V.

Gradual Decline of Riotous Demonstrations against the
Abolitionists.--Changes occur in the Doctrines and Methods of the
American Antislavery Society.--Judge Jay resigns his Membership,
while continuing his Efforts on Behalf of Emancipation. 82

CHAPTER VI.

Judge Jay continues to support the Antislavery Cause by his Advice
and Writings.--In Consequence of his Opinions he is deprived of his
Seat on the Bench.--His Visit to Europe.--His Views on the Liberty
Party.--On the Annexation of Texas.--His "Review of the Mexican
War."--His Advocacy of International Arbitration as a Remedy for
War.--His Work in the Episcopal Church. 112

CHAPTER VII.

Unpopularity of the Abolitionists.--The Compromises of 1850 and the
Fugitive-Slave Law.--Jay's Reply to Webster's 7th of March
Speech.--The Attitude of the Episcopal Church.--The Abrogation of
the Missouri Compromise.--Disunion. 135

CHAPTER VIII.

Death of Judge Jay.--His Position among Antislavery Men.--His other
Public and Philanthropic Interests.--His Private Life.--His
Character. 156

Bibliography 171

Index 175

Appendix 184

ILLUSTRATIONS.

William Jay, from a crayon by Martin _Frontispiece._

View of Bedford House, the home of Judge Jay 9

Chief-Justice Jay, from a painting by Gilbert Stuart 39

William Jay, from a painting by Vanderlyn 81

William Jay, from a painting by Wenzler 135

Mrs. William Jay, from a painting by W. E. West 164

WILLIAM JAY.