William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

"You may recollect that previous to my last appointment I was permitted to hold over for a year after my term of office had expired. This extraordinary delay in filling a vacancy on the bench was not the result of accident or inadvertency. It arose from doubts entertained by the leaders at Albany whether the party would gain more at the South than it would lose in Westchester by my removal. Mr. Van Buren was then a candidate for the presidency, and I was shown a confidential letter from one of his particular friends at Albany to an influential democrat of this county, discussing the expediency of my removal. The letter was put into my hands by the gentleman to whom it was addressed. It was admitted by the writer that my conduct as a judge was irreproachable, and that there were no other objections to my reappointment than my antislavery sentiments. My only fault in the eyes of this champion of equal rights was that I was opposed to converting men and women into beasts of burden. Still, he was apprehensive that my removal for such a cause might savour of persecution for abstract opinions; in other words, might be unpopular; and he wished to know what the party in Westchester deemed most expedient. After a year's deliberation and hesitation, I was reappointed. Mr. Van Buren is again a candidate, but now he has a Southern democrat for a competitor; and his party in the State being so strong that he can well afford to risk a little dissatisfaction in Westchester, it is deemed prudent to propitiate the demon of slavery by offering a victim, however humble, on his altar. The Plebeian, devoted to Mr. Van Buren's election, avowed with unblushing frankness that my reappointment would be calculated to prejudice the Democratic party 'in the eyes of our Southern brethren.'

"Thus, it seems that in order to elevate Mr. Van Buren to the presidency the magistrates of the free, sovereign, and independent State of New York are to be selected with reference to the good pleasure of Southern slaveholders.

"Pardon, my dear sir, the egotism of this letter. I have been compelled to speak of myself in order to expose the canting profligacy of our demagogues, and to illustrate one of the numberless accursed influences of slavery. This abhorred system, which in the South makes merchandise of the souls and bodies of men, is at the same time trafficking in the politics, the religion, and the liberties of the North, and putrefying whatever it touches. Against this system I have contended, as did my father before me, and the leisure Governor Bouck has given me shall be faithfully devoted to a continuance of the warfare."

The "leisure" given to him by Governor Bouck had first to be used by Jay in an attempt to restore his health, which for several years had been failing. In the autumn of 1843 he determined upon a visit to Egypt, and on the 1st of November he sailed from New York in the "Victoria," of 1100 tons, accompanied by his wife and his daughters Maria and Augusta. After a short visit to London, the party sailed from Southampton for Malta in the "Great Liverpool" of the Oriental Line, with passengers and mail bound to India. At Malta Jay was interested in meeting the famous wit, scholar, and diplomatist, John Hookham Frere, who entertained him at his house outside the walls of the city.

While in England, Jay had been requested by John Beaumont, on behalf of the British and Foreign Antislavery Society, to take charge of a quantity of antislavery tracts printed in the Arabic language, and to insure their distribution. After his arrival in Cairo, Jay gave packages of the tracts to several persons whose facilities for distributing them in Egypt were greater than his own. Others he disposed of himself. "During the short time I was in Egypt," he said in a letter, "I distributed tracts in the slave market, in the bazaars, in a public coffee-house, in the hotels, and to persons in the streets." And he was much struck with the fact that what he could do peacefully in Egypt, in a portion of his own country would have endangered his life.

On his return home, Jay visited Paris, and while there communicated to the Duc de Broglie the motives of the Southern statesmen in seeking the annexation of Texas, and made no secret of his hope that France would oppose the proceedings.[C]

The events leading up to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War were followed by Jay with the closest attention. The injustice and cruelty with which Mexico was treated throughout these proceedings by the United States Government excited his warmest indignation. He was deeply grieved at events which seemed to postpone indefinitely the emancipation of the slaves; his fears were aroused for the security of free institutions in the North by the great impetus given to the Southern spirit of domination. But above all he felt the disgrace incurred by his own country in forcing upon a weak and friendly power a desolating war for the sole object of wresting from it a territory to be peopled by slaves. The result of Jay's minute knowledge of this dark page in American history was embodied in a volume entitled "A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War," which was published in 1849. In this searching "Review" Jay exposed the parentage of the movement for the acquisition of Texas in the desire of the South to extend the territory devoted to slavery, with the twofold object of creating a new market for slave-breeders and of giving to the slave States an overwhelming control of Congress. He traced the devious paths of intrigue by which a rebellion was fomented in Texas by Americans settled there for that express purpose; the encouragement and aid given secretly to the rebels by the United States; the recognition of their independence; and finally the subterfuges adopted to achieve the annexation in violation of international rights and the Constitution itself. Jay set forth plainly the fact that hostilities were begun by the United States troops; he described the military operations by which a weak and defenceless people were reduced to consent to a dismemberment of their country; he showed the enormous cost in life and money involved in this war undertaken to furnish a new market for slaves and new power to slaveholders. Jay's "Review of the Mexican War" is a contribution to the history of the country which students cannot afford to pass unread. The views expressed in it are painful to patriotism for the reason that they are dictated by the pure patriotism which would make known the whole truth as a warning to posterity.

The book on the Mexican War was written originally for the American Peace Society, which had offered a prize for the best work on the subject. The committee appointed to pass judgment on the dissertations presented in competition awarded the prize to Jay's book on condition that he should expunge from it all "general censures on the Whig party." Jay refused to comply with this condition and the prize went to another. But the Peace Society recognized that the value of Jay's book lay in its impartial character and caused it to be published as the exposition of the society's views.

As nearly all the newspapers of both parties had supported the war, they were loth to notice a book which placed the object of their encomiums in so unpleasant a light. But many private letters were received by Jay which showed him that he had the approval of the best minds. Joshua R. Giddings wrote: "Thanks be to Him who rules the destiny of nations that we have among us competent and faithful men who possess the moral courage to stand forth and chronicle, in the language of truth, the barbarities of which the nation is guilty. The history of this age will speak to those who come after facts which will cause our descendants to blush. Your 'Review of the Mexican War' is faithful and just.... In writing it you have performed a service to your country and to mankind infinitely greater than was ever performed by any military officer."

"Every portion of it," wrote Charles Francis Adams, "commands my unqualified assent. That in the course of God's providence good may be ultimately educed out of evil is the only compensating reflection which we can draw from the observation of so much wrong. It may be that out of the very measures so wickedly devised to sustain a system of crime may come the means by which it will be overthrown. That your book will do great service in combining and perpetuating the evidence bearing upon this portion of American history, I do not for a moment doubt. It is my profound conviction that there never was a more wicked and unjustifiable war, promoted by one party and connived at by the other, than the late war with Mexico."