William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

The presidency of the college was then occupied by Dr. Timothy Dwight, who also gave instruction in belles-lettres, oratory, and theology. To him Jay wrote in 1818: "I retain a grateful recollection of your kind attention to me, and I have, and trust will ever have, reason to acknowledge the goodness of Providence in placing me under your care, when many of my opinions were to be formed and my principles established." Still later, he wrote to a college friend: "Your remarks on Dr. Dwight are grateful to my heart. I cherish his memory as one of the best friends I ever had."

In his senior year Jay took part in debates among the students, presided over by Dr. Dwight. Some of the subjects discussed were: "Ought infidels to be excluded from office?" "Ought religion to be supported by law?" "Would a division of the Union be politic?" "Would it be politic to encourage manufactures in the United States?" On the last question Dr. Dwight remarked: "We shall always buy things where we can get them the cheapest; we will never make our commodities so long as we can buy them better and cheaper elsewhere." Jay displayed his natural inclination for the law by contributing a series of articles on legal subjects, over the signature of "Coke," to the Literary Cabinet, the students' paper. He took his degree in September, 1807, having injured his eyesight in his efforts to attain a high standing in his class. "During the winter of my junior year," he wrote in warning to his grandson William, "I was struggling hard for honours, and trying to make up for lost time; I used to rise about four o'clock, light my fire, and sit down to the study of conic sections. I brought on a weakness in my eyes which lasted several years. Be sure you never rise before the sun and study your Latin and Greek by candle-light or gas-light."

After graduation Jay went to Albany and began the study of the law in the office of John B. Henry. On the 3d of September, 1812, he married Augusta, daughter of John McVickar, a merchant of New York, and vestryman of Trinity Church. The difficulty with his eyesight, which had seriously interfered with his legal studies, became so pronounced as to compel him to abandon his profession for some years. During this period he retired with his wife to his father's country seat, "Bedford," in Westchester County, and there devoted himself with energy to agricultural pursuits. The farm included about eight hundred acres, part of a tract purchased by Jacobus van Cortlandt from Katonah Sagamore and other Indian chieftains in 1700, and confirmed by patent of Queen Anne in 1704. It had come to Chief-Justice Jay partly through his mother, Mary van Cortlandt, the wife of Peter Jay, and partly through her sister, Eve van Cortlandt, the wife of Judge John Chambers.

The Jay House at Bedford.

Of the forty fields into which the farm was divided, Jay kept a separate account: showing the tillage and produce, the drainage and fencing, the dates of planting and reaping. A volume of this kind, begun in 1816, contained entries as late as 1857, the year before his death. He perfected himself in grafting and budding, and was particularly successful with peaches, with cherries, pears and plums, some of them with Huguenot names and memories, and with muskmelons from Persian seed, brought to him from the East by a friend. He raised horses from imported stock, Merino sheep, and superintended the curing of hams from a Westphalian recipe, furnished by an old Hessian farm hand—one of the hirelings who had come to conquer and remained to cultivate the country. In 1818 Jay and Fenimore Cooper drafted the constitution for an agricultural society of which Governor Jay was the first president and General Pierre van Cortlandt the second—an institution of great use in the development of Westchester County.

In 1815, when twenty-six years of age, Jay entered upon that course of active philanthropy which for the next forty years employed his thoughts and pen. His first effort was directed to the improvement of his native town of Bedford in the organization of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. By means of this society, of which he was the secretary, he did much to restrain the liquor traffic and to diminish intemperance. Later on, as a judge, he used all the power of the law to the same end; and it was he who suggested the law, still in force, which forbids a tavern-keeper to supply drink on credit.

An interesting incident in this early period of his life was the part which he bore in founding the American Bible Society, in organizing its machinery for the immense work it had to perform, and in vindicating the principles of the society against the attacks of the opposing party in his own church. In this struggle Jay proved the independence of character and courage of conviction which afterwards distinguished him through the seemingly hopeless years of antislavery effort. The general distribution of Bibles in our day makes it difficult to appreciate the limited supply, the high cost, and the consequent rarity of the Bible when this society began its work. The High-Church party in New York were opposed to the association of Episcopalians with other Christians to circulate the Bible, and opposed even to the distribution of the Bible, unless accompanied by the Prayer-book as an interpreter. In these views they were vigorously supported by their distinguished leader, Bishop John Henry Hobart. Jay, who had inherited with his Huguenot blood a faith in the Bible not to be restrained by ecclesiastical assumption, was an officer of the Westchester Bible Society and deeply interested in the work. On the appearance of a pastoral letter from Bishop Hobart in which the High-Church views were expressed, he published a pamphlet showing that it was "the interest and duty of Episcopalians to unite with their fellow-Christians of all denominations in spreading the knowledge of the Word of God." This pamphlet brought him into an active conflict with the eminent bishop which lasted for several years, and taught him that a philanthropic cause, even so plainly meritorious, was not to be carried on without the opposition of powerful conservative interests.

Convinced that a national society could accomplish more than the local and scattered State Bible societies, Jay published a pamphlet in 1816 which showed the imperative importance of the work, and urged united action. At the same time the venerable Elias Boudinot of New Jersey was exerting himself to the same end. When he received a letter from Jay enclosing the pamphlet, he thus welcomed his youthful ally: "These precious moments I have devoted to a full consideration of one of the greatest and most interesting subjects that has ever concerned the children of men. Weak and feeble and scarcely able to think or write, my efforts promised but little in the cause, when your welcome and unexpected letter was brought in. My drooping spirits were raised and my mind greatly revived. I could not help giving glory to God for the great encouragement afforded me to press on in this glorious cause, when I thus beheld His special mercy in raising up so powerful a support in this joyous work and labour of love." In the same year the American Bible Society was formed with the assistance of the best names in the country. Elias Boudinot was chosen president, with John Jay and Matthew Clarkson, a gallant officer of the Revolution, as vice-presidents. Others on the roll were: John Langdon, the statesman of New Hampshire; William Gray, the eminent merchant of Boston; the scholarly John Cotton Smith, of Connecticut, with the blood of the Cottons and the Mathers of colonial history; William Tighlman, the jurist of Pennsylvania; William Wirt and Bushrod Washington, of Virginia; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina; Governor Worthington, of Ohio; John Bolton, of Georgia; Felix Grundy, of Tennessee; and of New York: Dr. John B. Romeyne; Colonel Richard Varick, Washington's aide; Daniel D. Tompkins, the Governor who obtained the abolition of slavery in the State; John Pintard, John Aspinwall, Jeremiah Evarts, Frederic de Peyster, George Griffin, De Witt Clinton, the Patroon Stephen van Rensselaer, and Colonel Henry Rutgers.

Notwithstanding the honourable support given to the society, it had to resist a carefully organized assault on the part of Bishop Hobart and an influential portion of his clergy aimed at the vital principle on which the success of the movement depended—the cordial union of all Christians. Jay's previous training in the same field of controversy, his staunch devotion at once to his cause and to his church, designated him as the proper person to carry on, in behalf of the society, the war of letters and pamphlets which ensued. Although pitted against an adversary to whom age, experience, and station gave great advantages, he acquitted himself with credit, displaying literary and reasoning powers which were soon to exert a potent effect upon the great moral issue of our time.