Eulogy of William Jay: An Address Delivered in New York, New York, on May 12, 1859
EULOGY OF WILLIAM JAY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ON 12 MAY 1859
Frederick Douglass' Paper, 20 May 1859, Other texts in Douglass' Monthly, 2 : 81-86 (June 1859); Eulogy, of the Late Hon. Wm. Jay. By Frederiek Douglass, Delivered on the Invitation of the Colored Citizens of New York City, in Shiloh Presbyterian Church (Rochester, 1859); Speech File, reel 32, frames 522—39, FD Papers, DLC; Foner, Life and Writings, 5 : 430—49.
On Thursday evening, 12 May 1859, a large audience gathered at New York City’s Shiloh Presbyterian Church to honor the memory of William Jay, aprominent judge, author, and abolitionist, who had died on 14 October 1858. “This was peculiarly, though not exclusively, a meeting ofcolored citizens,” reported Frederick Douglass’ Paper. “Whites were present, and were interested in its proceedings; but the proposal to hold, and the preliminary work for holding it, belong alone to the colored citizens of New York. . . . The proceedings . . . were dignified, simple, and every way suited to the character of the occasion.” The Committee on Arrangements—Dr. James McCune Smith. Professor Charles Reason. and John Peterson—chose the Reverend Henry H. Garnet to preside. Douglass, the principal speaker, delivered the eulogy. In its coverage of the event. Douglass‘s newspaper emphasized that “in what FREDERICK DOUGLASS has had to say of the life and labors of Judge JAY, he wishes to be understood as speaking for his people as well as for himself. The address owes its chief significance to this fact.” The eulogy greatly pleased Jay’s son John, who later assisted Douglass in having it published in pamphlet form. New York Times, 13 May 1859; Douglass to John Jay, 11 April, 30 June 1859. John Jay Papers, NNC.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:—We have assembled here this evening in meek and willing obedience to a very natural and very sacred feeling of the human heart. A sad and solemn event has touched all our sensibilities. The shock is, indeed, a severe and painful one; but the duty which it has devolved upon us, may be well and properly performed in a resigned and cheerful spirit. Deep as is our sense of the great loss which has befallen us, and our people generally, and much as the good causes to which our hearts are attached will suffer from this bereavement, we cannot and ought not speak or listen on this occasion, as a people suddenly overtaken and overwhelmed by extraordinary calamity. Lament we may, and must, but not like those oppressed by a heavy and inconsolable grief. Where the full measure of human existence has been evenly filled up—where one has not been cut down and removed from us, in the midst of his years, and with all life’s plans and purposes suddenly arrested and broken off, wholly unfinished—
where a beautiful and blameless life has been calmly and peacefully ended, amid all the sweet consolations of home, family and friends— where the loss of those who remain behind is the exceeding gain of him who has gone before—where sin, the malignant sting of death, has no power to wound the dead, and no poison to inflame the wounds of the living—there is left no permanent lodgment for pain and sorrow. Clouds and darkness may indeed gather over and around, but they cannot linger long about the grave of a truly good and great man. Even through the frowning gloom of the valley of the shadow of death,1Douglass alludes to Ps. 23 : 4. bright beams may be seen encircling, with mellow beauty and golden promise, a weeping sky. Smiling through their very tears, the heavens never look more steadfast and immovable, than when swept by the storm. As with the brave old overhanging firmament. calm and serene. so may we contemplate the event that brings us here to-night.
By virtue of his nobler endowments, his more subtle and tender relationships, reaching out in all directions, taking hold of the life that now is, and the life which is to come, man is ever exposed to wilder shocks of grief and sadder disappointments, than are beings of less sensitive and less intelligent attributes. Very great, and sometimes very appalling, are the sorrows and afflictions inseparable from human experience. They do, indeed, often come in like raging floods, resistless in their course, causing old foundations to crumble and fall, bearing away upon their turbid waters so many of the precious objects of affection, that in the moments of our extreme desolation, we would almost exchange our natures with the less endowed and apparently more happy order of life which surrounds us. To have the objects of our earnest love caught away from us forever, to see the majestic pillars ofour strength and trust falling all around us, to watch with eager eyes the flickering lamps of our best and fondest hopes one by one, as in solemn procession, going out in darkness, will sometimes make even the strong man to quiver with a sense of his loneliness and of his nothingness. The powers above and around him seem too much for him. He is hemmed in on every hand, and to himself he appears but as the small dust of the balance, at the mercy of every breeze.
But here, in the very hour of his extreme destitution, there is ample provision made for man. Religion and reason loom out of the howling wilderness of doubt and desolation. Each troubled soul may have his Mount Pisgah!2An allusion to Deut. 34 : 1-4, describing how God led Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah in order that the Hebrew leader could see the Promised Land from which he was barred. Sublime heights are ever accessible! He who will, may
ascend and find all enemies, even death itself, the last enemy beneath his feet. From these lofty altitudes of thought and light, all earthly losses, sorrows, griefs, and afflictions, may be viewed with a tranquil heart and a hopeful spirit. The beneficent law of compensation operates here as elsewhere, fully vindicating the wisdom and the goodness of the great Creator of the Universe, in all His works and ways. Higher consolations, larger satisfactions in harmony with his more exalted nature, are provided for man. In the midst of all the ills which may beset him in this life, he may truthfully and gratefully exclaim, there is a balm for every wound, and a cordial for every fear.3Douglass perhaps paraphrases Robert Gilfillan's poem “The Exile’s Song":
There's a hope for every woe,
And a balm for every pain,
But the first joys o‘ our heart
Come never back again.
Robert Gilfillan, Songs, 2d ed. (Edinburgh, 1835), 215.
Among the deepest and most enduring foundations of unperverted human nature, far out of reach of the common and inevitable calamities of life, there lives and reigns the sentiment of religion, a sentiment which, in all the ages, the darkest and rudest, not less than in the most enlightened and refined, has filled the world with wonders, and linked the loyal soul in reverence to the great source of eternal power and wisdom. By the proper cultivation of this sentiment, man has become illuminated with the holiest inspirations, and made himself equal to all the ills to which flesh is heir.4Douglass slightly misquotes Hamlet, act 3, sc. 1, lines 61—63. Side by side with this great and all-controlling sentiment, and very nearly allied to it in character and modes of operation, the same in quality, only less in power and authority, there is another sentiment which takes cognizance of all that is good and great, made concrete in the lives of individual men. As in respect to religion, so in respect to this, men have in ifferent ages become fanatics and enthusiasts, stepping far beyond the bounds of reason, exalting absurdity into sense, the wildest folly into wisdom, and magnifying a worm of the dust into a God.
Nevertheless, by the proper exercise of this sentiment, it is permitted to the least and humblest of mankind, to hold honorable and ennobling converse with the purest and most exalted examples ofhuman excellence. This high privilege, this sacred opportunity, is in a high degree ours this evening; for the man whose memory is to pass in review before us, has made
the wisest and best use of life, and will be recognized as a shining example to the human race.
Without any of the pomp and vain-glorious display with which the pride and magnificence of patriotism celebrate the virtues of the departed great men of the country, without ostentation or show, we have simply paused here for an hour, turned aside from the ordinary courses of our affairs, withdrawn from the brilliant festivals peculiar to this Anniversary Week,5The anniversaries of many interdenominational religious and benevolent societies traditionally were held in New York City during the second week of May. The 1859 Anniversary Week began on 8 May with the preaching of the American Home Mission Society's annual sermon and continued through 13 May, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions held its annual business meeting. In addition, the Baptist missionary and publication societies held their yearly conventions in New York City over the period 7— 19 May 1859. New York Evangelist, 5 May 1859; New York Daily Tribune, 7 May 1859; New York Times, 7 May 1859. and have ventured in the sacred names ofLiberty and Humanity, to take respectful and grateful notice ofthe death ofa person eminent in all the virtues that can adorn the character of a genuine philanthropist.
Honorable WILLIAM JAY is dead! Since our last Anniversaries in this city, in the objects of which he took so lively an interest, he has been summoned the way ofall the Earth! The broad, mysterious curtains which separate the busy scenes of Time and Sense from the solemn and measureless plains of Eternity, have silently fallen between us and him. We shall no more see the fragile form of WILLIAM JAY upon the earth. His pale and benignant face. so well and gratefully remembered by most of us, has been veiled in death! We have often seen his countenance glow with fervor and spirituality as he sat in our meetings, cheering on the utterance of the great truths of Liberty and Humanity, which were ever dear to his warm and generous heart. But his place on the Abolition platform is now vacant. His beneficent mission among men is now completed. His good work on the earth is now done, and he is now gathered home to his exceeding great reward. His sleeping dust now lies among the ancestral tombs of his great family, and ancient patrimonial trees now fling their plaintive shadows upon his new made grave. His body, amid solemn ceremonies. has been committed to the dust, from whence it was taken, and his immortal spirit has gone up to the God who gave it. In the death ofWII.L1AM JAY, the cause of Emancipation in the United States has lost one of its ablest and most effective advocates. Our peeled and woe-smitten people, both of the North and of the South, have lost an invaluable friend. We have, as a people, too few real friends even among our professed friends, and we have now lost
one of the truest and best of that few. Some of the heaviest and bitterest reproaches under which we have been compelled to stagger, as a people, in this country, have come, unfortunately, from persons who affect to regard us as objects of compassion—men who actually trade in our sorrows, and live by our afflictions. All the more, on this account, we feel and shall feel, the loss of our friend, WILLIAM JAY. His friendship for us had its basis in principle. It was unaffected by the ebbs and flows of the national follies, for or against us, and stood inflexiny and unalterably the same in every hour of trial.
In view of the mighty struggle for freedom, in which we are now engaged, and the tremendous odds arrayed against us, every colored man, and every colored man’s friend in this country, must deeply feel the great loss we have sustained in this death, and look around with anxious solicitude for the man who shall rise to fill the place now made vacant. With emphasis it may be said of him, he was our wise counsellor, our firm friend, and our liberal benefactor. Against the fierce onsets of popular abuse, he was our shield: against governmental intrigue and oppression, he was our learned, able, and faithful defender; against the crafty counsels of wickedness in high places, where mischief is framed by law, and sin is sanctioned and supported by religion, he was a perpetual and burning rebuke.
Poetry and eloquence will search in vain for nobler themes, with which to enlighten and inspire the minds of men than those which form the basis of the character and history of WILLIAM JAY. All that is commanding in virtue, all that is exalted and sublime in piety, all that is disinterested in patriotism, all that is noble in philanthropy, all that will bear, like the unblenching marble, the searching judgments of after coming ages, in which all our works shall be tried as by fire, stand out gloriously in the life of WILLIAM JAY.
One qualification which may serve me as an apology for venturing to speak in the name and memory of our eminent and honored friend, a friend whose name must confer honor upon all who seek to honor it—this it is: In common with you, my friends, I wear the hated complexion which WILLIAM JAY never hated; l have worn the galling chain which WILLIAM JAY earnestly endeavored to break. I have felt the heavy lash, and experienced in my own person the cruel wrongs which caused his manly heart to melt in pity for the slave.
Who but the slave should lament, when the champion of the slave has fallen! Who but the black man should weep, when the black man’s friend is
no more! Who should rise to vindicate, honor, and bless the memory of WILLIAM JAY, if the colored people of this State and country may not properly do so?
While other rights may be denied us, while other privileges may be withheld from us, while we may not share in the honor of building the tombs of other great men of the country, whose actions so far as they touched us, tore open our wounds instead of healing them, surely no man will shut against us the offices of love and gratitude in this special instance. All will admit that those who have witnessed the scenes, and have endured the hardships of slavery, may be permitted to make some sign, however rude and awkward, in generous token of the love and gratitude with which the memory of WILLIAM JAY is cherished. It is meet that some broken accents, not less acceptable because broken, should rise from the sable ranks of untutored millions, as a testimonial to one who stood by us, and befriended us, in all the vicissitudes of our anomalous and forlorn condition. Of one thing we may feel assured: Whatever may be thought of our assembling here this evening, and whatever aversion it may excite here on the earth, that pure spirit which did not disdain us when in this world of pride and show, will from his celestial abode look down approvingly upon the humble offering we venture to bring to his memory. He who had respect for us among those who despised us; he who bound up our wounds, when the priest and the Levite had left us to die; he who lifted us up when the church and the State had wantonly and maliciously trodden upon us—will not reject the only offering a fettered and enslaved people have to bring.6Douglass adapts the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10: 30—35. The principles of Mr. JAY knew no selfish and partial limitations. They reached to the very outer-most boundaries of the outcast, embracing in their broad beneficcnce, the poorest, the rudcst, and most neglected of men, and he may therefore fitly be the object of marked and decided expression of loving remembrance on our part.
The liberal press of the country, to which he was an able, learned, and voluminous contributor, often anonymously, and as often over his own signature, has taken respectful, lengthy and gratifying notice of the death of WILLIAM JAY. The legal profession, represented by the bar of Westchester county, where he lived and presided—where he was most intimately known as a man and as a minister of justice—has recorded its unhesitating testimony to his eminent worth, as a man, and as an upright judge.7In 1812 William Jay permanently settled at his family‘s estate near Bedford, Westchester County, in southeastem New York. Jay was a judge in Westchestcr County from 1818 until 1843. On 8 November 1858 a meeting of the Westchester County bar at Bedford passed resolutions honoring the judicial career and philanthropic activities of Jay. New York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1858; New York Evening Post, 11 November 1858; NCAB, 8 : 74; DAB, 10 : 11—12. Religion, to which he was an unblemished honor through all the
years of his life, has dropped its tear upon his sacred grave. Learning, not less than Law, has recognized with fitting tokens of bereavement the lossof one of its brighest ornaments. The cause of international Peace, to which Mr. JAY was deeply devoted, and for the promotion of which he labored with that skill, fidelity, and efficiency, which distinguished him in every department of reform that engaged his energies, has summoned the ancient prophet—like eloquence of GEORGE B. CHEEVER,8George Barrell Cheever (1807—90), clergyman, journalist, and reformer, was the son of a Maine bookseller. After graduating from Andover Seminary, Cheever became a Congregational pastor in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1835 he was fined and jailed for libeling a Salem distillery owner in a temperance tract. This chastisemcnt did not discourage Cheever from speaking and writing on such controversial topics as slavery, capital punishment, Sabbatarianism, and Bible reading in the public schools. In 1838 Cheever moved to New York City, where, for the next thirty years, he was a preacher and regular contributor to the religious press. An active abolitionist in the 1830s, Cheever returned to the movement in the late 1850s and helped found the Church Anti-Slavery Society. The American Peace Society invited Cheever to deliver a eulogy for William Jay, who had been its president from 1848 until his death. Cheever gave this address first at his own Church ofthe Puritans in New York City on 8 May 1859 and again at the American Peace Society‘s anniversary meeting in Boston on 23 May. New York Times, 9 May 1859; New York Daily Tribune, 10 May 1859; New York Observer, 2 June 1859; Boston Advocate of Peace (May/June 1859), 286, ibid. (July/August 1859), 300—01 ; Robert M. York, George B. Cheever: Religious and Social Reformer, 1807—1890 (Orono, Me., 1955); lidson L. Whitney, The American Peace Society: A Centennial History (Washington, DC, 1928), 106—07; ACAB, 1: 597; DAB, 4: 48—49. to Boston, before the American Peace Society, of which Mr. JAY was long an honored President, to speak in memory of his good works in that department of Christian Philanthropy. Old personal friends, companions in the Christian reform, to which he was earnestly attached, and for which he wrought with the pious zeal of a true Christian, have recorded in affectionate and most touching language, their sense of the beauty and excellence of his life and the great value ofhis friendship. The New York Historical Society, ofwhich he was a member, describels] him “accomplished as a scholar, eminent as a citizen, just as a Judge, candid and benevolent as a man, and sincere as a Christian,” and esteems his name as among the most illustrious on its roll.9The New-York Historical Society was founded in 1804 through the efforts of John Pintard, a New York City banker and secretary ofthe American Academy of the Fine Arts. The Society's original function was to hold meetings at which historical addresses and discourses were delivered. From its earliest years, however, the Society also maintained a historical library and museum. In addition to William Jay, the organization counted as members such other antebellum luminaries as DeWitt Clinton, Albert Gallatin, George Bancroft, and William Cullen Bryant. The passage Douglass quotes is from a resolution memorializing Jay that was passed at the Society's monthly meeting on 2 November 1858. New York Evening Post, 11 November I858; Historical Magazine, 2 : 361 (December 1858); New-York Historical Society, The Story of the New-York Historical Society (New York. 1939), 19—32; New York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1858.
In this grateful procession, who can have a better right tojoin than we?
In the great cause of universal freedom his name was a tower of strength, and his pen a two—edged sword. His mightiest works were wrought for us. Our freedom, our elevation were special objects of his regard. We have a right to cherish his memory as a previous legacy. We may bind it upon the altars of our heart’s best affections, and offer it the ever increasing tribute of our respect and gratitude.
The name of WILLIAM JAY should hereafter be associated in our minds and hearts with the venerated names of WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, THOMAS CLARKSON, and GRANVILLE SHARP, the most illustrious friends of our people, who now rest from their labors. It was given unto CLARKSON and WlLBERFORCE to remain long enough on the earth, to see the ripening fruits of their devoted labors. They were permitted to see the triumph of the great principles and measures which they with almost matchless perseverance pressed home upon the hearts of the British nation. They lived long enough to behold their beloved Britain a free country, the safe asylum of the enslaved of all lands, and of all colors. They saw the dark stain of human bondage washed out, and the moral sentiment of their country so purified that a slave cannot breathe in England; the whole policy of the British Government was changed in their very presence. and in direct and immediate response to their indefatigable exertions to bring about that very result. They saw the slaves emancipated.10Douglass is mistaken in his chronology. Thomas Clarkson lived to see all of the events Douglass describes, but William Wilberforce died two days before passage ofthe British Emancipation Act on 1 August 1833 and a year before the act became effective. Frank J. Klingbcrg, TheAnti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism (1926; New York, 1968), 296—302. Their living ears caught the first glad shouts and songs of eight hundred thousand souls redeemed from slavery in the West Indies. Joyous anthems of freedom, sweeping across the wild waves, and rising above the thunders ofthe mighty deep, broughtjoy to the hearts of the noble and aged emancipators, ere they quitted the shores of time. They beheld, while yet in the flesh, the finger of God, writing their heavenly welcome upon discarded whips, severed chains and broken fetters—well done, good and faithful servants.
So, however, hath it not been with our great friend in America, whose character and labors, so beautifully resemble theirs. The toils of the seed time, but not the joys of the harvest, were his. He sowed in tears, but the golden sheaves of rejoicing have yet to be gathered into the gamer of righteousness. Nevertheless, it was his great privilege to see after a long
course of severe labor, patiently and cheerfully performed, the great cause of emancipation rapidly rising to power and importance in this country fullyjustifying his best hopes for its ultimate success. The important truths which he brought forward and illustrated, and enforced, by utterance and by action, and with marked fidelity, although yet falling on unwilling ears, have certainly rallied in their defence, a mighty host, whose advancing footsteps already rock the continent and fill the halls of American tyrants with alarm and terror, and the huts 0f the slave with joy and hope.
Though Mr. JAY saw with grief, as his pure spirit passed away from us, the slave still toiling in hateful chains, and the slave power madly intent upon the endless perpetuation of slavery, he evidently took with him to his blissful abode, the happy assurance that he had not labored for the honor of his country and the freedom of the slave in vain. Like another great Liberator, who was not permitted to see the full realization of his hopes, he endured as seeing him who is invisible!11Most likely another allusion to Moses. He died just as he had dared to live, a true man, and an honest Abolitionist. To the very last he remembered the American bondman as bound with him.12Douglass paraphrases Heb. 13: 3.
Happy and glorious is the lot of that man, when standing on the verge of the grave, winding up his affairs in this life, surveying the whole course of his career on the earth, who can truthfully say, in full view of the past, and the great incoming future, I have no regrets for the uses to which I have put my time and talents.
I well remember, and shall never forget, the impression made upon my mind, by the declaration made to me on this point, by the good and great THOMAS CLARKSON. Standing face to face with me, in his study at Playford Hall, erect, calm, and collected in the 87th year of his age, his long flowing silvery locks falling upon his shoulders, assured by his advanced age, and his gathering infirmities, that he was fast verging towards the tomb; he said, while holding my right hand firmly in his, “Go on, go on, in the good work, Mr. DOUGLASS; l have given 67 years of my life to the Abolition cause, and if I had 67 more, they should all be sacredly given to the same cause!”13Douglass never forgot this incident and recounted it over thirty years later in Life and Times, 269. Mr. JAY has given proof of the same satisfaction with his anti-slavery life. He was as certain of the ultimate triumph of emancipation as he was of its righteousness, and he committed himself to its whole course without reserve and without qualification.
His last will and testament contains a lesson to our country and the world on this subject. That sacred document exposes anew the futility and the blasphemy of attempting to control and overawe a good man’s conscience by the force and authority of inhuman and wicked laws.
Mr. JAY’S example at this point stands alone, I think, in the history of American philanthropy. No American Christian or Abolitionist has left a better testimony for the truth, or a nobler defiance of wrong. You have heard of bequests to popular institutions, to churches, colleges, tract societies, missionary societies, and even to piles of stone in honor of the successful man-slayer, but never, 1 think, such a bequest as the following: “I bequeath to my son one thousand dollars to be applied by him at his discretion in promoting the safety and comfort of fugitive slaves.”14Douglass accurately quotes the tenth clause in William Jay's final will and testament. dated 14 April 1858. William Jay’s only son to survive to maturity was John Jay (1817—94), lawyer, diplomat, and reformer. John Jay graduated from Columbia in [836 and practiced law for many years in New York City. His participation in the antislavery movement began while he was still in college. In 1853 Jay completed a seven-year struggle to have the black St. Philip‘s Church admitted to the previously all-white Protestant Episcopal Convention in New York. Much of Jay’s legal practice after 1850 was devoted to defending accused fugitive slaves. In 1855 he was a leader in founding the Republican party in New York State. Jay served as U.S. ambassador to Austria during the Grant administration, and, after returning to this country, helped establish New York's first civil service commission. William Jay Will, John Jay Collection, NNC; ACAB, 3 : 413-14 NCAB, 7 : 347; DAB, 10 : 10—11. Here is not only a thoughtful concern for the most needy of all the poor of this land, but a burning protest and sublime prophecy. It is a cutting rebuke to the present, and an appeal to the future by a righteous man looking steadfastly into the immeasurable continents of eternity, and winding up his affairs for his long journey, and unending home with God.
However those who maintain the divine right of Christian white men to hunt down and to hate the black man in slavery, may affect to regard this defiance of the fugitive slave statute, in the glorious coming future—when Doctors of Divinity shall find a better use for the Bible than in using it to prop up slavery, and a better employment for their time and talents than in finding analogies between Paul’s Epistle to Philemon and the slave-catching bill of MILLARD FILMORE,15Many conservative clergymen cited St. Paul's admonition to the escaped slave Onesimus to return to his master Philemon, found in Philem. 10— 19.,as an inspired commandment to obey the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. this act of Christian charity on the part of Mr. JAY, will be regarded as the crowning act, the most glorious climax to a great and benevolent life.
My friends, I can attempt here no general and detailed account of the
life and the services of WILLIAM JAY. Only a few of the leading facts of his ample history can be properly noticed and compressed into the narrow limits suited to the present discourse, and to this occasion. The relation of Mr. JAY to any one of the good causes, to which he gave his sympathy and his earnest co-operation, if minutely and faithfully examined, would fill a volume. We can scarcely hope to bring him before you in more than one of these relations. His connection with the great cause of human freedom, is
the most prominent, as it is the most significant and important feature of his life. It is the feature of the life and history of Mr. JAY which will longest keep his memory fresh and green, at home and abroad.
Mr. JAY was born in New York, on the 16th of June, 1789, and died at his home in Westchester County, on the 14th of October, 1858, having nearly filled up the scriptural measure of human life.16Douglass alludes to Ps. 90 : 10: “The days of our years are three score years and ten." He was the second son of JOHN JAY——a man whose name and fame stand worthily connected with GEORGE WASHINGTON.
The father of our deceased friend was one of the most eminent men of his day. and ranked with such as Hancock,17Wealthy Boston merchant John Hancock (1736—93) was a leader of Massachusetts patriots during the Revolution and president of the Continental Congress when independence from Britain was declared. After the Revolution, Hancock served as govemor of Massachusetts and was instrumental in that state's ratification of the Constitution. ACAB, 3: 7; NCAB, 1 : 103; DAB, 8 : 218—19. Hamilton, Adams,18Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Jefferson and Franklin—the most renowned of all the American patriots. The history of JOHN JAY is in fact the history ofthe American revolution, and of American independence; as, indeed, it is also the history of emancipation in this state. For the father, not less than the son, was an Abolitionist. Abolitionism seems hereditary in the family—from father to son, and grandson. In the darkest hours, and the deepest perils, which surrounded the American cause, and they were far more numerous and direful, than many at this day suppose, JOHN JAY never wavered, JOHN JAY never doubted. It is, indeed, hard to say, in view of the slender margin between success and failure in that great undertaking, how the revolution would have ended, whether independence itself would have been achieved had it lacked the support of JOHN JAY. Certain it is, that to his devotion, vigor, sagacity, address, unflagging industry and determination, the American people are to-day largely indebted for their freedom and independence. He served his country as few had the ability to serve it. His singular purity of character shed light and gave strength to the revolutionary cause.
At home and abroad, by his talents, by his learning, by his voice and by his pen, in council, in the field; as a member of Congress, as a foreign minister, as Chief Justice of the United States, both before and after the revolution, JOHN JAY won for himself a high place among the patriots of the revolution.
WILLIAM JAY was fortunate in being the son of such a father. A man so faithful to the impulses of true liberty, animated by the loftiest patriotism, was just the man to be scrupulously concerned for the proper education of his children; for love of family and love of country go hand in hand together. Ambition may, indeed, sometimes mask itself in the attractive forms of patriotism—but the genuine sentiment springs up in its fullness and purity only at the fire-side.
When but eleven years old WILLIAM JAY was placed at Albany under the charge of Rev. Mr. ELLISON,19At the age of eight, William Jay was sent to Albany to study under the Reverend Thomas Ellison (c. 1760— 1802). Ellison was bom in Newcastle, England, studied at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, and became rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Albany in 1787. James Fenimore Cooper was Jay's classmate at the school Ellison conducted as an adjunct to his church. Munsell, Annals of Albany, 6 : 56; Howell and Tenney, County of Albany, 267, 759—60; Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford. 1715—1866: Their Parentage,. Birthplace, and Year of Birth, with a Record of their Degrees, 4 vols. (London, 1887), 2: 423; Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1893), 1—3. an Oxford scholar noted for his strict discipline, and devotion to the classics. Here he, no doubt, acquired that habit of order and regularity of proceeding, for which he was ever after- wards remarkable, and to which, in part, may be ascribed the facility with which he accomplished any and every work undertaken by him.
Yale College,20Founded in 1701 , Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, is the third-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Franklin B. Dexter, Biographical Sketehes of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, 6 vols. (New Haven, 1885- 1912). 6: 129. an institution already loaded down with honors, has the great honor of completing the education of Mr. JAY. He entered Yale in 1804, and took his degree in I807, having ranked throughout the course among the severest students.
Turning his attention to the law—of which in after life, he became an able exponent of its highest attributes in its application to human rights—he was again placed at Albany, in the office of JOHN B. HENRY,21After graduating from Yale, William Jay studied law in the office of John V. Henry (1765-1829) in Albany, New York. Henry began practicing law in Albany in I782 and soon after became active in Federalist politics. In I800 Govcmor John Jay appointed him state comptroller, but he was removed the following year by Jay's successor, Jeffersonian Republican George Clinton. Henry vowed never to hold another political office and concentrated upon building his law practice into one of the most respected in the state. Howell and Tenney, County of Albany, 133—34; Munsell, Annals of Albany, 4 : 293. an eminent lawyer, in that city of eminent lawyers.
Here Mr. JAY took the degree of Counsellor, but owing to failing health he abandoned the practice of the profession, and rejoined his father’s family and assisted in the management of his estate at Bedford, which estate he inherited upon the death of his father, in 1829.
From this sacred old homestead, hallowed by glorious revolutionary memories—the scene of many an anxious consultation, in the troubled times that tried men’s souls22A paraphrase of the opening sentence of Thomas Paine's first Crisis paper, 23 December 1776. The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1859), l: 75.—the steady light of WILLIAM JAY’s clear intellect has streamed out over the country and the world, blessing all it has touched.
While in Mr. HENRY’s office, earnestly pursuing the study ofthe law, Mr. JAY wrote to his friend, and class mate Mr. HENRY P. STRONG,23Henry Pierce Strong (1785— 1835) was the son of a Salisbury, Connecticut, lawyer. After graduating from Yale College in 1807, he attended Andover Seminary. During his ministerial career Strong was pastor of both Presbyterian and Congregational churches in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Dexter, Graduates of Yale College, 6: 153—551; History of Litchfield County, Connecticut, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Philadelphia, 1881), 28. who was then studying for the ministry, a letter which gives us a key to his own character and history.
“The pursuit,” writes Mr. JAY, “in which you are engaged, is the most important, and the most interesting that can occupy the attention of man.
“I have devoted myself to the law, to protect the weak from the power of the strong. To shield the poor from the oppression of the rich, is the part for which I am preparing myself. God grant that I may not labor in vain.”
Here is a noble and generous purpose declared, and l undertake to say that it has been as nobly and generously performed.
Fortunate in his parentage, fortunate in his education, fortunate in the choice of his profession, fortunate in all his early surroundings, Mr. JAY was not less fortunate in his marriage.24On 3 September 1812, William Jay married Augusta McVicker (1790—1857), the daughter of a New York City merchant. Tuckerman, William Jay, 8, 164; Robert Bolton. [Jr. ], The History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester, from Its First Settlement to the Present Time, ed. L. W. Bolton (New York. 1881), 37, 80. In any condition of life, marriage is a matter of great moment. Even in private life, it may be the tide taken at the flood that leads on to fortune, or it may lead on to wreck and ruin. But
its power for good or for evil is increased in a ratio with the magnitude of a man’s public sphere and duties.
Here it may be an exalted blessing, or a withering curse—it may bear us upward towards success, or cast us down to failure. In all his noble plans and purposes our departed friend had the good fortune to be seconded by his excellent wife—in whose character were harmoniously blended, like his own, all the Christian virtues.
Subsequent to his marriage, which took place in 1812, Mr. JAY was appointed first Judge of the County of Westchester, and was continued upon the bench by successive Governors. of opposite and conflicting politics, through all the varied contests and changes of parties, until the year 1843. Speaking of Mr. JAY, as ajudge, the Historical Magazine remarks, that his charges to grand juries, commanded attention from his clear exposition of the law, without the slightest concession to the popular current of the day, and with careful regard to constitutional rights, morality and justice.25Although this passage did appear in the Historical Magazine, it was originally published as part of a eulogy of Jay in the New York Evening Post on 15 October 1858. Historical Magazine, 2: 349—50 (November 1858). All who know anything ofJudge JAY will assent to the justice of this encomium.
Mr. JAY never sought office. He belonged to other and better days of the Republic—when other and better tastes prevailed in respect to holding civil office. General JACKSON while President appointed him to an important Commissionership, but the office which had been unsought was declined.26In October 1832 President Andrew Jackson appointed William Jay a commissioner for the adjustment of all unsettled matters with the westem Indians. Jay declined the appointment. Dexter, Graduates of Yale College, 6 : 130; Historical Magazine, 2: 349—50 (November 1858). Important Commissionerships are seldom declined in our day. With talents, learning, and ability, a man of his position and connections, with a different ambition might have risen to almost any station in the country, but he contented himself in his office of county Judge. In this office, which enabled him to be of immediate service to those ofhis fellow-citizens, who knew his character and uprightness best, he would have remained probably to the day of his death but for his anti-slavery sentiments and principles.
Having been successively commissioned by Governors TOMPKINS, CLINTON, MARCY and VAN BUREN,27Daniel D. Tompkins (1774—1828) served as governor of New York from 1807 to 1817 before being elected James Monroe's vice president on the Republican tickets of 1816 and 1820. DeWitt Clinton (1769—1828), “Father of the Erie Canal," was a U.S. senator, a New York City mayor, and an unsuccessful presidential candidate before serving as New York governor (1817-21, 1825—28). A prominent Democratic politician, William Leamed Marcy (1786— 1857) resigned from the U.S. Senate to become New York govemor (1833-1838) and later served in the cabinets of Presidents Polk and Pierce. President Martin Van Buren (1782—1862) briefly served as New York govemor in 1829 before being appointed Andrew Jackson,s secretary of state. Alexander C. Flick, ed., History of the State of New York, 10 vols. (New York, 1933—37), 5: 222—31, 240—51, 309—15, 6: 48—60, 697—71; BDAC, 708—09, 1262, 1721, 1744. Mr. JAY was superseded by Governor
BOUCK,28William C. Bouck (1786-1859) was a prosperous farmer from Schoharie, New York, before entering politics as a Democrat. For nineteen years he held the arduous job of state canal commissioner and supervised the completion of the Erie Canal. The popular outcry against his removal by the Whigs in 1840 won Bouck the Democratic nomination for governor. Although narrowly defeated by William H. Seward, Bouck won a rematch two years later. Besides failing to reappoint Jay, Bouck earned abolitionist wrath for his reversal of Seward's refusal to extradite fugitive slaves. The Democrats did not renominate Bouck for govemor in 1844, but President Polk compensated him with a lucrative patronage position in the Treasury. Flick, History of New York, 6: 72—75, 260; ACAB, 1: 327; DAB, 2: 476—77. who had been elected in the pro-slavery re-action which followed the retirement of Governor SEWARD29William H. Seward. from office. The removal ofJudge JAY was notoriously in compliance with the demands of the pro-slavery press, urged on by the slave power of the nation. The circumstance at the time of its occurrence excited strong and decided disapproval in the county of Westchester. A letter addressed to Judge JAY by MINOTT MITCHELL of White Plains, a gentleman who then stood at the head of the bar, expressed the unqualified regret and indignation of the people.30Although this letter has not been located, William Jay's reply confirms Douglass’s description of its contents. Minott Mitchell (1784—1862) was the son of the Reverend Justus Mitchell, a Congregational minister in New Canaan, Connecticut. After attending Yale College, Mitchell established a law practice in White Plains, New York. For most of his career Mitchell was the leading lawyer of Westchester County and frequently pleaded cases before Judge William Jay. Jay once described Mitchell as “the most industrious man he ever knew." Tuckerman, William Jay, 122, 160; J[ohn] Thomas Scharf, History of Westchester County, New York, . . . ., 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1886), 1: 541; Robert Bolton, Jr., History of the County of Westchester front Its First Settlement to the Present Time, 2 vols. (New York, 1848), 2: 363.
On some accounts, Mr. JAY’s removal from the judgeship is to be regarded as fortunate. He was left all the more leisure to devote to the different objects of Christian benevolence which had already largely occupied his thoughts and feelings. The world is all the better for his removal from the bench. It was meant for evil, but it worked for good, for he could have scarcely found time to write so much and so efficiently had he continued to perform the duties of his judicial office.
In religion, Mr. JAY was a low church Episcopalian, and though a devoted and conscientious churchman, he was singularly free from that self-righteous bigotry which can see and appreciate nothing as good, that
does not bear the image and superscription of a particular religious denomination. His estimate of the tenets of other Christian denominations was like the man, broad, catholic, philosophical and liberal.
In politics he was like his honored father, a Federalist ofthe old school. Subsequently he acted with the Whig party, and finally with the Free Soil and Republican parties. Independent and honest, having no favors to ask of any party, his utterance of truth was never trammelled by his party connections. He was never prominent as a politician, and he was equally never of those who esteem themselves too righteous to take part in the government of their country.
The labors of Mr. JAY were very quietly performed. He was often found serving upon committees of religious, benevolent and scientific associations, giving them the great benefit of his presence, knowledge, experience and his wisdom; but he seldom appeared as a speaker before the public. While, however, he had no taste for the noise and ostentation of public assemblies, he did not despise those popular instrumentalities for flinging the great truths of liberty, virtue, and humanity among the people.
The very last time it was my privilege to see Judge JAY, was on one of those great public occasions four years ago. It was at that memorable meeting when CHARLES SUMNER, now suffering from assassin blows, (which may God heal), was thrilling with his surpassing eloquence an audience of your most refined and cultivated citizens at Metropolitan Theatre. Judge JAY was there. He was there and on the platform.31On the evening of 9 May 1855, the American Anti-Slavery Society sponsored a well-attended lecture by Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York City. Oliver Johnson chaired the meeting and members of all abolitionist factions were seated on the platform. William Jay introduced Sumner to the audience and praised his contribution to the antislavery cause. New York Daily Tribune, 10 May 1855; New York Daily Times, 10 May 1855; FDP, 18 May, 1 June 1855; NASS, 12.,19 May 1855. Among all the radiant faces, making up that grand and brilliant scene, there was not one which seemed more in sympathy with the great theme of the orator than his. It was a benediction to look upon that good man’s face that night. I remember it as one ofthe most pleasing and imposing features of that great occasion.
But the crowded hall, the clash and glitter of public speech and debate were not the favorite surroundings of Judge JAY. He is not to be contemplated to the best advantage in that direction and amid such scenes. The slender frame and delicate health which led him to abandon the profession of the law, made him unsuited to the physical hardships and excitements incident to frequent attending upon, and participation in the proceedings of
public meetings.
The pen was the weapon of his choice, and the weapon of his power. His quiet study was the scene of his most efficient warfare with wrong. It was here that he met the dark legions of error, selfishness, sin, and moral death, as they sallied forth from the gloomy gates of hell and vanquished them. Slavery, intemperance, war, duelling, treachery, hypocrisy, wickedness in high places, in church and state, found in him a steady and uncompromising enemy, while nearly every good cause of his time received the aid of his countenance and co-operation. Mr. JAY’s zeal and industry with his pen are proved by the great number and quality of his works. These are his perpetual eulogy. Letters, essays, pamphlets, books, newspaper articles on a variety of subjects, mostly of immediate and of practical importance, and all looking to the establishment ofjust principles for the well government of society, flowed from his pen in rapid succession, and prove him to have been a man of immense industry and abundant mental resources. In this respect, Mr. JAY appears to very great advantage. The world may have many pleasing and gratifying spectacles to present us. We meet in life many noble examples, worthy of our study and of our imitation; but a man born to the inheritance of large wealth, able to draw around him all that the cultivated taste and the peculiar pride of riches can suggest as the luxuries and indulgences proper to opulence; relieved of the necessity of making any exertion to supply real or artificial wants; left wholly at leisure, having the option to work or play, to seek his own pleasure, or to do otherwise; such a man, thus favored, thus surrounded, and, I may say, thus tempted, all forgetful of himself, deaf to every selfish entreaty to ease and to idleness, deliberately choosing to devote himself to earnest, persevering, indefatigable labor, not to increase his own wordly gains, either in purse or in position, but with only the motive to add his mite to the welfare and happiness ofhis suffering fellow-men, is one of the most hopeful, gratifying and noble examples which. in this selfish and ease-loving age and world, it is permitted mankind to behold. Precisely such an example has been given to the world in the life and in the works of WILLIAM JAY. Compared with such a life, how vastly inferior, in all the elements of true greatness, are the lives of most men to whom the world has accorded fame and greatness. Such a man has conquered himself and is greater than him who has taken a city. Starting at the point where other men have usually ended their labors, he has gone forward and reached a point of excellence immeasurably beyond them. The man who makes great exertions to be rich, the man who will endure untold hardships and privations for the world’s applause and honor, who seeks the bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth, may indeed be a great man; but how small is such a man,
when measured by the example of one who, though born to the inheritance of wealth, of ease, of leisure, and of a name already illustrious, instead of reposing on what is already attained, devotes all that he has and is to a cause of mercy and benevolence, which he well knows must direct against him the bitter hostility of power, the scorn of pride, and the vindictive frown of public opinion. The men are few who can stand this test ofgreatness. How few of the rich and mighty men of the land have even yet earnestly identified themselves with the Abolition cause, and given it the benefit of their manful exertions.
Abolitionists have been called men of one idea, but if Judge JAY shall be embraced in this charge, it must be confessed, upon a survey of his life and his labors, that his one idea was immensely comprehensive and capable of manifold applications. Few men have taken a broader view of human life. Few men have better understood and better performed its various duties.
To Mr. JAY belongs the merit of not only studying many subjects, but also the merit of considering well whatever he considered at all. In 1826 he received a prize for an essay on the Sabbath viewed as a civil institution; the year after he received another for an essay on the Sabbath viewed as a divine institution.32These essays were written for a competition sponsored by the Presbyterian Synod of Albany. William Jay, Prize Essays on the Institution of the Sabbath (Albany, 1827); Tuckerman, William Jay, 13, 172. In 1830 he was honored with a medal from the Savannah (Georgia) Anti—Duelling Society, for another essay upon the nefarious custom of duelling.33This competition actually occurer in 1828. William Jay won the medal for the best argument against dueling. William Jay, An Essay on Dueling; For Which the Gold Metal Was Awarded by the Savannah Anti-Duelling Association (Savannah, 1829); Tuckerman, William Jay, 13— 14, 172. In 1833 he published two octavo volumes, of the life and writings of his father, Chief Justice JAY.34William Jay, The Life of John Jay: With Selections from His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, 2 vols. (New York, 1833). These volumes are among the most readable and reliable of any that treat of the early political history of this country.
He was a friend to the Bible, Tract, Peace, Temperance, Sunday School, Sabbath, Missionary and Educational causes. He was President of the Westchester Bible Society, and a Vice President of the American Bible Society.35Several members of the Jay family actively supported the American Bible Society, which was founded in 1816. William Jay’s father, John Jay, was one of the Society's first vice presidents (1816—21) and its second president (1821—28). Peter Augustus Jay, William Jay's older brother, also served as a vice president of the Society (1828-43). William Jay himself was a vice president of the American Bible Society from 1843 until his death and was the president of its auxiliary, the Westchester County Bible Society, from 1836 to 1851. American Bible Society, Annual Report[s] (New York, 1816—69); Tuckerman, William Jay, 10— 12. His time, his money, and his talents were freely given in all
these and other departments of benevolent effort. He was, however, by no means a worshipper of any particular organization or combination of men. He looked at such organizations in the broad, intense light of truth, and esteemed them simply as means to important ends. When any of them were guilty of substituting their dead forms for the living objects which bro’t them into being, as most of them were, he never hesitated to withdraw his countenance from them, and to expose and rebuke them with all
faithfulness. The American Bible Society, Tract Society, Sunday School Union, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions have all been subject to his public censure.36William Jay wrote numerous pamphlets and public letters criticizing the interdenominational benevolent societies for practices that sanctioned slaveholding. In addition to supporting efforts by abolitionists to reform these practices, he contributed to such antislavery benevolent organizations as the American Missionary Association. William Jay, The American Tract Society, Withdrawal from, by the Hon. Judge Jay, on the Grounds of Its Alliance With the Slave Power (London, 1853); William Jay, Letters Respecting the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the American Tract Society (New York, 1853); William Jay to Lewis Tappan, 14 May 1849, 18 March 1853, 28 February 1857, 15 May 1858. Lewis Tappan Papers, DLC. His chief controversy with all these popular bodies was either their culpable indifference to the wrongs of the slave, or their directly aiding and abetting those who hold the slave in bondage. These bodies were. and are lamentably open to rebuke, both for sins of omission and for sins of commission. They are yet on the side of the oppressor, and deaf to the cries of the slave. He loved the great objects for which these various associations were combined, but was unwilling to build up with one hand and tear down with the other; and to him nothing beneath the sky was more sacred than the rights ofthe American slave. He was unwilling to subordinate this cause to any other, and much more unwilling to sustain those who were using their influence and position to put down that hated cause.
Judge JAY wrote voluminoust on the whole subject of slavery. I willname only a few of his publications: “Letter to the Hon. Theo. Frelinghuysen, respecting his declaration that he was not an Abolitionist, but an ardent friend ofthe Colonization Society"—37William Jay, Letter of the Honorable William Jay to Hon. Theo. Frelinghuysen (New York, 1844).“Examination of the Mosaic Laws of Servitude”38William Jay, An Examination of the Mosaic Laws of Servitude (New York, 1854).—“Letter to the Committee chosen by the American Tract Society”39William Jay, A Letter to the Committee Chosen by the American Tract Society, to Inquire into the Proceedings of Its Executive Committee, in Relation to Slavery (New York, 1857).—“Inquiry into the American Colonization
and American Anti-Slavery Societies”40William Jay, An Inquiry Into the Character and Tendency ofthe American Colonization, and American Anti-Slavery Societies (New York, 1835).—“A View of the Action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery”41William Jay, A View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery (New York, 1839).—"On the Condition of the Free People of Color in the United States”—“Address to the friends of Constitutional Liberty on the violation by the United States House of Representatives of the right of Petition”—“Introductory Remarks to the reproof of the American Church, contained in the recent history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, by the Bishop of Oxford”42These three works are found in William Jay, Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery (Boston, 1853).— “A letter to the Right Rev. L. Silliman Ives, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina”43William Jay, A Letter to the Right Rev. Silliman Ives, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina, Occasioned by His Late Address to the Convention of His Diocese (Washington. DC, 1846).—“Address to the inhabitants of New Mexico and California on the omission by Congress to provide them with Territorial Governments. and on the social and political evils of Slavery”44William Jay, Address to the Inhabitants of New Mexico and California, on the Omission by Congress to Provide Them with Territorial Governments, and on the Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York, 1849).—“A letter to Hon. William Nelson, Member of Congress, on Mr. Clay’s Compromise”45William Jay, Letter to Hon. William Nelson. M .C., on Mr. Clay's Compromise (New York, 1850).—“A letter to Hon. Samuel A. Elliot, Representative in Congress, in reply to his apology for voting for the Fugitive Slave Bill"46William Jay, A Letter to the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot. Representative in Congress from the City of Boston, in Reply to His Apology for Voting for the Fugitive Slave Bill (Boston, 1851).— ‘"An address to the Anti-Slavery Christians of the United States, signed by a number of clergymen and others”47William Jay was one of the signers of An Address to the Anti -Slavery Christians of the United States (New York, 1852).— “Letter to the Rev. R. S. Cook, Corresponding Secretary ofthe American Tract Society”48William Jay, Letter to Rev. R. S. Cook, Corresponding Secretary, American Tract Society (New York, 1853).—“Letter to Lewis Tappan, Esq., Treasurer of the American Missionary Association."49William Jay, Letter to Lewis Tappan, Treas. of theAmerican Missionary Association (New York, 1853).
Mr. JAY was remarkable for his great readiness. He wrote precisely at the right time. No great occasion escaped him. He was ready for every
emergency. Besides his public works, Mr. JAY wrote a great many private letters. He had a long list of correspondents. His anti-slavery relations alone gave him a great deal of this sort of occupation. His advice was constantly solicited by the leaders of the anti-slavery movement, and it was never withheld when it could be of service to the anti-slavery cause. Some idea can be formed of the extent of Judge JAY’s anti-slavery correspondence, by the list of those with whom he was in most frequent communication.*And first among these may be named, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Rev. S. Jocelyn, Rev. A. A. Phelps, Robert Voux of Philadelphia, E. Wright. Jr.. Joshua Leavitt, Samuel J. May, Reuben Crandall, Hon. James G. Bimey, Theodore Sedgwick, Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith, John Scoble of England, Lydia Maria Child, Miss Grimké of South Carolina, Wm. Goodell, G. Bailey, Jr., Rev. Dr. Morrison of England, Gov. R. W. Habersham of Georgia. W. W. Anderson, Esq., of Jamaica, W. I. Joseph Sturge, Esq., of England, Hon. Jabez D. Hammond, Geo. W. Alexander of England, Hon. William Slade of Vermont, Hon. John Quincy Adams, Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Hon. S. P. Chase, Prof. C. D. Cleveland of Philadelphia, Thomas Clarkson of England, Sir W. Colebrook, Govemor of New Brunswick, Hon. Charles Sumner, Chief Justice Hornblower of New Jersey, Hon. J. G. Palfrey, Hon. John P. Hale, besides more than an hundred others.
To form any just estimate of the character of a reformer, and to comprehend the value of his services, it is important to notice whether he embraced the cause early or late, in the morning or at the eleventh hour, whether he bore the burden in the scorching heat of the noon-day sun, or came only in the refreshing cool of the evening, when the heaviest work was already done, and the space between labor and reward reduced to the smallest possible point. To this inquiry the history Mr. JAY answers very satisfactorily. He was not behind the chiefest apostles of immediate emancipation. He, himself, was too noble to set up any claims as to priority in the assertion of the doctrines of modern Abolitionism. He never asked to be considered the originator of the anti-slavery movement; and yet impartial history will accord to WILLIAM JAY the credit of having affirmed all the leading principles of modern Abolitionism long before modern Abolitionism was recognized as a reformatory movement. There has been much said about “immediatism,” as the peculiarity of the present movement, and when that principle was first applied to the abolition of slavery in this country. Some have attributed the doctrine to Mr. GARRISON, and insist upon denouncing as traitors all who deny this claim. The absurdity of this pretension on the one hand, and the folly and injustice of the denunciation on the other, have become equally apparent in looking at the letters and papers of WILLIAM JAY. Without for a moment wishing to call in question the eminent services which WM. LLOYD GARRISON, rendered to the cause
of abolition when organized a quarter of a century ago, it can be shown that the doctrine of immediate Abolitionism was affirmed by WM. JAY before Mr. GARRISON was so much as heard of in the anti-slavery cause. In 1819, Mr. JAY wrote to Hon. ELIAS BOUDINOT50Elias Boudinot (1740—1821) was bom into one of the leading families of colonial New Jersey. After receiving a private education, Boudinot practiced law in his home colony. Although allied with the conservative gentry, he supported the colonial protests against English taxation and later the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolution, Boudinot was placed in charge of British prisoners of war and spent much of his personal fortune caring for them. In 1777 he was selected as a delegate to the Continental Congress and rose to be its president at the war’s end. Boudinot supported ratification of the Constitution and was a member of the House of Representatives in the first three Congresses. From 1795 to 1805 he served as director of the Mint. Boudinot gave liberally to benevolent causes and was the first president of the American Bible Society. George Adams Boyd, Elias Boudinot: Patriot and Statesman, 1740—1821 (Princeton, 1952); ACAB, l: 327—28; NCAB, 2: 296; DAB, 2: 477—78. as follows:
“I have no doubt that the laws of God. and as a necessary and inevitable consequence, the true interests of our country, forbid the extension of slavery. If our country is ever to be redeemed from the curse of slavery, the present Congress must stand between the living and the dead, and stay the plague. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. lf slavery once takes root on the other side of the Mississippi, it can never afterwards be exterminated, but will extend with the future western empire, poisoning the feelings of humanity, checking the growth of those principles of virtue and religion which constitute alike the security and happiness of civil society.”51This letter, dated only “ 1819," is reprinted in Tuckerman, William Jay, 28—29.
On the 22d of September, 1826, he wrote to Hon. Mr. MINER52Charles Miner (1780— 1865) was the son of a Norwich, Connecticut, printer. In 1799 Miner moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he owned and edited several newspapers over the next thirty years. Miner was elected as a Federalist to the state legislature and then to the U.S. Congress, where he served two terms (1825—29). He drew national attention in the House of Representatives for persistently introducing resolutions in favor of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and its eventual extinction nationwide. Miner also authored resolutions and reports that attempted to interest American farmers in raising silkworms. After retiring from Congress, Miner pioneered in the development of anthracite coal mining in eastern Pennsylvania. Charles F. Richardson, Charles Miner: A Pennsylvania Pioneer (Wilkes-Barre, 1916); ACAB, 4: 335—36; DAB, 13: 22-23. of the House of Representatives:
“Since I read the resolution introduced by you in relation to slavery in the District of Columbia, the subject has been scarcely absent from my mind, and the late imprisonment in Washington of a CITIZEN of this county, (Westchester county, N.Y. ,) afforded an opportunity which I gladly embraced of obtaining an expression of public opinion. I do not entertain the slightest hope that our petition will be favorably received, nor
the slightest apprehensions that the cause we espouse will not finally triumph. The history of the abolition of the slave trade teaches us the necessity of patient perseverance, and affords a pledge that perseverance will be ultimately crowned with success. We have nothing to fear, but much to hope from the violence and threats ofour opponents. Apathy is the only obstacle we have reason to dread and to remove this obstacle it is necessary that the attention of the public should be constantly directed to the subject. Every discussion in Congress in relation to slavery, no matter how great may be the majority against us, advances our cause. We shall rise more powerful from every defeat.”53This letter is reprinted in Tuckerman William Jay, 32—33.
On the 4th of November. 1826, he writes to Mr. THOMAS HALL:54William Jay's correspondent was possibly Thomas Hall (1791—1874), the renowned organ-builder. Hall was born in Philadelphia and there learned the organ-building trade as an apprentice to John Lowe. In 1813 Hall moved to New York City, where he built organs for the Trinity Church, St. Thomas' Church, Temple Emmanuel. and many other religious congregations. ACAB, 3: 45.
“In consequence of a resolution passed at a public meeting in this county, (a meeting called through Mr. Jay’s efforts in relation to the arrest and imprisonment at Washington of Gilbert Horton, a free black man of Westchester,) a petition will be forwarded to Congress for the IMMEDIATE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. It is not easy to calculate the vast importance of the object ofthis petition. The District, it is true, is small, and the number of slaves to be emancipated comparatively few; but the moral influence ofthe measure will be felt on every plantation, and in every Legislature in the several States. It is an act which is required by our national character. as well as by humanity and religion. Congress possesses an undoubted constitutional right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and it is in the power of the free States to carry the measure.”
Thus we see the criminal character of slavery declared, the non-extension of slavery insisted upon, the negro recognized and called a citizen, and the immediate abolition of slavery demanded so early as 1819 and 1826, by WILLIAM JAY.
This was no sudden and temporary outburst of feeling against slavery by Mr. JAY. Writing to Mr. CHAS. MINER, Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, who had introduced a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, he says:
“In our exertions to promote the welfare ofour fellow men, we must, for our encouragement, recollect that we are not answerable for success. It
is our duty to plant and water, while the conviction that it is God who giveth the increase, ought to teach us both confidence and resignation.”
Writing to Mr. MINER at another stage of the effort for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, Mr. JAY thus joyfully announces to his friend and co-worker, a position gained in the State of New York:
“My Dear Sir:—The mail this evening brings the news that resolutions instructing our Representatives in Congress to vote for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, have passed our Assembly by a vote of 57 to 39. In the fullness of my heart, I thank God, and congratulate you on the result.”55This letter is reprinted in Tuckerman, William Jay, 37. However. the last sentence of the letter as printed in Tuckerman reads: “In the fulness of my heart I thank God and take courage."
It is worthy of remark that Mr. JAY takes no credit to himself for the passage of these resolutions in the Legislature of the State of New York. The truth is, however, that his exertions in procuring petitions, and by correspondence with influential men, such as Hon. WALKER TODD56Walker Todd (c. 1787-1840) was bom in Milford, Connecticut, and educated at Yale College. In 1813 he began a law practice in Carmel, Putnam County, New York. After holding several county offices, Walker served in the state senate from 1828 to 1831. In 1836 he ran for Congress as a Democrat but was defeated. William S. Pelletreau, History of Putnam County, New York, With Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men (Philadelphia, 1886), 228; Dexter, Graduates of Yale College, 6: 361—62. of the N.Y. Senate, and WM. L. STONE57William Leete Stone (1792- 1844), historian and joumalist, was the son of a Sodus, New York, farmer. After an apprenticeship as a printer, Stone owned and edited a number of newspapers and literary journals in New York and Connecticut. His greatest influence came as editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser from 1821 until his death. Stone's most famous literary coup was discrediting Maria Monk’s fradulent expose of the practices of Roman Catholic nuns. A die-hard Federalist in politics, Stone also championed gradual emancipation through congressional action. In 1843 and 1844 he served as New York City‘s first superintendent ofschools. He was active in the New-York Historical Society and wrote several books on American Indian history. Elliot R. Barkan, “The Emergence of a Whig Persuasion: Conservatism, Democratism, and the New York State Whigs,“ NYH, 52: 367—95 (October 1971); ACAB, 5: 705—06; NCAB, 7: 205; DAB, 18: 89-90. of the New York Commercial, had greatly aided to bring about the result, upon which. with a full heart, he thanks God, and congratulates his friend and co-worker for the abolition of slavery.
Like many other good men, (GERRIT SMITH among the number,) Mr. JAY at one time was disposed to co—operate with the American Colonization Society, that old enemy of the colored people of the US.58Gerrit Smith became active in the American Colonization Society in 1827 and contributed over $9,000 to its treasury before resigning his membership in November 1835. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith, Philanthropist and Reformer (New York, 1939), 60—65 ,116— 17, 124. It has always worn two faces—one a face of humanity. and the other a face of
hatred—one was for the South. and the other was for the North, so as to deceive, if possible, the very elect. Mr. JAY was among the first at the North to get his own eyes open, and to open the eyes of others, to the real character of this malign and mischievous scheme. He had regarded it, as many others had done, as a means of doing away with slavery—the removal of them to Africa as fast as they should be emancipated, supplying a motive for emancipation. When he found that in this he was mistaken, and that, instead of furnishing a motive for emancipation, it only increased the motive for slave-holding; that, instead of supplying an asylum for the oppressed free colored people of this country, it promoted and encouraged their oppression, to get them to consent to leave the country—when, in a word, he found it to be an engine of wickedness, and not an instrument of mercy, he promptly exposed it as a hypocrite, a deceiver, and renounced it. As early as 1829, in answer to an invitation to assist a meeting of the Colonization Society, Mr. JAY wrote to Mr. STONE,59The New York State Colonization Society was dormant in the mid-1820s but was revitalized at a meeting in Albany on 9 April 1829. William L. Stone was not listed as being present on that occasion. In 1833 Stone was an officer of the New York City Colonization Society. Albany (N.Y.) Argus, 17 April 1859; Jay, Inquiry, 115; Jay, Misc. Writings, 41; Eli Serfman, “A History ofthe New York State Colonization Society" (PhD. diss. New York University, 1965), 55—56, 61—67. saying:
“I confess, I entertain no hope that the efforts of the American Colonization Society will produce any direct and sensible diminution of the number of slaves in our country.”
This early expression of a want of confidence in the American Colonization Society shows that Mr. JAY had not taken his views second hand, but had, for himself, thoroughly examined the claims of the Colonization scheme, and for himself had found it the stupendous sham which it was afterwards proved to be by the overwhelming facts and arguments bro’t out three years afterwards in “Garrison's Thoughts" on African Colonization.60William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization (Boston, 1832).
At this point of time, the American Colonization Society ranked among the most popular institutions of the country. It combined the support of all classes, anti-slavery men and pro-slavery men, and enjoyed a monopoly of the pulpits North and South. Monthly sermons were preached in its favor by the pastors, and collections were taken up to aid in sending the negroes out of the country. The most distinguished divines and the most influential statesmen every where stood forth as its champions, regarding it as the ample and all-sufficient answer to all inquiries concerning slavery,
and concerning the free colored people of the United States. Hence, to dissent from it, and worse still, to oppose and attack it, was to unstop all the vials of concentrated wrath, and to bring down their malignant contents upon the naked heads of such offenders.
That all this had no terror for such a man as WILLIAM JAY, stands boldly out to his credit. He did not hesitate either to dissent from, to oppose or attack this popular Goliath.61Douglass alludes to the biblical character found in 1 Sam. 17: 5—51. His “Inquiry into the character and tendency of the American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Societies,” is one of the most clear, searching and masterly publications now to be found upon the subject.
The next great work of Mr. JAY, was his view of the Federal Government. The facts and arguments brought forward in this work exerted an incalculable influence upon the public mind. It showed how completely the slaveholders had for years wielded the Federal Government to extend and strengthen slavery. It is a book of facts, and was a manual in the hands of anti-slavery agents all over the country, and is such still.
The subject of slavery is an exciting one. Oppression is apt to make even a wise man mad. The bare relation of master and slave, unaccompanied with its grosser manifestations of ignorance. depravity, cruelty and blood, shocks and stuns the mind by its enormity. O’CONNELL62Daniel O'Connell. used to say, that when he first heard the idea of property in man, it sounded to him as if some one were stamping upon the grave of his mother. The very thought chills the blood in the veins of the strong man, and stirs a fever in the blood of age. The heart becomes sick, and the spirit frantic with horror over its brutal atrocities and crimes. In writing upon a system of such boundless and startling enormity, where the wildest fancy is over-matched by the terrible reality, it is not easy to steer clear of exaggeration in individual cases. Some extravagance may indeed be looked for and ex- cused in treating of such a subject. but such extravagance will be looked for in vain in the writings of Judge JAY on slavery.
As a writer, that can be said, of him which can be said of but few reformatory writers in any age[:] he not only relied implicitly upon, and believed in the simple undistorted truth as the safest and best means of accomplishing his benevolent purposes, but was never, to the knowledge of any, tempted or driven by eager anxiety for immediate results into distortion or exaggeration. He had an earnest heart. It was always alive with the fires of justice and liberty; but with all, he possessed that accurate
and well-balanced judgment which controlled and directed wisely and discreetly all his writings on the subject of slavery. No fact, no statement, of Judge JAY, how fiercely soever his opinions may have been combated, has ever been called in question.
His burning indignation which came down upon the pro-slavery wickedness of the nation like a mantle of unquenchable fire, was recognized as the natural product of his well-known love ofjustice. Those who contended with him, contended not against him, but against the truth, within which Mr. JAY was always fortified.
Some men rebuke sin with such manifest levity as only to amuse the sinner. Others denounce wrong as if exulting over the wrong docr, while others show their zeal for the truth by stretching it into falsehood and absurdity. All these will offend, disgust, and drive the wrong doer from the teacher or reformer. He will say, your cause may be good, but you are not the man to advocate it. Mr. JAY’s exemption from this sort ofcriticism did not arise out of any timidity either of character or manner; but it is to be traced to his scrupulous regard for truth, his entire and transparent honesty. When truth failed to produce conviction, he could bide his time without resorting to artifice. He ever scouted the doctrine of doing evil that good might come, and in the midst of all discouragements, it is ours to plant and to water, but it is God who giveth the increase.
I am not of that sentimental school of moralists who think it right to speak only of the virtues of the dead. The power exerted by some men after death is far greater than in life, and it frequently happens that to expose the faults of departed great men, is a much higher and more commanding duty than to extol their virtues. Wrong and injustice to the living are remarkably disposed to conceal themselves from the light of truth, under the overshadowing examples of the great among the dead.
Examples of this sort are abundant in all the ages, and our own among the number. Thus, while JEFFERSON wrote that all men are created equal, and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and while WASHINGTON fought for the principle which JEFFERSON wrote down, both JEFFERSON and WASHINGTON are to-day quoted in proof that colored people have no rights that white people are bound to respect.63Chief Justice Roger B. Taney quoted Thomas Jefferson‘s preamble to the Declaration of Independence in the Dred Scott decision but claimed that the Founding Fathers did not intend it to be construed as a statement recognizing blacks as their equals. Both Taney and Justice John A. Campbell cited George Washington as one of the earliest national leaders to treat slaves as property rather than as citizens. Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 409—11, 496, 504, 5 10-11. The fact that
these great men were slaveholders, is triumphantly cited as sanctioning the idea of property in man.
Their anti-slavery declarations are less potent for good than their pro-slavery examples have been made for evil. From a careful survey of the life and works of Mr. JAY, no fear need be entertained that we will get the advantage over good by means of his memory. If he had faults, they were to his whole character like the spots on the resplendent orb of day, not to be seen by the ordinary means of vision.
As we walk under the light of this glorious orb, never thinking of any possible speck upon its surface, but thanking God for the brilliant illumination, so let us accept gratefully the shining example of the late Honorable WM. JAY. He has taught us the great purposes of life. He has taught us how to live; he has taught us how to die.