Chief Justice John Jay was constantly on the go. In order to fulfill his annual duties for the Supreme Court, he attended sessions for weeks at a time in Philadelphia1 and likewise spent months riding the circuit throughout New York and New England. The map below showing the spring 1792 term of the Eastern District highlights the extent of Jay’s […]
An Enduring Amity
Editor’s Note: Jennifer E. Steenshorne is our third and final contributor to “John Jay at SHEAR 2018.” Steenshorne is the Director & Editor in Chief of the George Washington Papers. Previous to this post, she served as Associate Editor of the John Jay Papers. http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/about/editors/ The standard accounts of the Jay Treaty negotiations depict a […]
Profit is every hour becoming capital
Editor’s Note: Samuel Negus is our second contributor for “John Jay at SHEAR 2018”. Negus is an Upper School History Teacher at the Atlanta Classical Academy https://atlantaclassical.org/team-bios/dr-negus/ During the autumn of 1794 John Jay and the British foreign secretary William Grenville negotiated a treaty of amity and commerce in London. Jay’s mission followed two years of […]
John Jay and Grand Strategy
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Den Hartog kicks off our Posts for “John Jay at SHEAR 2018.” Den Hartog is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul and serves as Chair of the History Department. https://unwsp.edu/bio/jonathan-den-hartog His published scholarship includes Patriotism & Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation (2015). goo.gl/t5WeLb […]
John Jay at SHEAR 2018
One of America’s key diplomats, John Jay, was featured in a panel session at this year’s meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), held this past July in Cleveland, Ohio. The panel was entitled “John Jay and the Construction of American Foreign Policy in the Early Republic,” and it brought […]
Don Quixote and Sally Jay
Sara Georgini, of the Adams Papers, has written a fascinating post “Men of La Mancha” on the popularity of Cervantes’s novel in early America, for the group blog the Junto. Sara writes that “No other foreign novel seemed to claim the American mind with such fervor until the Civil War”. The Jays were no different […]
A “pretty good House”: John Jay and the Phelps Taverns of Connecticut
We tend to imagine taverns as spaces of drinking, merrymaking, and leisure. Yet in the eighteenth century, taverns also served as essential places of rest for weary travelers, including those like Jay, who traveled far and wide on the business of the new nation. Although justices of the Supreme Court today hear their cases in […]
Federalist 5 published on this day in 1787
On this date in 1787, Federalist 5 was published in New York Independent Journal. Written by John Jay under the name “Publius,” this essay continues the theme of Jay’s previous three essays (Federalist 2, 3, and 4): the threat of foreign influence and the need for unity. Jay, sick with rheumatism and burdened with his […]
Defending “this damned treaty”: Jay, Washington, and the 1794 Anglo-American Treaty
The Selected Papers of John Jay is pleased to feature a guest blog post written by David Hoth, Senior Editor, The Papers of George Washington. The treaty that John Jay negotiated with Great Britain in 1794 was among the most important events of George Washington’s second term as president—significant not only as a matter of foreign policy […]
Politics By Other Means
Twice a year, Chief Justice John Jay embarked on a grueling journey that lasted on average seventy-two days and covered approximately eight hundred and fifty miles on horseback. During these marathon rides, Jay kept to a set timetable that had him preside over the opening and subsequent sitting of each of the six district courts […]