JAY TREATY 



3128 



JEFFERSON 



treaty of Washington's second term, which 

 bears his name, was negotiated by him (see 

 JAY TREATY). 



John Jay was born in New York City. In 

 1764 he was grad- 

 uated from King's 

 College (now Co- 

 lumbia Univer- 

 sity), and after a 

 course in law was 

 admitted to the 

 bar in 1768. He 

 represented New 

 York in the First 

 Continental Con- 

 gress, which- as- 

 sembled in 1774 

 at Philadelphia, 



was chosen a . JOHN f A ^ 



. . .In reviewing the life of Jay, 



delegate to the Daniel Webster once said: 

 ^on^nrl P^rxTrocc "When the spotless ermine of 

 becond Congress, the judicial robe fe ii pn j hn 



and would have Jay it touched nothing less 



, Al spotless than itself." 

 been one of the 



signers of the Declaration of Independence 

 had he not been called away in May, 1776, to 

 take his seat in the Provincial Congress of 

 New York. In 1778 he returned to Congress, 

 serving as president of that body from Decem- 

 ber, 1778, to September, 1779. In the latter 

 year he was appointed minister to Spain, and 

 while abroad took part in the negotiation of 

 the peace treaty with Great Britain. 



From 1784 until the organization of the gov- 

 ernment under the Constitution Jay was Secre- 

 tary for Foreign Affairs, and he was appointed 

 by President Washington first Chief Justice of 

 the. United States Supreme Court. In 1795 he 

 resigned this exalted post to become gov- 

 ernor of New York, an office which he held 

 for two terms. At the end of his second term, 

 in 1801, he retired to private life. 



Consult Whitelock's Life and Times of John 

 Jay; Pellew's John Jay, in American Statesmen 

 Series. 



JAY TREATY, in American history, the 

 first treaty negotiated between Great Britain 

 and the United States after the signing of the 

 peace of 1783, which concluded the Revolu- 

 tionary War (see PARIS, TREATIES OF). It was 

 named for Chief Justice John Jay, who acted 

 for the United States in the negotiation pro- 

 ceedings, and was signed by him and the Brit- 

 ish representative, Lord Grenville, in London, 

 on November 19, 1794. After the Treaty of 

 Paris trouble arose between the two countries 

 over the treatment accorded the Tories (Brit- 



ish sympathizers) who had remained in 

 America. Among these were British merchants 

 who were unable to collect old debts, though 

 such payment was promised in the peace arti- 

 cles. In retaliation, Great Britain continued 

 its garrisons in various forts on the northwest- 

 ern frontier, and caused the Americans further 

 annoyance by refusing to pay for negroes 

 carried away by the English troops at the end 

 of the war. An even greater cause for ill-feel- 

 ing was England's insistence on the right to 

 search American vessels for supposed deserters 

 from the British navy and to capture merchant 

 vessels carrying provisions to France. 



To avert another war, for which the new 

 American nation was ill prepared, President 

 Washington nominated Chief Justice Jay as a 

 special ambassador to negotiate a treaty ad- 

 justing the various points at issue. The publi- 

 cation of the resulting agreement caused 

 intense indignation in America. Nothing 

 whatever was said about the right of search or 

 impressment, or compensation for kidnaped 

 negroes, and the evacuation of forts on the 

 frontier was the only real concession to which 

 England agreed. The United States agreed to 

 pay all debts due British merchants at the 

 outbreak of the Revolution, and to submit to 

 a joint commission a dispute over the north- 

 east and northwest boundaries. Though Jay 

 was burned in effigy in numerous places, and 

 President Washington was subjected to bitter- 

 est censure for acceptance of so unfavorable a 

 treaty, in time the people came to realize that 

 circumstances justified the action. 



JEFFERSON, JOSEPH (1829-1905), one of 

 America's greatest actors, who was affection- 

 ately called "the dean of the American stage." 

 He was born in Philadelphia, the third child 

 of a family of actors; his great-grandfather 

 had been a member of Garrick's company at 

 Drury Lane, London. Jefferson said of him- 

 self, "I may almost say I was born in the 

 theater," as at the age of three he appeared 

 in a juvenile part in Pizarro. His first pro- 

 nounced success was in Our American Cousin 

 in New York, a play which developed unex- 

 pected powers in him. He also became a 

 notable "Caleb Plummer" in Dickens' Cricket 

 on the Hearth. His greatest success however, 

 was as the kindly, harmless vagabond "Rip," 

 in Rip Van Winkle, and with this character 

 his name is mainly associated. He presented 

 this play every season for forty years. In 

 1868 he created another famous role for him- 

 self as "Bob Acres" in The Rivals, and only a 



