250 



THE FRENCH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



Governor of 

 New York 



daring that a free ship did not make free cargo. In spite 

 of the fact that by the treaty provisions the eastern 

 boundary of Maine was determined, that American citizens 

 recovered over ten millions for illegal captures by British 

 cruisers, and that the western posts held by British gar- 

 risons were surrendered. Jay was accused of having be- 

 trayed his country, and his effigy was burned together 

 with copies of the treaty. AVashington, however, ratified 

 the treaty, with the approval of the Senate, and its ben- 

 eficial effects were subsequently recognized. 



Two days before he arrived in New York from this 

 foreign mission , Jay had been elected Governor of New 

 York ; and in spite of the violent denunciation of his 

 treaty was re-elected, serving six years. At the close of 

 his second term, in 1801, he resolutely withdrew from 

 public life, living on the ancestral estate at Bedford, 

 Death in 1829 Wcstchcster Couuty, for a quarter century. He died 

 May 17, 1829. He declined a second appointment by 

 President Adams as Chief Justice of the United States 

 Supreme Court, and kept himself free from politics. 



The characteristics of his ancestry now appeared prom- 

 inently. He was devoted to religious and philanthropic 

 movements, and his public utterances in his later years 

 were chiefly as president of the American Bible Society. 

 He was a member of the Episcopal church, in which most 

 of the Huguenot churches in this country became merged, 

 and maintained the highest character for moral purity, 

 philanthropy, patriotism, and unyielding integrity. He 

 was long in advance of the latter-day abolitionists. As 

 early as 1785 he was president of a New York society for 

 the emancipation of the slaves, and it was largely due to 

 his efforts that slavery was abolished in New York in 

 1799. As a private citizen his influence was scarcely less 

 marked than when he was in public life. In his eighty- 

 fourth year closed a life whose purity and integrity are 

 summed up in a sentence by Daniel Webster that forms a 

 fitting epitaph : '' When the spotless ermine of the judi- 



Christian 

 Philan- 

 thropist 



■Webster's 

 Eulogy 



