WILLIAM JAY
AND
THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT FOR
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
BY
BAYARD TUCKERMAN
WITH A PREFACE BY
JOHN JAY
NEW-YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1893
Copyright by
Dodd, Mead & Company,
1893.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A.
PREFACE
BY JOHN JAY.
A prolonged illness, added to other causes, has disappointed my hope ofcompleting an elaborate biography of my father.
This memoir by Mr. Tuckerman is devoted chiefly to the part borne byJudge Jay in the antislavery work, to which his time and thoughts wereso long given. In this connection the memoir develops his personalcharacteristics, with the constitutional principles and national policyadvocated by him in that historic contest; while of necessity it touchesbut lightly on his home life, his varied correspondence, and hisjudicial charges, one of which assisted to avert the passage of apro-slavery legislative act infringing the liberty of speech and of thepress; and the scope of the volume forbids its dwelling on his writingson other topics, some of which are still subjects of discussion.
Judge Jay's memoir on the formation of a National Bible Society, whichin 1816 so warmly encouraged the hopes of the venerable Boudinot, wasfollowed by[iv] spirited controversial pamphlets with an antagonist as ableand eminent as Bishop Hobart. The correspondence after Jay's firstletter was marked by an unusual sharpness, which happily did not preventmy cherished and lamented friend, the son and namesake of the Bishop,from becoming in later years sincerely attached to his father'santagonist. It was a contest in which Jay vindicated the right ofChurchmen to assist in the distribution of the Bible, and anticipated inthis his similar efforts for a lifetime to secure the united action ofall good citizens, without regard to creed or politics, in practicableschemes for the elevation and happiness of mankind. Among his earlieressays were two on "Sunday: Its Value as a Civil Institution, and ItsSacred Character"; while a third, upon "Duelling as a Relic ofBarbarism," was honoured, when the authorship was still unknown, by amedal from an anti-duelling association at Savannah.
THE LIFE OF JOHN JAY.
Judge Jay, in the life of his father, which was welcomed as an importantaddition to our American biography of the Revolution, vindicated, by acareful presentation of the historical evidence then available, thesoundness of the judgment of Jay and Adams, as peace commissioners atParis in 1782-83, regarding the policy of the French court as unfriendlyto the American claims to the boundar