Not Your Father's Founders (13 page)

New York, New York
December 12, 1745−May 17, 1829
Actions Speak as Loud as Words

At a time when some young people were just starting their college educations, John Jay graduated from King's College in 1764 with the highest honors. He was only nineteen years old at the time. Four years later he passed the New York bar exam, which marked his entry into politics.

The Committee of Correspondence was a good place for Jay to start his political career. He made news in 1774, the year he became a member, when he politely warned the British that rebellion was a possibility in his
Address to the People of Great Britain
. He said, in part, “be not surprised… that we… whose forefathers participated in all the rights, the liberties, and the Constitution you so justly boast of… should refuse to surrender them to men who found their claims on no principles of reason, and who prosecute them with a design, that by having our lives and property in their power, they may with the greater facility enslave you.”

The publicity generated by his address helped get him elected to the First Continental Congress despite his youth (he was only twenty-nine when he became a delegate).

In 1775, he wrote similar addresses to the people of Canada, Jamaica, and Ireland. But in one way he became the victim of his own success. He was selected as a delegate to New York's Fourth Provincial Congress, which took him away from Philadelphia and deprived him of a chance to sign the Declaration of Independence.

New York state had big things in store for Jay. He was named as the chief justice of the state's Supreme Court in September 1777. But he was too much in demand nationally to stay there long, especially after the state made a special exception for him and sent him to the Continental Congress.

When Jay was appointed as chief justice of New York state, its constitution prohibited justices from holding any post other than in the U.S. Congress, and then only if there was a “special occasion.” One arose: Vermont seceded from New York and New Hampshire in November 1778. New York sent Jay to Congress to settle territorial claims arising from the secession.

Within three days of his arrival at Congress, he was named its president.

Jay stayed in Congress for a year and then assumed the post of American ambassador to Spain. That was a steppingstone to his next major assignment in 1781: working with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens to negotiate a treaty with Britain.

The original plan was to seek the guidance of the French government in the negotiations. Jay did not understand why the Americans had to rely on any foreign power for advice. He wrote a letter to Congress encouraging it to bypass French involvement and deal directly with Britain. Congress agreed. The team negotiated terms that were favorable to the United States, such as British recognition of America's independence and the formation of boundaries that would allow U.S. expansion in the west. That was a coup for the United States—and Jay.

Jay returned to the United States on July 24, 1784, to accolades and new assignments. He was elected to Congress, which named him secretary of foreign affairs. He held the position until 1790. At the same time, he used his pen to argue for ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

President George Washington asked Jay to pick any position in his administration. Jay opted for chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He remained in that position from November 1789 to June 1795, during which time Washington also asked Jay to negotiate a treaty with Britain to wrap up the loose ends left over from the Treaty of Paris. What resulted was the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, also known as the Jay Treaty. Americans were so displeased with the terms of the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation they burned Jay in effigy.

According to the terms, British control of northwestern posts would be eliminated within two years, the Americans could file claims for damages from British ship seizures, and the United States was granted limited trade rights in the West Indies. Those outcomes displeased ordinary Americans, who believed it was a one-sided treaty that favored the British.

Some citizens threw stones at Alexander Hamilton in New York City to express their displeasure after he spoke in defense of the treaty; others roundly protested against President Washington for signing it. It was not Jay's finest moment.

After his stint on the United States Supreme Court, John Jay returned to New York, where he served two terms as governor. In 1801, he decided he was more suited to farming than to public office. He retired to the land that he loved, and which he believed no one should be able to take away.

He spent the next twenty-eight years on that farm. After writing, regulating, and ruling in support of his country for twenty-seven years, he had earned the rest. Jay had compiled a record of achievement that few of his peers could equal.

Shadwell, Virginia
April 13, 1743–July 4, 1826
Ever the Writer

There was nothing in Thomas Jefferson's early life to suggest that he was destined for greatness. He attended the College of William & Mary, studied law with George Wythe from 1762−67, inherited his father's estate, Monticello, when he was twenty-one years old, was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767, and got elected to the colony's House of Burgesses a year later.

That was the normal path for Jefferson's peers in the mid-eighteenth century. One thing distinguished Jefferson from other young men: his cleverness with words. That became his hallmark, showcased in his first significant document
A Summary View of the Rights of British America
, in which he reminded the king of Britain that Americans had rights, too. He wrote the essay in 1774, the same year he retired from his law practice in order to pursue a political career.

Many of the ideas in that document appeared in the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote with limited help in 1776. After that, he returned to Virginia, where he devoted himself to the state's affairs.

Jefferson continued writing political documents over the next few years, revising Virginia's laws (1776) and drafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1777) and the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (1778) to promote education in Virginia. He also served as Virginia's governor between 1779−81.

After the war ended his political career exploded.

Following the Revolutionary War, Jefferson served in a variety of positions, including United States minister to France and secretary of state. He was the United States' first secretary of state, serving from 1790−93.

Jefferson was there to help his longtime friend George Washington through his two terms as president. They differed in some political respects: Jefferson was opposed to the formation of a national bank and the Jay Treaty, backed by Alexander Hamilton and authored by John Jay.

The political differences among the leaders prompted Jefferson to form his own party, the Democratic-Republicans. It was under that banner that Jefferson became the third president of the United States, even though, as the
Connecticut Courant
suggested, some people considered him the devil incarnate.

When John Adams turned over the presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1801, it marked the first peaceful transfer of authority from one party to another in the history of the United States.

Jefferson assumed the presidency at a crucial time for the United States. France and Britain were at war again, and one of Jefferson's primary goals was to keep the United States out of the conflict. He succeeded in that, but he ended up presiding over the First Tripolitan War with the Barbary States, which were interfering with American merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea. During the Revolutionary War, the French navy protected American merchant ships from harassment by the Barbary pirates under the terms of the 1778–1783 Treaty of Alliance between the two countries. The pirates earned their money by capturing foreign ships and holding their crews for ransom. After the war ended, the French no longer provided that protection. The Americans were on their own, and they expected help from their government. When Jefferson was inaugurated as president in 1801, the pasha of Tripoli demanded $225,000 from his administration—without even capturing a ship. Jefferson refused the pasha's demand and declared war on the Barbary States, albeit reluctantly.

By 1809, when James Madison, Jefferson's friend and successor, assumed the presidency, Jefferson had completed forty years of public service. Finally, he had the opportunity to devote his time to pursuits that had fascinated him since his younger days, such as farming and science.

For the first time, he could devote more time to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society, which was founded in 1743 as the country's first learned society, as well as see to the distribution of his books and the foundation of a university for the people of Virginia. His establishment of the University of Virginia was a major milestone for the state. He began planning the project in 1819; it opened in 1825, the year before he died.

Jefferson, ever the writer, penned his own epitaph. On his gravestone he listed what he thought were his three most significant accomplishments: writing the Declaration of Independence, drafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia. They were important achievements, but his accomplishments over the course of his lifetime exceeded what can be etched on a single gravestone.