Abbreviations Used in Notes

People

Published Texts, Archival Collections, and Archives

∗ When not otherwise specified, Jay correspondence is cited from JJP.

Prologue

1. 1. JJ to SLJ, Nov. 10, 1790, SL, 193; the funeral of former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin occasioned Jay’s reflection on fame; Ellis, Quartet; full-length biographies of Jay have been scarce, the most recent being Stahr, John Jay. See also, Morris, Seven, 150–88; and Rakove, Revolutionaries.

2. 2. US Constitution, transcription on the National Archives website, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, and Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution, make two of the strongest arguments on this point, about which there is no shortage of scholarly commentary.

3. 3. Wiencek, Master; Gordon-Reed, Hemingses; Wiencek, Imperfect; Dunbar, Never; Shipler, “Jefferson.”

4. 4. Berlin, Many, includes New England and mid-Atlantic colonies in his paradigm-shaping study. On New England, see Melish, Disowning, and Platt, “ ‘And Don’t Forget’ ”; on New York, see Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 118–29.

5. 5. Waldstreicher, Runaway, and “Reading”; Miranda, Hamilton; see contributions to “Symposium on Hamilton” for ways in which scholars are unpacking racial and other historical meanings in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cultural landmark of a musical. Ball, “Ambition,” offers a thoughtful appraisal of Hamilton. Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, and Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” provide positive interpretations of Hamilton’s antislavery commitments; Weston, “Alexander Hamilton,” is more critical; and Serfilippi, “As Odious” uncovers important new evidence on Hamilton’s slaveholdings. Subsequent chapters of this book cover Hamilton’s and Jay’s important interactions over slavery.

6. 6. I will have occasion to cite from the large and excellent literature of slavery in New York in the early chapters of this book. Particularly noteworthy in the present context are Hodges, Root; Foote, Black and White; Lepore, New York; White, Somewhat; and Lydon, “New York.”

7. 7. Douglass’ Monthly, June 1859; “Why We Resist,” De Bow’s Review.

8. 8. Wiencek, Imperfect, 4–6, 339–43, 353–59; Gordon-Reed and Onuf, “Most Blessed,” 57, 122, 130–32, 135, 148–51; Wiencek, Master, chap. 5. Waldstreicher, Runaway, ix–xv, not incorrectly, notes that to compare founders’ records on slavery is to risk anachronisms—all the more reason to take the long view, in his case of Franklin and, in mine, of the Jays; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, offers a reevaluation of gradual emancipation.

9. 9. Although my approach to a founding family and abolition is new, the recent trend toward taking the long view of abolitionism can be found in such works as Sinha, Slave’s Cause; Rael, Eighty-Eight Years; Berlin, Long; and Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom.”

10. 10. Family papers are housed primarily at Columbia University in New York City and at the John Jay Homestead State Historic Site, in Katonah, New York. The marvelous “The Papers of John Jay” website (https://dlc.library.columbia.edu/jay) contains a vast collection of John Jay documents. The ongoing, expertly edited Selected Papers of John Jay is also an invaluable resource. Even so, a relatively small portion of the family’s letters, mostly to and from John Jay, have made it into print.

11. 11. My debt to Horton, “Listening,” for shining a light on the Jay family slaves and former slaves will be made evident throughout the pages of this book.

12. 12. Littlefield, “John Jay,” 132; Morris, John Jay, the Nation, and the Court, 14; Brier, Mr. Jay, 292–95. Full-length studies of William Jay’s abolitionism are few, far between, and insufficient: see Tuckerman, William Jay; Trendel, William Jay; Budney, William Jay. There is no full-length biography of John Jay II.

13. 13. Pencak, “Salt of the Earth,” comes closest among Jay scholars to conveying the interlocked nature of the family’s story; Den Hartog, Patriotism, points in a promising direction as well; see also, Egerton, Heirs, for a recent intergenerational study of the Adams family.

14. 14. Taylor, William Cooper’s Town, and Appleby, Inheriting, originally inspired the intergenerational aspirations for this project.

15. 15. Adair, “Fame.”

1. Disruptions

1. 1. WJ, LJ,1:3.

2. 2. Based on imputed data from the Voyages database, voyage identification nos. 33743 and 33646, accessed June 1, 2020; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, 119–21; Rawley, Transatlantic Slave Trade, 92; Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants,” 84; Van Ruymbeke, New Babylon, 218.

3. 3. Based on imputed data of the Voyages database, of the estimated 670 slaves who embarked on these two ships, 113 (almost 17%) would not have survived the two journeys. For brief accountings of the French Jays, see Stahr, John Jay 2, and Morris, UP, 29; Goodfriend, Who Should Rule, 172–97, takes a fresh look at slave–master interactions, emphasizing the slaves’ perspective.

4. 4. Butler, Huguenots, 13–26; Carlo, Huguenot Refugees, 5–8; Stanwood, “Between Eden and Empire,” 1319, 1322.

5. 5. Stanwood, “Between Eden and Empire,” 1322; WJ, LJ, 5; Butler, Huguenots, 26–40; see also Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants,” 85, for the dire economic consequences for a Huguenot merchant who did not leave La Rochelle.

6. 6. WJ, LJ, 1:4–5; Butler, Huguenots, 26–27, 49, 50–51, puts the number closer to 1,500; Van Ruymbeke, New Babylon, xv, 35, 38, 203, estimates a higher total of 2,500; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 6; Stanwood, “Between Eden and Empire,” 1333.

7. 7. Butler, Huguenots, 100–7, 121–26, 204; Van Ruymbeke, ch. 8; Foote, Black and White, 117; Wood, Black Majority.

8. 8. Butler, Huguenots, 91–92, 100; Van Ruymbeke, New Babylon, 217; WJ, LJ, 1:6.

9. 9. Hodges, Root, 7–38, 40–41; Goodfriend, “Souls”; Foote, Black and White, 23–52; Davis, “New York’s Long Black Line,” 42, 44; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 47–63, 369.

10. 10. Stahr, John Jay, 2. On seventeenth-century New York’s famous diversity, see Kammen, Colonial New York, 37; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 31, and the early chapters more generally; see also Shorto, Island. On imperial politics, see Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution.

11. 11. Vorhees, “Fervent Zeale”; Murrin, “Menacing”: Kammen, Colonial New York, 118–27; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 91–102.

12. 12. Hood, In Pursuit, 11; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 97–101; Butler, Huguenots, 146, 154–56; Morris, UP, 29–30; Howe, “Bayard Treason Trial”; “Bayard Genealogy,” Butler, Huguenots, 186; Hodges, Root, 23; Pellew, John Jay, 1–2; Stahr, John Jay, 2.

13. 13. Bosher,” Huguenot Merchants”; Stanwood, “Between Eden and Empire”; Morris, UP, 29–30; Butler, Huguenots, 153, 180.

14. 14. Stahr, John Jay, 2; Butler, Huguenots, 192–93; Goodfriend, “Social Dimensions,” 259, 262–63; Foote, Black and White, 117–18; Berrian, Facts, 63; Bushman, Refinement, 174; Bulthuis, Four Steeples, 17–19.

15. 15. Cohen, “Elias Neau”; Foote, Black and White, 125–31, 143; Hodges, Root, 55–63; Bulthuis, Four Steeples, 25–26; Neau to SPG, Oct. 3, 1795, SPG mss., Letters, ser. A v. 2, no. 124; “A List of Slaves Taught by Mr. Neau since the year 1704, SPG mss., Letters, ser. A, v. 10, 220–223; “A List of Negroes Taught by Mr. Neau,” Dec. 23, 1719, SPG mss., Letters, ser. A, v. 14, pp. 141–3, SPG mss. Collection—copy provided to author by Bodleian Library, Rhodes House, Oxford, England; David Humphreys et al., Dec. 18, 1722, PJJ, Doc. 07409.

16. 16. Butler, Huguenots, 149–53, 174–75; Butler broadly emphasizes Huguenot motivations as individual and economic; Carlo, Huguenot Refugees, 123, 154; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 90. See Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege, xvii, 16–37, on merchants, wealth, and status in New York City during the colonial period.

17. 17. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 118–23; Morris, UP, 29–30.

18. 18. Voyages database, voyage identification nos. 21045, 36997, 36998, 36999, 37011, 37012, 37013, 37015, and 70201; these numbers are approximations, because the database designers extrapolate missing data for individual voyages; in this instance, the database includes the same numbers for four separate voyages; for a discussion of this design choice, see Smallwood, review of Eltis, 259–60; Stahr, John Jay, 2.

19. 19. Judd, “Frederick Philipse,” esp. 367–68; Voyages database, voyage identification no. 36999; Foote, Black and White, 64.

20. 20. Neither Augustus nor his son Peter appears in the Voyages database, but as John Jay biographer Stahr, John Jay, 2, suggests, Augustus’s association with Philipse is a strong indication of at least “some extent” of participation in the trade.; Doc. 369, “Negroes Imported into New York, 1715–1765,” in Donnan, Documents, 463, 477, 479, 482, 484; the record refers to “Peter Vallett” and “Peter Valet,” which is almost surely an anglicized version of Pierre Valette; see also New York Slavery Records Index. O’Malley, Final Passages, 11, emphasizes that slave trading facilitated other economic opportunities; 46–58, 72, 83–84, 173, 179 describe the likely conditions.

21. 21. I draw on Lydon, “New York,” esp. 377, 378, 380, 381 383, 394. Estimates vary: see Foote, Black and White, 64–70, for different numbers that tell the same story. Voyages database (accessed June 2, 2020) lists sixty-one voyages between 1700–75 whose principal disembarkation was New York, with 5,710 enslaved people disembarked; see also Doonan, Documents, 406–7; O’Malley, Final Passages, 106, 201–2, 241, 377–78; and Kammen, New York, 180–82.

22. 22. Foote, Black and White, 69, 72; Harris, Shadow, 1; Lydon, “New York,” 387–88; on black rural life and labor, see Williams-Myers, Long Hammering; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom; Hodges, Root, 43–47, 82–83, 107–14; on housing see Kruger, “Born to Run,” 164–65; and for a superb analysis of living and health conditions for enslaved urbanites, see Klepp, “Seasoning.”

23. 23. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 17–18; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 70–73.

24. 24. Butler, Huguenots, 175–76; Kammen, New York, 225, Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 148–49; Cohen, “Elias Neau,” 21; Foote, “ ‘Some Hard Usage’ ”; Scott, “New York Slave Insurrection.”

25. 25. Morris, UP, 30; WJ, LJ, 9; Foote, Black and White, 63–64, 87; Judd, “Frederick Philipse,” 354; McManus, Negro Slavery, 28, 46; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 90; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 150–55.

26. 26. Berrian, Facts, 63.

27. 27. “Negroes Imported into New York,” 490–93, 495–96, 506, and New York Slavery Records Index; O’Malley, Final Passages, 22, 25, 51, 172, 178, 188–89, 204. The specific African origins of the small numbers of slaves whom the Jays’ Dolphin venture carried are speculative, based on Voyages database records for the time period proximate to the ship’s recorded visits to these particular Caribbean islands.

28. 28. Peter Jay Ledger 1724–68, NYHS; specific slave references appear in 1:7, 46 and 2:12; Wallace and Burrows, Gotham, 120, 126; Stahr, Jay, 1, 3, 5; O’Malley, Final Passages, 11; on 210, O’Malley notes the northern market’s “preference … for enslaved children recently arrived from Africa.”

29. 29. Peter Jay Ledger, 1:25, 2:161; Davis, “New York’s Long Black Line,” 46–47; see Hodges, Root, 107–14, and Foote, Black and White, 73–77, on slave work.

30. 30. Bond, “Shaping,” 65, 72, 75, 77–79, 81–83, 89, 91–92; Hodges, Root, 89, 96; Lepore, New York Burning, 99–100, 137–38, 141, 180–81; Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy, 63–64; Davis, New York Conspiracy, xii–xiii; Wilder, In the Company, 9–35; see also Goodfriend, Who Should Rule, 172–97.

31. 31. Lepore, New York Burning, and Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy, narrate the chilling contextual details; on the South Carolina rebellion, including connections to the conflict with Spain, see Wood, Black Majority, 296, 303–26; and Smith, Stono.

32. 32. Account synthesized from Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy; Hodges, Root, 91–98; Lepore, New York Burning.

33. 33. Davis, New York Conspiracy, 217–18.

34. 34. Davis, New York Conspiracy, 223, 258–59, 325; as Lepore, New York Burning, 191–92, notes in relation to another slave named Othello, shaping testimony to avoid or mitigate punishment was easier said than done.

35. 35. Lepore, New York Burning, Appendix B, 248–59. Historians remain sharply divided on the meaning of the alleged plot’s preemptive suppression and how to interpret the evidence surrounding it, which was derived from the purported movements and testimony of dozens of African Americans like Brash. To this day, there is not a consensus on even the most fundamental question—whether there really was a plot at all. For historians like Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra, 174–210, and Hodges, Root, 88–99, the plot was real and an example of how a pan-Atlantic proletariat mobilized to resist the forces of mercantile capitalist empire and racial domination. In sharp contrast, for Foote, Black and White, 159–86, the trials function as a proof text for the ways a “colonialist discourse” enforced subjugation on Black bodies through a manipulation of fears of racial otherness, in the process ensuring unity among whites otherwise potentially divided along class and ethnic lines. Lepore, New York Burning, xvi–xvii, xix–xx, 203–4, highlights a contemporary critic of the trials who deployed the Salem analogy; yet as subsequent notes indicate, Lepore is anything but dismissive of what the story reveals about New Yorkers, Black and white; see also Bond, “Shaping,” 63–65, 64–65n, 68, for judicious assessments of the historiography, the sources on which the historiography relies, and the comparison to Salem. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 159–66, are skeptical of a conspiracy but, like other historians, attempt to extract broader social implications about Black life from the trials; Hoffer, Great Negro Conspiracy, 4–8, assesses the strength and weaknesses of Horsmanden’s journal, the controversial source on which all accounts one way or another rely; see also Davis, New York Conspiracy, vii–xx; and Zabin, New York Conspiracy Trials.

36. 36. Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy, 62, 64, 69; Davis, New York Conspiracy, 54, 60–63; Horsmanden, New-York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot, 264; Bond, “Shaping,” 84.

37. 37. Davis, New York Conspiracy, xii, 117–18, 138, 151, 164, 173; here I follow the interpretive lead of Bond, “Shaping”; see also Zabin, Dangerous, 5–6, 57–59, 61, 64–66, 75, as well as chap. 6 for her take on the conspiracy trials more broadly.

38. 38. Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy, 3, 165–68, summarizes this perspective; see also Lepore, New York Burning. Davis, New York Conspiracy, ix, xv; Hodges, 93–94, 97, 99.

39. 39. Davis, New York Conspiracy, 324–25.

40. 40. Horsmanden, New-York Conspiracy, 89–90, 286–87; Hoffer, Great New York Conspiracy, 130–51; Lepore, New York Burning, 188.

41. 41. Agreement between Thomas A. Dean and Peter Jay, Sept. 25, 1741, PJJ, Doc. 06632.

42. 42. Davis, “Long Black Line,” 47; Voyages database (accessed June 2, 2020) indicates the following numbers for slave ships whose primary disembarkation point was New York: 1731–40, five ships; 1741–50, five ships; 1751–60, twenty-two ships; Lydon, “New York,” 377–81; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 83–85; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 167–90; Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege, 7, 25

43. 43. Shonnard and Spooner, History of Westchester, 223; the 1,299 acres Peter Jay obtained via his father-in-law did not make him a particularly large landholder compared to the great landed families of the province or even of Westchester County; see Kim, Landlord, although as Kim shows, 181–83, Peter’s land acquisition occurred during an era when the original Cortlandt Manor was being divided among heirs who themselves were selling off significant acreage; Stahr, John Jay, 3–5; Morris, UP, 33.

44. 44. Scharf, History of Westchester County, 1:29–30; Shonnard and Spooner, History of Westchester, 151, 153, 194, 263; McManus, Negro Slavery, 46; “Census of Slaves, 1755,” in O’Callaghan, Documentary History, 3:852–53, lists twenty-nine slaves owned by Lewis Morris; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 104–5, 131, 150–55; Davis, “Long Black Line,” 49–50.

45. 45. Rev. Charles W. Baird, D. D. “Rye,” in Scharf, History of Westchester County, 2:666–67; Baird, Chronicle, 181–83.

46. 46. “Census of Slaves, 1755,” in O’Callaghan, Documentary History, 3:855; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 135–37, 187–88n, makes extrapolated estimates, that, with children, on average each Rye household contained 3.2 slaves; if that pattern held for the Jays, it might mean that there were several slave children in the household; looking at the 1755 census as a whole, which does not include Albany, New York, and Suffolk Counties, Jay’s recorded ownership of eight slaves sticks out as an atypically large figure.

2. Rising Stars

1. 1. JJ to Susanna Philipse Robinson, Mar. 21, 1777, in SP, 1:386–87; for further background on the Robinsons and the Committee for the Detection of Conspiracies, see SP, 1:361–64, 367–69, 371–72; Kammen, “American Revolution,” 140–41, 154, explores other aspects of this revealing episode.

2. 2. The concluding sentence to the penetrating study by Brown, Moral Capital, 462—“What is truly surprising about British abolitionism is that such a campaign ever should have developed at all”—is applicable to both Jay’s revolutionary leap and the tentative stirrings of antislavery. Classic studies of the ideologies of slavery and race in the Revolutionary Era that make this broad point include Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 255–342, and Jordan, White over Black, 269–311; John Jay attracts no more than cursory treatment in these books and in most subsequent commentary on and critiques of the revolutionary rhetoric of slavery, the exception being Littlefield, “John Jay,” esp. 95, 105.

3. 3. Morris, UP, 1:55. Stahr, John Jay, 13–14; WJ, LJ, 1:14–15.

4. 4. PJ to James Jay, July 3, 1752, UP, 1:35; also PJ to David and John Peloquin, Oct. 24, 1753, UP, 1:36–37; SL, 10–11; SP, 1:3.

5. 5. Carlo, Huguenot Refugees, 62, 64, 65, 69, 82, 88–91, 96–97, 102, 107–9, 123, 160–65; Bonomi, “John Jay,”12. WJ, LJ, 1:11–12.

6. 6. Humphrey, From King’s College to Columbia, 168; Wilder, Ebony & Ivy, 50–53, 59, 60–70, 75, 96, 131–32, 162; Foner, “Columbia,” 1–16; Johnson, Samuel Johnson, 219, 228, 264, 269, 402–3.

7. 7. PJ to James Jay, Nov. 12, 1763, JJHx transcription of original letter held in a private collection; PJ to JJ, n.d., [1764], PJJ, Doc. 07852; Mary is not identified as a slave per se.

8. 8. PJ to JJ, Mar. 26, 1765, UP, 1:70.

9. 9. Knapp, Life of Thomas Eddy, 13, 376–84; Dictionary, 7:359–60, 365–66, 367; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 63; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 27–29.

10. 10. Foner, “Columbia and Slavery,” 9–12; Wilder, Ebony & Ivy, 52–53, 60–65, 68, 75; Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (search, “vessel owners: Livingston”); Morris, UP, 1:71, 86; Nuxoll, SP, 1:34, 55; Dangerfield, Chancellor, 29, 46–47; JJ to RRL, Apr. 2, 1765; see also JJ to RRL, Oct. 31, 1765; Mar. 4, 1766, 79–81; License to Practice Law, Oct. 26, 1768, SP, 1:35–36, 39–41, 41–43, 56; and JJ to RRL, Apr. 19, 1765, UP, 1:74–7.

11. 11. Stahr, Jay, 19–25, 30; SP, 1:50–55, 70–71.

12. 12. JJ to the Earl of Dartmouth, Mar. 25, 1773, SP, 1:81; see also Morris, UP, 1:86–88; SP, 1:53–54.

13. 13. JJ to SLJ, Mar. 3, 1776, SL, 36; Nuxoll, SP, 1:82–83; Freeman, North, and Wedge, SL, brilliantly document this relationship.

14. 14. Prince, William Livingston; Dangerfield, Chancellor, 22–23, 35, 39, 74; Stahr, John Jay, 33–35; Morris, UP, 1:135–37; Nuxoll, SP, 1:84–85; Becker, History, 38, 49; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 214–22. For suggestions that had Jay been successful in persuading one of the daughters of the loyalist DeLancey family to marry him, instead of winning the hand of Sarah Livingston, he would never have attempted, let alone achieved, his subsequent rise to authority and influence within the ranks of the patriotic independence movement; see Morris, Seven, 167–68; McCaughey, Stand, Columbia, 47; Stahr, John Jay, 31–32.

15. 15. SLJ to JJ, Nov. 1, 1776, SL, 42; Hodges, Root, 137.

16. 16. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 232–46; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution.

17. 17. Brown, Moral Capital, 126–51, 161–71.

18. 18. Brown, Moral Capital, 135–36, 138, 140–43, 148, 167–68, and more generally; Jackson Let This Voice; Waldstreicher, “Wheatleyan Moment”; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 36; Sinha, “To ‘cast just obliquy’ on Oppressors,” 152; Nelson, Thomas Paine, 64–65.

19. 19. Brown, Moral Capital, 97–101; Van Cleve, Slaveholders’ Union, 31–33; Drescher, Abolition, 99–105; Oldham, “New Light”; Krikler, “Zong and the Lord Chief Justice”; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 474–501.

20. 20. Van Cleve, Slaveholders’ Union, 33–40; Drescher, Abolition, 103–5. For more general anxieties about the future authority of slaveholders and slavery’s morality during the run-up to independence, see Brown, Moral Capital, 105–14, 134–43; Holton, Forced Founders; Carp, Rebels, 143–71, shows how even in South Carolina, patriarchal concerns for maintaining family hierarchy and concerns over slavery overlapped.

21. 21. PJ to JJ, Dec. 18, 1775, UP, 1:205; on JJ’s and his friend Robert Livingston’s concerns about disruptions associated with resistance to the British, see JJ to Alexander McDougall, Dec. 4,1775; RRL to JJ, Dec. 6, 1775, SP, 1:164–67.

22. 22. JJ to John Vardill, May 23, 1774, Sept. 24, 1774, SP, 1:87–89, 94–95; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 217, 221–22; Morris, UP, 136. Morris, “John Jay and the Radical Chic Elite,” in Seven, 150–88, encapsulates the conundrum of how Jay overcame his doubts about independence and his conservative scruples; see also, Jack Rakove, “Introduction,” to SP, 1:xxv–xxix; Becker, “John Jay,” 1–12; Klein, “John Jay,” 19–30; Morris, “American Revolution”; Stahr, John Jay, 33–54; Becker, History, 111.

23. 23. [JJ], “Address to the People of Great Britain,” SP, 1:100–7; Morris, UP, 136–37; Becker, History, 150–51.

24. 24. JJ, Letter from Congress to the “Oppressed Inhabitants of Canada,” May 29, 1775, in SP, 1:116–18; Arendt, On Revolution, esp. 28.

25. 25. JJ to Alexander McDougall, Mar. 13, 1776; see also JJ to Robinson, Mar. 21, 1777, SP, 1:208–9, 387.

26. 26. Nuxoll, SP, 1:320–25; “An Address of the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York to their Constituents,” Dec. 23, 1776, SP, 1:337, 338, 340.

27. 27. “Address of the Convention,” SP, 1: 337, 340, 341, 342.

28. 28. “Address of the Convention,” SP, 1:346.

29. 29. Brown, Moral Capital, esp. 105–10; taking Jay’s use of enslavement metaphors seriously thus may help solve the conundrum of what Kammen, “American Revolution,” 153, describes as Jay’s puzzling transition “from moderation to militancy.”

30. 30. Nuxoll, SP, 1:399–403.

31. 31. Journals of the Provincial Congress, 887; Constitution of the State of New-York, 7–12; Richards, Slave Power, 28–31; Mintz, Gouverneur, 7, 14–15, 76; Adams, Gouverneur Morris, 4, 7, 8–9, 81; Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, 3, 16–17, 34.

32. 32. Journal of the Provincial Congress, 889, 897; Maier, American Scripture, 146–47, 236–41.

33. 33. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 31, 34–35; Constitution of Vermont, July 18, 1777, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/vt01.asp; Jordan, White over Black, 292.

34. 34. JJ to RRL and Governeur Morris, Apr. 29, 1777, SP, 1:413. William Jay claimed that if John Jay had not had to absent himself from the convention, New York would have had “the honour of setting the first example in America of the voluntary abolition of slavery,” an interpretation perhaps as much informed by William’s emerging antislavery commitments as by historical events; see WJ, LJ, 1:70.

35. 35. Young, Democratic Republicans, 17–22; JCNY, 13, 25–29; Dangerfield, Chancellor, 88–93. Fortunately, although John Jay exercised a great deal of influence over the crafting of the 1777 constitution, he did not have a stranglehold on the proceedings, especially with regard to the rights of minority factions of New York’s population. Jay failed to convince his fellow delegates, including Morris, to approve a set of proposals stigmatizing Catholics. See Morris, UP, 1:392; Dangerfield, Chancellor, 91; Adams, Gouverneur Morris, 82–83; Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, 33; Mintz, Gouverneur Morris, 75.

36. 36. JJ to RRL and Gouverneur Morris, Apr. 29, 1777, SP, 1:413.

37. 37. Hodges, Root, 139–40, 144–53; Hodges, “Black Revolt”; Foote, Black and White, 210–16; Van Buskirk, Generous, 129–54; SP, 1:305n; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 36–37. Events in New York were part of a much larger phenomenon of slaves seizing their freedom and fighting for the British, as narrated dramatically by Schama, Rough Crossings, 8–9, 55–126; and Nash, Forgotten, 22–38.

38. 38. WL to Richard Bache, May 22, 1777; Samuel Hayes to WL, July 16, 1777; David Forman to WL, June 9, 1780, Papers of William Livingston, 1:338, 2:22, 3:423; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 96–104.

39. 39. SLJ to JJ, Mar. 23, 1777, SL, 44–45; PJ to JJ and James Jay, Sept. 1, 1779, in UP, 1:631; PJ to James Jay and JJ, Sept. 20, 1779, PJJ, Doc. 07874, which contains summary but not image, and transcription in JJHx files. Claas might be the man named “Massey” recorded as a former John Jay slave evacuated with the British in 1783; see “Inspection Roll of Negroes, Book No. 2,” in Hodges, Black Loyalist Directory, 184.

40. 40. PJ to JJ and Sir James Jay, Sept. 22, 1779, UP, 1:642–43.

41. 41. Laws (1792), 42; Davis, “New York’s Long Black Line,” 55–57; McManus, Negro Slavery, 199, 200; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 37, 40.

42. 42. JJ to Susan Livingston, Mar. 16, 1778, SL, 54.

43. 43. Journals of the Provincial Congress, 871–72, 904, 941–42; Kruger, “Born to Run,” chapter 11, esp. 640–41, 645–48, 651, 677–87; it was not until 1786 that New York’s state legislature passed legislation to free confiscated loyalist slaves; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 65–66.

44. 44. Samuel Allinson to WL, July 13, 1778. Papers of William Livingston, 2:380–87.

45. 45. WL to Samuel Allinson, July 25, 1778; Allinson to WL, Aug. 12, 1778; WL to Thomas Bradford, June 3, 1780, Papers of William Livingston, 2:403–4, 407–8; 3:413. The modern editors of the Livingston papers found no record of Livingston’s proposal.

46. 46. Anthony Benezet to JJ, Feb. 2, 1779, SP, 1:581–82; [Benezet], Serious, 11.

47. 47. [Benezet], Serious, 27, 28–31, 37–39.

48. 48. JJ to Anthony Benezet, Mar. 5, 1779, draft attached to letter from Benezet, PJJ, Doc. 05485; Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, 133.

49. 49. AH to JJ, Mar. 14, 1779, in SP, 1:607–9; SP, 1:478–79, 670; on other uses of piety as a Revolutionary Era theme, see Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 298.

50. 50. Wiencek, Imperfect, 204, 214–33, quotations, 229, 232.

51. 51. Whether Jay read the actual text of the law or just learned of its essential features is not known; see An Act for the gradual abolition of slavery, 2, 3.

52. 52. Nuxoll, SP, 1:709–14.

53. 53. JJ to Egbert Benson, Sept. 18, 1780, SP, 2:253.

54. 54. Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, 109, 129, 134, 212–15, 219, 346–47n; SP, 1:670.

3. Negotiations

1. 1. JJ to PJ, May 23, 1780, in SL, 65, 84; JJ, manumission document for Benoit, Mar. 21, 1784, PJJ, Doc. 07298. On the importance and nature of asymmetrical master–slave negotiations within the confines of the chattel principle, see Johnson, Soul by Soul; see also, Morris, “Articulation.”

2. 2. SLJ to Susannah French Livingston, Dec. 12–26, 1779; SLJ to WL, Dec. 30, 1779; SLJ to Peter Jay, Jan. 9, 1780, SL, 68, 71, 73; and ed. notes, 65, 69; see also JJ to BF, Jan. 26, 1780, SP, 2:15–16.

3. 3. SLJ to Susan Livingston, Aug. 28, 1780, SL, 89; Bemis, Diplomacy, 91, 101–4; Stahr, John Jay, 127–44.

4. 4. Letters Being the Whole of the Correspondence; in this volume, John Jay himself elected to publicly expose Littlepage’s attempts to take advantage of Jay’s trust and financial sponsorship so that Littlepage’s public attacks on Jay would not stand up to scrutiny; see Stahr, John Jay, 138, 228–32; and WJ, LJ, 1:204–29.

5. 5. SLJ to William Livingston, June 24, 1781, SL, 107–11; for the Irish servant, see SLJ to Susan Livingston, Aug. 28, 1780, SL, 88.

6. 6. On the birth and death of daughter in Spain, see JJ to WL (draft), July 14, 1780; SLJ to Susan French Livingston, Aug. 28, 1780; WL to SLJ, Jan. 14, 1781; SLJ to WL, June 24, 1781; SL, 86–87, 90–91, 98, 111 (quotation).

7. 7. SLJ to Susannah French Livingston, Aug. 28, 1780; SLJ to WL, Jan. 31, Oct. 14, 1782; SLJ to PJ, Apr. 29, 1782, in SL, 91,117, 118, 122.

8. 8. SLJ to PAJ, July 25, 1781, photocopy of transcription from JJH.

9. 9. JJ to John Adams, Mar. 1783, SP, 3:331.

10. 10. SLJ to Kitty Livingston, May 18, 1781, SL, 106.

11. 11. I use the term “paternalism” in a descriptive more than in a historiographically or theoretically technical sense; nonetheless, I am informed by Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul, and his “Nettlesome,” for commentary on paternalism’s limitations and ironies. For Jay, paternalism was not a strategy for morally digging in on slavery but instead was compatible with his emerging criticisms of the institution; Littlefield, “John Jay,” 123–26, 128, provides useful observations.

12. 12. Kim, “Limits”; FJ to JJ, Apr. 10, 1781, PJJ, Doc. 06327; SP, 3:xxx; Horton, “Listening,” Appendix.

13. 13. JJ to FJ, Mar. 15, 1781, PJJ, Doc. 06326.

14. 14. JJ to Richard Harrison, May 28, 1781, SP, 2:449; JJ to Robert Morris, May 29, 1781; JJ to FJ, Mar. 15, Nov. 19, 1781, PJJ, Docs., 09322, 06326, 06333.

15. 15. JJ to FJ, July 31, 1781, PJJ, Doc. 06328.

16. 16. FJ to JJ (copy), Nov. 18, Dec. 1, 1781, PJJ Doc. 06331; Horton, “Listening,” 1, 8–9, 13, 43, 47–48, 51, 56, is particularly insightful and see 34–52 more generally.

17. 17. JJ to FJ, Apr. 29, 1782, PJJ, Doc. 06336

18. 18. SP, 3, liv; RRL to JJ, May 22, 1782, SP, 2:794; FJ to JJ, Apr. 20, 1782, SP, 2:721–22; JJ to RRL, Aug. 13, 1782; JJ to Egbert Benson, Aug. 26, 1782; JJ to FJ, Oct. 3, 1782, SP, 3:64, 92, 172.

19. 19. SP, 2:783–85; FJ to JJ, Apr. 20, 1782, SP, 2:722; Stahr, John Jay, 190.

20. 20. Peter Jay, will and codicils, PJJ Doc. 00374 (original at the Museum of the City of New York); see also “Abstracts of Wills,”—Liber 33, 262–63 (photocopy provided to author from files at JJH); SP, 2:720–21; Morris, UP, 2: 211–12; as Horton, “Listening,” 53–57, makes clear, Peter Jay’s slaveholdings were in flux during this period; see FJ to JJ, Aug. 15, 1782, PJJ Doc. 06337, for a further accounting. The identity of Mary in the third codicil is not easy to determine. Although others have assumed that the Mary in the third codicil is the younger Mary, given the emphasis on health, the older, not the younger, Mary may be the one addressed here.

21. 21. JJ to FJ, Oct. 3, 1782 (draft), in SP, 3:172; FJ to JJ (copy), Jan. 26, 1783, PJJ Doc. 06339. Claas may have been the man named “Massey” recorded as a former John Jay slave evacuated with the British in 1783, although the date listed for his arrival with the British does not line up with Claas’s apparent departure (see chapter 2); “Inspection Roll of Negroes, Book No. 2,” in Hodges, Black Loyalist, 184.

22. 22. Walker, “Blacks as American Loyalists,” offers a superbly concise account.

23. 23. JJ to Richard Oswald (draft), Sept. 10, 1782, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 561.

24. 24. Congressional Resolutions, Sept. 10, 1782; JA to RRL, No. 11, 1782; Richard Oswald to Thomas Townshend, Nov. 15, 1782; Giunta, Emerging Nation, 560, 656, 658–59; RRL to BF (draft), Sept. 13, 1782, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 38:102–4, see esp. n8. For overviews of the peace negotiations, see Morris, Witnesses, 76–93; Bemis, Diplomacy, 234; Rakove, Revolutionaries, 276–89.

25. 25. BF to Richard Oswald, Nov. 26, 1782, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 38:350–56; Waldstreicher, Runaway, 221–22; Schama, Rough, 8–9, 55–126; Nash, Forgotten, 22–38.

26. 26. “Preliminary Articles of Peace between the United States and Great Britain,” in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 700; John Adams’s Journal, Nov. 30, 1782, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 692; HL to South Carolina Delegates, Dec. 16, 1782, in Papers of Henry Laurens, 16:79–80, n2.

27. 27. HL to John Lewis Gervais, Aug. 9,1783, Mar. 4, 1784; HL to John Owen, Mar. 4, 1784; HL to Richard Oswald, Aug. 16, 1783, in Papers of Henry Laurens, 16:254–55, 267–68, 362n, 402–3, 408–10; HL to BF, Apr. 7, 1782, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 37:108–9, n9; Bemis, Diplomacy, 195; Papers of Henry Laurens, 15:620–22.

28. 28. Bemis, Diplomacy, 238, writes the whole episode off rather cavalierly as a bargain “between two old slave merchants.”

29. 29. Nov. 29, 1782, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 38:375–77, 382n.

30. 30. Adams, Journal, Nov. 30, 1782; BF to RRL, Dec. 5, 1782, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 692–94, 708–9.

31. 31. JJ to RRL, Dec. 14, 1782, SP, 3:286–87; see also HL to South Carolina delegates, Dec. 16, 1782; HL to James Laurens, Dec. 17, 1782; HL to Thomas Day, Dec. 23, 1782, in Papers of Henry Laurens, 16:79–81, 84, 95.

32. 32. Memorandum of a Conference between GW and Guy Carleton, May 6, 1783; GW to Guy Carleton, May 6, 1783; Guy Carleton to GW, May 12, 1783, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 848–50, 851–52, 856–57.

33. 33. Hodges, ed., Black Loyalist, 170, 184; RRL to BF, May 9, 1783; Peace Commissioners to Robert Hartley, July 17, 1783; Commissioners to RRL, July 18, 1783, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 854, 881, 885–86; BF to HL, July 6, 1783, Papers of Henry Laurens, 16:231. Compare the Draft Definitive Treaty (c. Aug. 6, 1783) and the Definitive Treaty ratified by Congress (Jan. 14, 1784), in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 906–9, 964–67.

34. 34. Charles James Fox to David Hartley, Aug. 9, 1783; Hartley to Fox, Aug. 20, 1783; HL to American Peace Commissioners, Aug. 9, 1783, JA to RRL, Aug. 13, 1783, in Giunta, Emerging Nation, 913–18, 922–23; Foote, Black and White, 217, 226; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 656 estimates as many as 4,000. Wiencek, Imperfect, 253–58; see also Gellman, Emancipating New York, 38–39, for additional information and sources.

35. 35. For hints of Adams’s budding antislavery views, see Works, 2:200, 280, 497–98; 3:280. On Franklin, see Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 19:112–16, 187–88, 269; and Waldstreicher, Runaway. On Laurens, see HL to James Bourdieu, Feb. 6, 1783; HL to William Drayton, Feb. 15, Feb. 23, 1783; HL to John Owen, Apr. 1, 1783, Mar. 4, 1784, in Papers of Henry Laurens, 16:144, 145–46, 155–57, 174, 409; Rakove, Revolutionaries, 198, 205–8, 215–18; and David Duncan Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, 444–55.

36. 36. For an appraisal of Article VII within the broader context of legal precedents involving wartime emancipation, see Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 108–31, and chapter 4 of this book.

37. 37. Young Peter Augustus spent these years of separation with Sally’s Livingston relatives in New Jersey and with John’s brother and father; SP, 3:xxx.

38. 38. Horton, “Listening,” introduction and 62–66, tells Abbe’s story as part of a superb effort to uncover the story of all of John Jay’s slaves; I draw inspiration from her example and benefit from her detective work; Littlefield, “John Jay,” 128–30, also writes with insight on this episode.

39. 39. Abbe had played an important role in assisting Sally Jay with her children, earlier in the year helping with the weaning of one of the girls, though Abbe’s health in France had not been good; see SLJ to Susannah French Livingston, Apr. 15, 1783, in SL, 133; SLJ to Kitty Livingston (draft), June 11, 1783, SL, 135.

40. 40. SLJ to JJ, Nov. 6, 1783, SL, 147–48.

41. 41. On French law and slavery, see Boulle, “Racial,” 19–46, quotation 29, 40; and Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”; see also Wiencek, Master, 190.

42. 42. SLJ to JJ, Nov. 6, 1783, SL, 147–48; this incident was not the first time that Franklin had intervened with authorities to help someone recover a slave; see Waldstreicher, Runaway, 222–4.

43. 43. SLJ to JJ, Nov. 6, 1783; PJM to JJ (draft), Nov. 12, 1783, SL, 148–49.

44. 44. Melish, Disowning, 93, 107, comments astutely on how slow whites were to give up on the notion of their own authority, even during emancipation. That Jay was negotiating at all anticipates conditions once gradual emancipation would be underway, though in this instance, Abbe held far less leverage; see White, Somewhat, 108–12, 115, 149, 151–52; and Stories, 13–15; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 756–57.

45. 45. JJ to William Temple Franklin, Nov. 11, 1783, SP, 3:513; SLJ to JJ, Nov. 18, 1783, SL, 151.

46. 46. SLJ to JJ, Nov. 6, 1783; JJ to SLJ, Nov. 23, 1783, SL, 148, 153.

47. 47. SLJ to William Temple Franklin, Dec. 7, 1783; SLJ to JJ, Dec. 7, Dec. 11, 1783; PJM to JJ (draft), Dec. 7, 1783, SP, 3:527, 528, 529, 532.

48. 48. JJ to SLJ, Dec. 26, 1783, SP, 3:536–37; see also SP, 3:541n for Peter Jay Munro’s observation that Sally dealt with tragedy with “accustomed fortitude” and with more equanimity than most other people would have dealt with “like accidents”; and JJ to SLJ, Dec. 8, 10, 20, 1783, PJJ Docs. 08043, 08044, 08045, on inoculations.

49. 49. PJM to JJ (draft), Jan. 4, 1784, SP, 3:541.

50. 50. The general inspiration for this insight is Scott, Domination, esp. chap. 6 on “the arts of political disguise,” including “spirit possession” on 141–42. For a similarly suggestive incident from colonial America of a slave ghost haunting a house where he was murdered by his master, see Moraley, Infortunate, 83; for another colonial ghost story, see Winiarski, “ ‘Pale.’ ” The literature on witchcraft and demonic possession in New England is suggestive as well, esp. the psychologically rich Demos, Entertaining Satan, and Karlsen, Devil.

51. 51. JJ to Carmichael, Apr. 24, 1784, PJJ, Doc. 07721. Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France,” 135, intriguingly suggests an increase in the number of French masters freeing their slaves in France. JJ, manumission document for Benoit, Mar. 21, 1784, PJJ, Doc. 07298.

52. 52. Stahr, John Jay, 190, 193, 236–39; Littlefield, “John Jay,” 107, 128, 130–32; see also thoughtful remarks by Freeman, North, and Wedge on Jay and slavery and pairing Abbe’s death and Benoit’s manumission document in the appendix to SL, 296–99. Horton, “Listening,” 62; Nuxoll, SP, 3:569n.

53. 53. Matthew Ridley to Catherine Livingston, Mar. 26, 1783, PJJ, Doc. 04691; Klingelhofer, “Matthew Ridley’s Diary”; see also SL, 126; SP, 3:xxxi, 219.

4. Nation-Building

1. 1. Granville Sharp to the President, Vice President, and Treasurer of the New-York Manumission Society, May 1, 1788, SP, 4:707; Jay to English Anti-Slavery Society, n.d., 1788, CPP, 3:340–44.

2. 2. These same four concentric circles informed the experiences of slaves, as well as less famous or politically powerful Black and white foot soldiers in the abolitionist cause. Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution and his whole bookshelf of canonical works are dedicated to a multivalent perspective; see also Brown, Moral Capital; Drescher, Abolition; Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, see esp. xi, 62, which explicitly nest his new synthesis of US emancipation in a transatlantic context. Furstenberg, “Atlantic Slavery,” offers a fascinating example of studying a single founding father in his cosmopolitan context; Morgan “To Get Quit,” 406, gestures in this direction; Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” esp. 208, also takes this approach.

3. 3. Littlefield, “John Jay,” 98; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 41, though having far too many fish to fry to focus intensively on the founders, nonetheless makes this key point: “The sectional division over slavery belies generalizations of either an antislavery revolutionary generation or the equally flattening notion of a proslavery consensus among the founders.” Gordon-Reed and Onuf, Most Blessed, offers a compelling portrait of a founder operating in a very different regional context; see also, Wiencek, Imperfect and Master; and for biographical studies of founders from the mid-Atlantic that take the subject of slavery seriously, see Waldstreicher, Runaway, and Chernow, Alexander Hamilton.

4. 4. Polgar, “Problem.”

5. 5. SL, 167; SP, 3:584–87; Stahr, John Jay, 197–98; Wallace and Burrows, Gotham, 265–306.

6. 6. SP, 5:73; US Federal Census 1790, Ancestry.com (website); Horton, “Listening,” 70–73, Appendix; Stahr, John Jay, 223–26; White, Somewhat, 4–14.

7. 7. John Jay’s Account Book, JJHx; “Abstracts of Wills,”—Liber 33, 262–63 (photocopy provided to author from files at JJH).

8. 8. Nash and Soderlund, Freedom; Melish, Disowning; Breen, “Making History”; Wolf, Race, 21–35.

9. 9. Sedgwick Jr., Memoir, 399–401; Waldstreicher, Runaway, xi, 229–31, 235–37.

10. 10. NYMS, 6:3–4, Feb. 4, 1785; JJ to Benjamin Rush, Mar. 24, 1785, SP, 4:72. On the NYMS and its early program and achievements, see Gellman, Emancipating New York, 56–77; Oakes, Freedom, 10–12; Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” 214–15.

11. 11. JJ to John Murray, Jr., (draft), Oct. 10, 1786, PJJ, Doc. 07283; Jefferson, Notes, 138, 163; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 53–54, 103–10, 289, has influenced my thinking about the scope and sincerity of the NYMS’s antislavery commitments and the first movement for emancipation more generally; Littlefield, “John Jay,”121, also notes Jay’s lack of racist presumptions.

12. 12. NYMS, Feb. 4, 1785, Nov. 10, 1785, Feb. 8, 1786, May 1, 1786, Feb. 15, 1787, 6:3–4, 16, 29–30, 37–38, 40–41, 61; White, Somewhat, 81–4; Harris, In the Shadow, 61–65; Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 210–11, 215, 581; Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” 223; White, Somewhat, 81–86; Littlefield, “John Jay,” 93, 103, 119; Ball, “Ambition”; for a more critical appraisal of this incident, the NYMS, and Hamilton, see Weston, “Alexander Hamilton”; for evidence of Hamilton’s subsequent slave purchases, see Serfilippi, “As Odious,” 7–9, 16–17.

13. 13. On demographics, see Gellman, Emancipating New York, 40; Davis, “New York’s Long Black Line,” 55–57; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 642–43, 688–89; White, Somewhat, 22–23, 27, 54. NYMS, Feb. 10, 1785, 6:17.

14. 14. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 48–53; NYMS, Aug. 8, 1785, 6:22.

15. 15. Richard Price to JJ, July 9, 1785; JJ to Richard Price (draft), Sept. 27, 1785; SP, 4:134–35, 190–91; White, Somewhat, 82; on Price, see Brown, Moral Capital, 126–28, 149–50, 172, and SP, 3:662n.

16. 16. Richard Lushington to JJ, Feb. 22, 1786, SP, 300–301.

17. 17. New-York Packet, Mar. 13, 1786; JJ to Lushington, Mar. 15, 1786, CPP, 3:185.

18. 18. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 67–68; NYMS, May 11, Nov. 9, 1786, 6:42–45, 54–55; see also Feb. 8, May 11, 1786; Feb. 15, May 17, 1787; Jan. 26, 1788, 6:37, 39, 41–42, 60, 66, 91–92; “An Act concerning Slaves,” Laws of the State of New-York (1788), 75–78; Oakes, Freedom, 11–2.

19. 19. JJ to committee for manumitting slaves, Feb. 25, 1788, PJJ, Doc. 07303; NYMS, Aug. 10, 1786; Apr. 10, May 17, 1787; May 15, 1788, 6:48, 63, 68, 108.

20. 20. NYMS, Aug. 11, Nov. 10, 1785, May 17, 1787, Nov. 15, 1787, Feb. 21, 1788, 6:24, 26, 66–67, 80–89, 96–97; Harris, In the Shadow, 49, 64–65.

21. 21. On JJ’s correspondence committee work, see NYMS, Feb. 21, Aug. 21, 1788, May 21, 1789, 6:95, 111, 131–32; JJ to Society at Paris for Manumission of Slaves, n.d. 1788, JJ to Lafayette, Sept. 1, 1788, PJJ. Docs. 05842, 07309, 07310; JJ to Thomas Clarkson, Sept. 1, 1788, Papers of Thomas Clarkson, HL.

22. 22. White, Somewhat, 26–30; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 687–91, 725–27, 740, 747, 753–55.

23. 23. Sedgwick Jr., Memoir, 400–401; circumstantially validated by WL to JJ, May 1, 1786, PJJ, Doc. 06893, in which he reports a servant absconding, leaving his household without any; Kruger, “Born to Run,” 758.

24. 24. Transcription of the will of Anna Maricka Jay, in JJH collection of Jay family wills.

25. 25. Stahr, John Jay, 198–99; Ellis, Quartet, 73–74, 85–87.

26. 26. Charles Thomson to JJ, Apr. 22, 1785; JJ to GW, Aug. 26, 1785, PJJ, Docs. 01627, 01379; JJ to President of Congress, July 3, 1786, SP, 4:357; JA to JJ, May, 25, 1786, in Works of John Adams, 8:394–96.

27. 27. JJ, Secret Journals, 187–274; Stahr, John Jay, 200–205.

28. 28. JJ, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Oct. 13, 1786, Secret Journals, 274–77 (emphasis in original).

29. 29. JJ, Secret Journals, 277 (emphasis in original).

30. 30. JJ, Secret Journals, 278; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 113–15.

31. 31. Kaminski, “Honor,” 293, 295, 322–33, emphasizes the attitude of “moral statesmanship” (295) that guided Jay while he held this crucial post, as well as how he applied this approach to his response to Article 7 in his report.

32. 32. JJ to GW, Mar. 16, 1786, SP, 4:313, 464–65; Ellis, Quartet, 90–93, 97,107–8, 112–14; Stahr, John Jay, 241–44.

33. 33. Stahr, John Jay, 245–46; Ellis, Quartet, 125; SP, 4:464–65.

34. 34. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men, esp. 83–84; Minutes of the NYMS, Aug. 16 and 17, 1787, SP, 4:538–40.

35. 35. Brookhiser, Gentleman, 3, 32, 34, 83–91, quotation 85; Richards, Slave Power, 28–34; Mintz, Gouverneur, vii–viii, 7, 14–15, 76; Adams, Gouverneur Morris, 4, 8–9, 81, 148–65; Solberg, ed., Constitutional Convention, 213, 215, 278, 285, 300, 303; Finkelman, Slavery, 17–20; see also Van Cleve, Slaveholders’ Union; and Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution.

36. 36. Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, and Freedom, 2–34, articulate explanations of antislavery constitutionalism; for an interpretation of the Constitution that emphasizes the document’s resistance to the recognition of slavery under federal law, see also Wilentz, No Property; Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” 219–20.

37. 37. Van Cleve, Slaveholder’s Union, 108, 111–13, 152–66; Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution, 86–88; Waldstreicher, “Too Big.”

38. 38. Quotation from Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 6:50–51; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 87–88; The Federalist Papers, Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 42, 43, 54, 64, Avalon Project; Ellis, Founding, 114–15; Oakes, “Compromising Expedient”; Stahr, John Jay, 249–51.

39. 39. [JJ], Address, esp. 4, 12, 18–19; Stahr, John Jay, 253–54.

40. 40. Maier, Ratification, 317, 320–400; Debates, 18–19, 26. Several days after the Hamilton–Smith exchange, Jay mentioned in passing that slaves were a type of luxury item the national government might tax—see SP, 5:6, 28, and more generally 1–12. See also, “Ratification”; Boonshoft, “Doughfaces”; Ball, “Ambition”; and Weston, “Alexander Hamilton.”

41. 41. Granville Sharp to the President, Vice President, and Treasurer of the New-York Manumission Society, May 1, 1788, SP, 4:707–9; Jay to English Anti-Slavery Society, n.d., 1788, CPP, 3:340–44; NYMS, Feb. 21, 1788, 6:92–97.

42. 42. Landers, Atlantic; JJ, Office of Foreign Affairs, Aug. 14, 1788; JJ to William Carmichael, Sept. 9, 1788; JJ to Don Diego de Gardoqui y Arriquibar, Sept. 16, 1788, Gardoqui to Jay, Sept. 19, 1788; JJ to William Carmichael, Oct. 2, 1789; PJJ, Docs. 03734, 02531, 05847, 03740, 02541; Continental Congress, Report on Slaves Who Escaped to Florida, Aug. 26, 1788, in Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 5:205; US Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 2.

43. 43. Van Cleve, Slaveholder’s Union, is particularly forceful on this point; Riley, Slavery, shows how the same process played out over time for antislavery Democratic Republicans.

44. 44. John Jay to J. C. Dongan, Feb. 27, 1792, SP, 5:361–62; WJ, LJ, 1:235.

45. 45. PJM to JJ, May 5 and May 11, 1790, PJJ, Docs. 00409, 00410; SP, 5:214–30, provides a highly informative account of Jay’s circuit-riding experience.

46. 46. JJ to PAJ, June 17, 1791, SL, 198 (emphasis in original).

47. 47. SLJ to JJ, April 23, 1790; May 13, 1792, SL, 191, 207.

48. 48. Sally Jay’s letter to her sister Susannah reported this awful death quite perfunctorily. SLJ to Susannah Livingston Symmes, Nov. 12, 1792, JJH transcription of JJP; Klepp, “Seasoning”; Horton, “Listening,” 78–80; see also SLJ to JJ, June 2, 1792, SL, 210.

49. 49. Chisholm v. Georgia, SP, 5:466–77 (emphasis in original); Johnson, “John Jay,” 76–83; Morris, John Jay, chap. 2.

50. 50. SP, 5:354.

51. 51. Dongan to JJ, Feb. 27, 1792, SP, 5:359–60; see also LJ, 1:284–85.

52. 52. JJ to Dongan, Feb. 27, 1792, SP, 5:361; see also Littlefield, “John Jay,” 96–97, 107.

53. 53. New-York Journal, April 21, 1792; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 132–35.

54. 54. Alexander Hamilton received a letter that asserted, “I expect our Election is Very Tight. Mr. Jays [sic] being one of the Emancipation Committee operates much against him”—Josh Mersereau to AH, Apr. 29, 1792, in Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 11:344; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 135; Young, Democratic Republicans, 300–303, 589; Kaminski, George Clinton, 215–27; Taylor, William Cooper’s Town, 170–96.

55. 55. Elkins and McKitrick, Age, 375–95; Morris, John Jay, 92–93; Stahr, John Jay, 317, 319–21; SL, 224.

56. 56. JJ to Edmund Randolph, Sept. 13, 1794 (emphasis in original), PJJ, Doc. 04312; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 115–18. On Mansfield and the Somerset decision see Brown, Moral Capital, 97–101; Van Cleve, Slaveholders’ Union, 31–33; Drescher, Abolition, 99–105; Oldham, “New Light”; Krikler, “Zong”; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 474–501.

57. 57. Randolph to JJ, Dec. 3, 1794, PJJ, Doc. 00619.

58. 58. Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution, chap. 1, coins the phrase “Mansfieldian moment” and illustrates, 39–56, the long shadow that the decision cast on southern perceptions of what was at stake in national politics; see also Van Cleve, A Slaveholder’s Union, 31–32, 50–56, 170–71.

59. 59. Randolph to JJ, Dec. 15, 1794, PJJ, Doc. 00620. In his earlier note, Randolph indicated to Jay that a failure to mention the evacuees at all in the treaty might lead “some quarters of the union” to “suppose themselves neglected”; Randolph to JJ, Dec. 3, 1794.

60. 60. JJ to Randolph, Feb. 5, 1795, PJJ, Doc. 04301.

61. 61. Littlefield, “John Jay,” 110–11; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 124–30.

62. 62. Stahr, John Jay, 330–31; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 25, 115, 174, 234, 235, 237, 347, 358, 362, 405, 426; Brown, Moral Capital, 123, 228–30, 235–36, 255–56, 417, 418, 422, 429, 443n; JJ to Samuel Hoare Jr., Sept. 1, 1788, PJJ, Doc. 07306; see also JJ to Edmund Burke, Dec. 12, 1795, PJJ, Doc.12824, a cordial letter indicating that a pleasant relationship between the two developed during Jay’s stay in England, the subject of this letter being horticulture.

63. 63. Wilberforce to JJ, Jan. 28, Feb. 7, May 11, Aug. 27, 1795; Nov. 7, 1805; see also Feb. 4, 1798, PJJ, Docs. 90434, 09273, 09275, 09274, 09283, 04899; Brown, Moral Capital, 259–330, 333–89; Sidbury, Becoming, 91–129; Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 25–30, 93, 94, 115, 246, 364, 380.

64. 64. SLJ to JJ, Apr. 22, 1794, SL, 224.

65. 65. JJ to SLJ, Aug. 16, 1794, SL, 230–31.

66. 66. JJ to PJM, Sept. 14, 1794, PJJ, Doc. 00427.

67. 67. SLJ to Catherine Livingston Ridley, Nov. 25, 1794, JJHx transcription of JJP document; SLJ to JJ, Dec. 5, 1794, SL, 245–47. PAJ to SLJ, Feb. 8, 1795, PJJ, Doc. 10021; PAJ to NJ, Feb. 8, 1795, JJHx transcription; JJ to SLJ, Feb. 22, 1795, Kenneth W. Rendell Inc. website, http://www.kwrendell.com/full-description.aspx?ItemID=20101602, accessed Jan. 25, 2008.

68. 68. PAJ to NJ, Nov. 8, 1794; JJ to SLJ, Mar. 13, 1795, SL, 239–40, 252–53; Stahr, John Jay, 333–34; see also SLJ to JJ, Nov. 11, 1794, SL, 241, where Sally urges John not to attempt a winter voyage home.

69. 69. Stahr, John Jay, 333–34, 339; Young, Democratic Republicans, 308, 429–42, 589.

70. 70. Stahr, John Jay, 335–37; Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 485–90; Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 18:391–92n; Elkins and McKitrick, Age, 407–49; Jay Treaty; Stewart, Opposition, 200–201, 214, 216–19; Argus, July 10, 15, 1795; Sharp, American, 117–27; Estes, “John Jay.”

71. 71. Argus, July 13, 17, 22, 1795 (emphasis in original); Dangerfield, Chancellor, 268–72; Stahr, John Jay, 232, 285–86, 318–19.

72. 72. Estes, “John Jay”; Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 479–81, 488–96.

73. 73. “The Defence No. III,” Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 18:519 (emphasis in original); “The Defence No. V,” Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 19:93; see also “Philo Camillus No. 2,” and “The Defence No. IX, 19:100–5,164; Stahr, 337–38; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 118–25; Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” 222; Estes, “Shaping”; Elkins and McKitrick, Age, 432–36.

74. 74. Hamilton, in his private correspondence with George Washington, also downplayed the worthiness of insisting on compensation: see AH, Remarks on the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 18:414–34; and AH to GW, Sept. 4, 1795, Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 19:236; see also Chernow, Hamilton, 211–16, 295, 395, 485–86, 495. Jay’s brother-in-law Brockholst Livingston, a personal and political rival, published as “Cinna” a lengthy refutation of Hamilton’s argument against demands for compensation; see Argus, Aug. 1, 1795; Elkins and McKitrick, Age, 432; Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 18:477n; Stahr, John Jay, 230–32, 285; on slavery and natural rights, see Chan, “Alexander Hamilton,” 210–16; on the changing valence of slavery as an issue in New York political discourse, see Gellman, Emancipating New York, chap. 7.

75. 75. Wiencek, Imperfect, 340–41, and more generally; see also Dunbar, Never Caught; Morgan “To Get Quit”; Twohig, “That Species of Property.”

76. 76. Littlefield, “John Jay,” 98; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 124–25; Ellis, Founding Brothers, 81–119; Boonshoft, “Doughfaces”; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 41.

5. Mastering Paradox

1. 1. Background information on Hamilton’s early life is sketchy; for a summary of Hamilton’s life see Hodges, “Hamilton, William T.,” 2:144–5; and McNeil, “Hamilton,” 3:1178.

2. 2. William Hamilton to JJ, Mar. 8, 1796, PJJ, Doc. 07312; also published in Monaghan, “Anti-Slavery Papers,” 491–93; for another approach to this letter, see Littlefield, “John Jay,” 91, 96.

3. 3. Oakes, Freedom National, 10–12, makes a particularly forceful case for the significance of gradual emancipation regimes; see also Polgar, Standard-Bearers.

4. 4. PAJ to JJ, May 13, 1796; Oct. 24, 1797, PJJ, Docs. 06067, 06058; Peter A. Jay is the presumed author of “To the Law Society,” JJ Ide Col. Bx 3-Misc. Fld Misc. Man; Den Hartog, Patriotism, 171–73.

5. 5. JJ to PAJ, Jan. 2, 1800, SL, 268–69; Jay, Memorials, 25–34; see also Pencak, “Salt of the Earth,” 247.

6. 6. JJ to MJB and NJ, June 1, 1792, SL, 209; JJ to MJB, Dec. 9, 1794, SL, 247; see also SLJ to MJB, Oct. 21, 1794, SL, 235. Letter-writing skills were stressed by both parents; valuable information about the older Jay sisters and childhood education in the family can be found in North, “Amiable,” and the informative essay “Education” by Freeman, North, and Wedge in the appendix of SL, 291–93.

7. 7. SLJ to JJ, Jan. 30, 1791, JJ Ide Col. Box 1, Correspondence, 1772–1841; SLJ to JJ, May 6, 1792; Oct. 11, 1794, SL, 206, 234.

8. 8. SLJ to JJ, May 31, 1799, SL, 264; on the bond between the two youngest siblings, see North, “Amiable,” 4; and SL, 293.

9. 9. JJ to MJB, May 7, 1792, SL, 207; JJ to SLJ, June 6, 1800, SL, 271. See SLJ to JJ, Oct. 11, 1794, SL, 234, in which Sally remarked to John in London on Maria’s “answering your expectations”; see also SL, 293.

10. 10. Taylor, William Cooper’s Town; as Taylor notes, 168–80, describes James’s ambitious father William Cooper as a political ally of Jay and New York’s Federalist elite. WJCM, 1–3, Taylor, Cooper’s Town, 339–40; Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, 44–46; SL, 293; SLJ to JJ, July 21, 1799, SL, 267.

11. 11. White, Somewhat, 34–36, 40–41, 43, 46, 82, on the changing composition and social meaning of slaveholding in New York City.

12. 12. Inventory, November 1798, PJJ, Doc. 09216; Wilentz, Rise, 84.

13. 13. Kruger, “Born to Run,” 756–66, quotation 765.

14. 14. JJ to Richard Lawrence, Feb. 9, 1797, PJJ, Doc. 08969; on Peter Williams Sr., see Hodges, Root, 126, 142, 183, 239.

15. 15. PAJ to JJ, Jan. 21, 1808, PJJ, Doc. 06126.

16. 16. Horton, “Listening,” 78–80, 86–87.

17. 17. PAJ to JJ, Jan. 9, 1797, PJJ, Doc. 06056.

18. 18. JJ to PAJ, Oct. 2, 1797, Jay Family Papers, HL; PAJ to MJB, Oct. 8, 1797, typescript excerpted from Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections, held at JJHx; Horton, “Listening,” 87–88, on Caesar’s discipline problems, and 73–74, 76–77, 81–84, 87–91, 101–6, 109–10, on John Jay’s slave management and disciplinary style.

19. 19. JJ to Lewis A. Scott, Oct. 11, Oct. 25, 1797, PJJ, Docs. 02839 (original location unknown), 02722 (original held at New York Public Library); Gellman, Emancipating New York, 66–70; Zilversmit, First, 161; Laws of the State of New York, (1792), 1:312.

20. 20. PAJ to MJB, Oct. 8, 1797, JJH typescript of Columbia doc; PJ to JJ, Oct. 24, 1797, PJJ, Doc. 06058.

21. 21. JJ to PAJ, Nov. 2, 1797, PJJ, Doc.11350 (original held at Archivo Historico Nacional—emphasis in original).

22. 22. JJ to PAJ, Jan. 26, 1799; SLJ to PAJ, June 17, 1800, PJJ, Docs. 09978, 10008 (originals held at JJH).

23. 23. PAJ to JJ, Feb. 22, 1800; JJ to PAJ, Mar. 3, 1800, PJJ, Docs. 11459, 13348; on crossing back and forth between the United States and St. Domingue during this tumultuous era, see White, Encountering, 141.

24. 24. Judith Livingston Watkins to SLJ, Aug. 6, 1798, May 5, 1800, PJJ, Docs. 06393, 08367; the letters were posted from “Salubria,” which I am assuming is near Lake Salubria in present-day Steuben County; see SLJ to Susan Livingston Symmes, Feb. 22, 1797, PJJ, Doc. 06389, which lists Seneca as her destination, which would be farther to the north in the Finger Lakes region.

25. 25. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 165; Journal of the Assembly (1796), 4–7; Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 13, 1796; WJ, LJ, 1:390–91.

26. 26. Journal of the Assembly (1796), 6–7; Journal of the Assembly (1797), 6; Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 13, 1796; Philadelphia Gazette, Jan. 9, 1796; Albany Gazette, Jan. 15, 1796; JJ to Richard Lawrence, Feb. 9, 1797, PJJ, Doc. 08969. A. White, Encountering, documents the extensive interaction of the U.S. and Haiti during this period and the impact of approximately 20,000 refugees; see esp. 62, 64, 77, 126; see also S. White, Somewhat More Independent, 31–32, 85, 143–45, 155.

27. 27. NYMS, Nov. 20, 1788; Feb. 15, 1791, 6:124, 153; North, “Amiable Children,” 7; NYMS, May 15, 1798, 9:10.

28. 28. NYMS, Nov. 19, 1793, 6:183; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 154, 156; Sayre, “Evolution”; Moseley, History, chap. 6; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 54, 134–37, 156. NYMS, May 22, 1793, May 17, 1796, 6:179, 229–30; for another instance of Frederick Jay’s involvement with the organization’s activities, see NYMS, Oct. 23, 1792; Apr. 17, May 14, 1793, 7:15, 18, 19. Frederick Jay also hosted a meeting of the NYMS Standing Committee; NYMS, June 3, 1793, 7:20.

29. 29. NYMS, Feb. 19, 1794; Jan. 17, 1797, 6:187, 243; Oct. 9, 1792; July 30, Sept. 10, 1793; Oct. 16, 1794; Nov. 22, 1796; Dec. 28, 1797; Mar. 7[?], 1799, 7:14, 20, 34, 79, 105, 115–16; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 159–60, 162–65; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 89, 103–20.

30. 30. Hodges, Root, 173–75, 183–84; Minutes of the Common Council, June 22, 1795, 158–59; White, Somewhat, 26–27, 114–49; Hodges and Brown, Pretends; McManus, History, 101–19; Groth, Slavery, 60–65, 71–72; Waldstreicher, “Reading,” 243–72; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 158, 160.

31. 31. NYMS, Nov. 26, 1795; May 17, 1796, 6:217, 228; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 115–27, 140–43, 154–55, 161–62, 165, 167–69.

32. 32. For the orations by Miller and Smith, see Gellman and Quigley, Jim Crow New York, 39–55, quotations, 40, 44, 49; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 154, 156, 159.

33. 33. Gellman, Emancipating New York, 170–71, and the book more generally.

34. 34. On politics and policy, see Sharp, American Politics, chaps. 8–10; Elkins and McKittrick, Age of Federalism, chaps. 13–14; Ellis, Founding Brothers, 185–201; Wilentz, Rise, 72–89; on the passage of the emancipation law, see Gellman, Emancipating New York, 178; Zilversmit, First, 182–83; Young, Democratic-Republicans, 529–32.

35. 35. WJ, LJ, 1:408.

36. 36. Laws of the State of New York (1799), 721–23; and Gellman and Quigley, Jim Crow New York, 52–55; on mortality, see Klepp, “Seasoning.”

37. 37. The gradual emancipation formula and the racialized disabilities implicit in laws adopted by New York and other northern states have attracted no shortage of scholarly criticism: see Melish, Disowning, 68–118, and Harris, In the Shadow, 58, 70–71. For an older economic critique, see Fogel and Engerman, “Philanthropy,” and Goldin, “Economics.”

38. 38. ACPAS, 1:191; Oakes, Freedom National; Polgar, Standard-Bearers and “To Raise Them,” makes a forceful argument for the impact and progressive trajectory of northern emancipation.

39. 39. Laws of the State of New York (1801), 207–9; NYMS, Vol. 9, May 20, 1800; May 12, 1801, 39, 59; prior legislation providing the context for this reform can be found in Laws of the State of New-York (1795), 50–53; Laws of the State of New-York (1797), 71–73; and Laws of the State of New-York (1799), 834–36. Levine-Groningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” chap. 3; Harris, In the Shadow, 132.

40. 40. Laws of the State of New York (1887), 5:547–52; Journal of the Assembly (1801), 320–21; these provisions can be compared with their predecessor laws, Laws of the State of New York (1785), 61–63, and Laws of the State of New-York (1788), 75–78; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 108.

41. 41. NYMS, May 20, Nov. 25, 1800, and Special Meeting, n.d., 9: 40, 48, 49–51.

42. 42. NYMS, Mar. 27, May 18, July 3, Oct. 3, Nov. 20, Dec. 10, 1800; June 2, 1801, 7:154–55, 157, 167, 172, 174, 176, 191.

43. 43. On Sanders case, see NYMS, June 2, June 18, 1801; Jan. 18, 1802, 7:192, 194, 204; on Duchess Country case, see Mar. 24, Apr. 30, 1801; 7:188, 190; for Ennals case, see May (n.d.), June 19, 1802, 7:225, 229; for other examples of Munro’s involvement, see NYMS, Dec. 10, 1799; April 25, 1800; Dec. 9, 1803; Feb. 3, 1804, 7:129, 158–62, 249, 254; Jan. 20, 1801, 9:52; see also Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 89, 103–20, on how early abolition societies integrated such legal work into their mission.

44. 44. NYMS, Jan. 18, 1802, 7:206–8, 9:72–74; “An Act to Prohibit the Carrying on the Slave Trade” and “An Act in Addition to the Act”; the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database indicates two English ships operating during this era by the name “Young Ralph,” though it is not clear from the individual voyage records that either is the same ship as the one mentioned in the NYMS minutes.

45. 45. NYMS, Aug. 28, 1801, 7:197–200; May 20, 1800; Sept. 17, Sept. 23, 1801, 9:40, 66–67, 69.

46. 46. It is also noteworthy that John Jay’s estranged brother-in-law Brockholst Livingston represented Madame Volunbrun in her successful effort; see Jones, “Time,” for a detailed investigation of the case; see also NYMS, Jan. 18, 1802, 9:72; Jan. 18, 1802, 7:205.

47. 47. NYMS, Dec. 9, 1807, 10:19. During this period, Munro engaged personally in a halting transition from a world of masters and slaves to a world of employers and servants in which African Americans endured far more tenuous circumstances than their employers. Munro had owned four slaves in 1790. Whether for moral or financial reasons, when he needed someone to work in his house and stables in 1800, he opted to hire a free person rather than acquire a slave. He also manumitted one of his slaves, Candice, in 1803. Munro became president of the NYMS in 1810, several months after the organization had at last adopted a rule restricting membership to non-slaveholders (see NYMS, Apr. 11, July 11, 1809; Jan. 16, 1810, 9:214, 216, 235). But there is some indication that he continued to own at least one slave. The 1814 Mamaroneck town records in Westchester County show Munro registering the birth of girl named Charlot to a woman named Nelly. The registering of the children of enslaved mothers had been a requirement since the 1799 passage of the state’s gradual emancipation law. Perhaps Munro was registering a free Black female servant’s child to ensure that as Charlot grew up there would be a clear record that she was born free, although this is mere speculation. His experience as a lawyer with the NYMS conveyed the clear message that African Americans’ free status did not protect them from all sorts of malfeasance; see PJM to JJ, Nov. 30, 1800; JJ to PJM, Dec. 4, 1800, PJJ, Docs. 04055, 00496 (originals in the Museum of the City of New York); Benton, “Slavery in Mamaroneck”; the federal censuses for 1810 and 1820 list Munro’s residence as New York City and registers the presence of only free people of color in his household.

48. 48. PAJ to JJ, Jan. 21, 1808, PJJ, Doc. 06126.

49. 49. JJ to PAJ, Jan. 27, 1808, PJJ, Doc. 90066; Horton, “Listening,” 100–101.

50. 50. John Murray Jr, to JJ, Sept. 2, 1805, PJJ, Doc. 10023; JJ to John Murray Jr., Oct. 18, 1805, PJJ, Doc. 09603; William Wilberforce to JJ, Aug. 1, 1809; Jul. 18, 1810, PJJ, Docs. 09282, 09277; JJ to Wilberforce, Nov. 8, 1809; Oct. 25, 1810, PJJ, Docs. 09281, 09278.

51. 51. NYMS, Apr. 9, 1805; Jan. 13, 1807; Jan. 17, 1809; Jan. 16, 1810, 9:133–37, 165–67, 205–6, 235, 237; Laws of the State of New-York (1807), 92–93; Public Laws, 32–33; Levine-Groningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 89. Sir James Jay, John’s eldest brother, was among the slaveholders in the region who continued to exploit legal loopholes exacerbated by the porous border between New York and New Jersey; see Hartog, Trouble, 72–73, and the 1810 US Census.

52. 52. Den Hartog, Patriotism, 186.

53. 53. Den Hartog, Patriotism, 186–87. Yale was not uncharted territory for the family; William Livingston, Sarah Jay’s father, attended college there, as did other members of the Livingston family; JJ to WJ, Feb. [n.d.], 1803; Stahr, John Jay, 368, 370; on Yale and slavery, see Wilder, Ebony & Ivy, 52, 63–64, 76–77, 95–96, 100, 109, 118, 120–22, 133–34 (quotation), 244.

54. 54. Den Hartog, Patriotism, 64, 187; Kelley, Yale, 115–39; Kingsley, Yale, 1:112–23; Dexter, Sketch, 47–54; Baldwin, Annals, chap. 8; Kafer, “Making”; see also, Dwight, Folly.

55. 55. Kelley, Yale, 138; Kingsley, Yale College, 2:257–58. Catalogue, 1–2, 8, 36–40; Yale College Commencement Programs (1807) Sterling Library; WJ to Angelina Grimke, Feb. 1, 1837, JJHF; Edward B. Coe, “The Literary Societies,” in Kingsley, Yale College, 1:307–23; Brothers in Unity, Records Book III; Secretary’s Records Book III; Minutes of meetings 1803, Apr. 27–June 26, 1816, Clubs, Societies & Organizations, Box 8, File 37, various dates and pages, Oct. 9, 1804–April 1, 1807, Archives, Sterling Library.

56. 56. Paley, Principles, 291; see also, 191–94, 279, 284–93. Paley found a positive reception from American college faculty because he offered a theologically safe form of utilitarianism, favoring rationality in the service of human happiness without a hint of the radical impulse to unseat God at the head of the universe nor to replace Christianity as the religion that sustained God’s moral purposes; see Smith, “William Paley’s Theological Utilitarianism.”

57. 57. Paley, Principles, 195–98.

58. 58. Cunningham, Timothy Dwight, 316–67, 335–36; Hinks, “Timothy Dwight,” 148–61, provides the detail on Dwight’s manumission contract and, more broadly, makes the strongest case that can be made for Dwight as an antislavery figure. As a poet, Dwight conveyed a moral impatience with slavery, if perhaps too benign a view of the conditions of slaves in the North; see Basker, Amazing Grace, xlv, 486–88; Silverman, Timothy Dwight, 51, 69–71, 113–14, 130–36, 152. One student’s 1802–1803 notes record Dwight’s comments on the “corruption of morals” in Virginia and Maryland—Moses Bradford, “Miscellaneous observations made in the recitation room: New Haven, Connecticut, 1802–1803,” Gen MSS File 158, Beinecke Library.

59. 59. David L. Daggett, “Dr. Dwight’s Observations on Paley’s Moral & Political Philosophy,” Yale Lectures Collection, Box 8, Folder 36, Sterling Library; Hezekiah Baldwin, “Notes on Locke” and “Notes on Paley,” 19, 40, 46–47, Yale Lectures Collection, Box 14, Folder 74, Sterling Library; see also “Notes from the instruction given by Dr Dwight to the Senior Class in Yale College 1812–1813,” 27–28, Yale Debates and Disputations Collection, Archives, Sterling Library; “ ‘Did All mankind descend from one pair.’ Senior Debates of Ralph Emerson in Yale College, 1810–1811,” 26–38, Ralph Emerson Papers Group 199, Box 1, Folder 6, Archives, Sterling Library; Bradford, Miscellaneous observations; on folk racialized anecdotes in New England, see Pierson, Black Yankees, 108–12, 132, 137, 156–57; Jordan, White over Black, 512–41, many years ago brilliantly explored the terrain of environmentalist notions of color in the early republic.

60. 60. Dwight Jr., President Dwight’s Decisions, published his notes of these pedagogical proceedings; see Coe “The Literary Societies,” in Kingsley, Yale College, 1:307–23.

61. 61. Brothers in Unity Records Book III; Secretary’s Records Book III, Aug. 12, 1807; Jessup Couch, Book of disputation. Common place Book, notes, 4, Yale Debates & Disputations Collection, Box 2, Folder 17, Archives, Sterling Library; “Dr. Dwight’s Decisions, 1810–1811,” 7, Ralph Emerson Papers, Box 1, file 5, Archives, Sterling Library; Dwight, President Dwight’s Decisions, 157–65.

62. 62. Bradford, “Miscellaneous observations.”

63. 63. Couch, Book of disputation, 25–27.

64. 64. Ralph Emerson, “On Slavery,” Box 1, file 13; “Did All mankind descend from one pair,” Senior Debates of Ralph Emerson in Yale College, 1810–1811, Ralph Emerson Papers, Box 1 fld 6, 13–17. Brothers in Unity, Records, Book III, Feb. 13, 1805, debated immediate abolition and rejected the proposition; William’s first appearance in the society’s record does not occur until October 9.

65. 65. Dexter, Biographical Sketches, 131, identifies WJ as the author of these essays; for background on the Literary Cabinet, see Franklin Carter, “College Magazines,” in Kingsley, Yale College, 1:339–40.

66. 66. Literary Cabinet 1:2, 4, 5, Nov. 29, Dec. 27, 1806; Jan. 10, 1807, 12–13, 28, 30, 37.

67. 67. Literary Cabinet 1:5, Jan. 10, 1807, 35–36; on the Jefferson administration as context for these youthful views, see Wilentz, Rise, 130–36. For William’s adult appreciation of his New England experience, Yale, and Dwight, see WJ to Thomas Fessenden, John A. Underwood, Samuel Tindal, Dec. 5, 1840; WJ to JJII, Nov. 2, Nov. 22, 1831; Jan. 20, 1834, JJHF—family letters; John McVickar to JJII, n.d., Nina Iselin (Tolman) Ms Col, JJHF.

68. 68. Hamilton to JJ, Mar. 8, 1796.

69. 69. SLJ to JJ, Mar. 2, 1802; SLJ to MJB, May 5, 1802; Obituary, June 2, 1802, SL, 280, 282; JJ to Rufus King, Jan. 20, 1803 (draft), SL, 283; Brier, Mr. Jay, 47–51, 55, 57–62; Brier, “Joseph Cusno,” 41–42; Stahr, John Jay, 365–67.

70. 70. PAJ to JJ, Jan. 21,1808; WJ to JJ, May 19, 1808; Mar. 13, Aug. 19, 1809, PJJ, Docs. 06126, 09651, 09653, 09654; WJ to MJB, May 17, 1809, JJP; Brier, Mr. Jay, 64–65; Budney, William Jay, 13–15.

6. Sharing the Flame

1. 1. Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, Apr. 22, 1820, Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12:158–60; Gordon-Reed and Onuf, Most Blessed, 7–8, 89, 288, 294; Ellis, American Sphinx, 264–73.

2. 2. National Recorder, Dec. 18, 1819; Evening Post (NYC), Nov. 17, 1819; WJCM, 28; WJ, Diary, Dec. 31, 1820, JJH.

3. 3. Brier, Mr. Jay, 68–78, 200, 217, 239; WJCM, 8–12; Stahr, John Jay, 366–70; North, “Amiable,” 4–5; 1810 US Federal Census, accessed through Ancestry.com.

4. 4. See Horton, “Listening,” 101–4, for a version of this story.

5. 5. PAJ to MJB, Oct. 21,1809; Sarah Louisa Jay to JJ, Jan. 15, 1810, PJJ, Docs. 10046, 09245; Genesis 28:24, 30:9; Horton, “Listening,” 103.

6. 6. JJ to PAJ, Apr. 16, 1811, PJJ, Doc. 11518 (emphasis in original).

7. 7. JJ to PAJ, Apr. 16, 1811; JJ to PAJ, May 8, 1811; JJ to PAJ, Mar. 9, 1813; PAJ to JJ, Mar. 12, 1813, PJJ, Docs. 11518, 11519, 11555, 06180.

8. 8. PAJ to JJ, Apr. 5, 1811; PAJ to MJB, Aug. 1, 1811, PJJ, Docs. 06155, 90199.

9. 9. NYMS, Nov. 17, 1807, Jan. 15, 1811, 9:175–76, 268, 271.

10. 10. PAJ to MJB, July 6, 1810; JJ to PAJ, Oct. 24, 1811, PJJ, Docs. 90194, 11525 (emphasis in original).

11. 11. PAJ to JJ, Oct. 22, 1813, PJJ, Doc. 06186; Brier, Mr. Jay, 78; Jay Heritage Center, https://jayheritagecenter.org/land-ownership-residents/ (accessed June 18, 2020).

12. 12. Transcription of Overseers of the Poor records, Rye, New York, Jan. 14, 1814, copy provided to author by Jay Heritage Society, Rye, New York. On the cultural politics of Revolutionary Era Black naming and renaming, see Nash, “Forging Freedom,” 20–27; and Berlin, Many Thousands, 239–40; White, Somewhat, 192–94; and Kruger, “Born to Run,” 437–47, 911–3, and, more broadly, chapter 14 of this stunningly rich, unpublished study.

13. 13. JJ to Sarah Louisa Jay, May 4, 1813, PJJ, Doc. 06371; Brier, Mr. Jay, 130–32.

14. 14. PAJ to JJ, July 8, July 29, 1808, PJJ. Docs. 06131, 06132; JJ to PAJ, Nov. 28, 1811; Mar. 24, 1812, PJJ, Doc. 11527, 11536; WJ to JJ, Jan. 29, 1813, PJJ, Doc. 09662 (emphasis in original). Horton, “Listening,” 111; see also WJ to JJ, Nov. 22, 1816, PJJ, Doc. 09683, in which WJ located a coachman in NYC for $12.50 per month. Brier, Mr. Jay, 117–23; evidence from Brier, “Joseph Cusno.” According to Brier, the census recorded Cusno and his family as mulatto and later as white, while Cusno became a naturalized US citizen in 1834 under a federal law that applied exclusively to whites.

15. 15. John Jay Ledger, Mar. 3, 1815, brief transcription in files of JJH; JJ to Caesar Pine, Dec. 28, 1818, PJJ, Doc. 08758 (emphasis in original).

16. 16. Kruger, “Born to Run,” 887–937, see statistics on 857, 897, 908; White, Somewhat, 47–50; Hodges, Root, 175–76, 220–21; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 147–70; Harris, In the Shadow, 77, 80, 98–100; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 196–97; Horton, “Listening,” 111; Montgomery, Citizen, 13, 25–27, 32–24; White, Somewhat, 36. On gradualism and racialized norms, see Harris, In the Shadow, 57–58, 71, 115; Melish, Disowning, 69–70, 84–118; and Gigantino, Ragged, 110–14.

17. 17. John Jay Ledgers, brief transcription in files of JJH; see Montgomery, Citizen, 39–42, on the significance of being able to quit in the era of indentured servitude’s decline.

18. 18. NYMS, Vol. 10, covers the Standing Committee’s work for 1807–17; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 109–20; Polgar, “Problem of Prejudice.”

19. 19. NYMS, Jan. 16, 1810; Nov. 25, Dec. 16, 1811; Jan. 3, 1812, 9:235, 280, 282, 289–90; Peter Jay Munro was president during this year, but not at these crucial meetings; Zilversmit, First, 211–13; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 122–32, 254; Journal of the Assembly (1815), 198, 233, 281–82, 291, 295–96, 302, 304; Journal of the Senate (1815), 176, 218–20, 231, 234, 270–73.

20. 20. JCNY, 17–18, 64–66; Polgar, “Whenever,” 2–11; Journal of the Assembly (1815), 3, 359, 420, 466, 469–78; Journal of the Senate (1815), 289, 305–6, 326–28, 330, 333; “An Act to amend an act entitled ‘An act for regulating elections,’ passed March 29, 1813,” Apr. 11, 1815, Laws of the State of New-York (1815), 146–48; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 252–53.

21. 21. Journal of the Assembly (1816), 3, 163, 211, 370–71, 382; Journal of the Senate (1816), 229; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 123–24; “Observation on draft of law concerning Slaves and Servants,” in Elizabeth Clarkson Jay Papers, Manuscripts and Special Collections, New York State Library, contains a marked-up copy of the proposed bill; I am grateful to Sarah Gronningsater for sharing her digital photos of this document.

22. 22. Journal of the Assembly (1816), 222, 264, 272, 357, 587, 604, 616; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 253–54; The Evening Post, Apr. 9, 1816; Albany Register, Apr. 25, 1815; for an article critical of legal obstructions to Black voting, see New-York Courier, Mar. 25, Apr. 10, 1816; Gronningsater, “Expressly,” brilliantly demonstrates how African American New Yorkers exercised their franchise rights in the midst of political efforts to restrict their access to the polls.

23. 23. Journal of the Assembly (1816), 50, 60–61, 419; Journal of the Senate (1816), 113–14, 115, 126, 145; Journal of the Assembly (1815), 305–6; “An Act concerning the maintenance of certain person, formerly slaves,” Mar. 22, 1816, Laws of the State of New-York (1816), 37.

24. 24. Jay, Memorials, 92–93; Colden quoted from Albany Advertiser, Jan. 8, 1817 (emphasis in original); Public Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins, 1:106–7; Zilversmit, First, 213–14; Levine-Gronningsater, “Delivering Freedom,” 124–25; JCNY, 67–72; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 205–6.

25. 25. JJ to PAJ, Mar. 12, 1817, PJJ, Doc. 90065; Horton, “Listening,” 109–10.

26. 26. NJ to MJB, Mar. 2, 1818, PJJ, Doc. 06036.

27. 27. 1810 United States Federal Census; 1820 United States Federal Census; search through Ancestry.com; the 1820 entry for “John Jay” requires entering “John Fay” in the search engine; Horton, “Listening,” is surprisingly silent on the entire subject of Clarinda’s manumission, though eloquent on the conditions of the later years of her life.

28. 28. ACPAS, 2:632–33, 639–40, 641–43, 649–56, 662–70, quotations 642, 651, 655, 670; Polgar, Standard-Bearers, 286–89.

29. 29. Mason, Slavery & Politics, 177–81; Richards, Slave Power, 52–54; Brown, “Missouri Crisis”; Forbes, Missouri Compromise, 33–68; Wilentz, Rise, 222–31; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 186–87; Hammond, “President,” esp. 848–89.

30. 30. Accounts of the meeting include Evening Post (NYC), Nov. 17, 1819; The National Advocate (NYC), Nov. 18, 1819; Salem Gazette (Mass.), Nov. 23, 1819. News of the meeting spread all the way to Edwardsville, Illinois, near St. Louis, Missouri (Edwardsville Spectator, Dec. 25, 1819); see also Jay, Memorials, 94.

31. 31. For a profile of Boudinot, see Den Hartog, Patriotism, 93–115.

32. 32. JJ to Elias Boudinot, Nov. 17, 1819, PJJ, Doc. 08767 (emphasis preserved from the handwritten letter); National Recorder, Dec. 18, 1819; WJ, LJ, 1:452–53; Stahr, John Jay, 372–73.

33. 33. Arbena, “Politics”; Richards, Slave Power, 49–51; Papers Relative to the Restriction of Slavery; New-England Galaxy & Masonic Magazine, Dec. 17, 1819, Vol II, No. 14, p. 2, Stahr, John Jay, 373; New York Daily Advertiser, Dec. 15, 1819; Albany Gazette, Dec. 16, 1819; Rhode Island American, Dec. 17, 1819; New-York American, Dec. 18, 1819; Vermont Journal, Dec. 20, 1819; (Newark, N.J.) Centinel of Freedom, Jan. 4, 1820; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 187.

34. 34. In JJ to Daniel Raymond, Dec. 21, 1819, in WJ, LJ, 2:405–6, Jay expressed approval of Daniel Raymond, The Missouri Question (1819), a pamphlet that denied that either colonization or westward extension of slavery would weaken the institution and emphatically identified gradual emancipation (35) as the only viable means of ending the institution; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 187–88.

35. 35. WJ to Boudinot, quoted in WJCM, 28–9; JJ to Raymond, Dec. 21, 1819; Budney, William Jay, 20–21; Den Hartog, Patriotism, 191 and 186–200 generally, emphasizes William’s more avowedly religious approach to politics than his older brother’s and also notes that the Missouri letter was “his first known objection to slavery.”

36. 36. Wilentz, Rise, 232–35.

37. 37. WJ, Diary, Dec. 31,1820; Wilentz, Rise, 235–36; JCNY, 84–86; Gellman, Emancipating New York, 209; Moore, Missouri Controversy, 138–39, 142–59.

38. 38. Riley, Slavery, 214–41.

39. 39. Munro et al., Address; PAJ to MJB, Mar. 17, 1820, JJ; Fox, Decline, 198–99, 206–28; PAJ to JJ, Jan. 28, Mar. 18, Apr. 1, Apr. 7, Apr. 15, May 20, 1819, PJJ, Docs. 06224, 06226, 06228, 06229, 06231, 06232; JJ to PAJ, Feb. 2, Mar. 12, Mar. 16, Mar. 21, Apr. 13, Apr. 20, 1819, PJJ, Docs.13425, 90099, 13424, 13515, 06230, 11591; PAJ to DeWitt Clinton, Apr. 10, 1819 (draft); Apr. 24, 1821, JJP; Den Hartog, Patriotism, 177; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 257, 365, 368; see later discussion on the disposition of the Rye property.

40. 40. Polgar, “Whenever,” 11.

41. 41. Reports of the Proceedings, 134–35. Sitting in the Albany gallery on September 12, the same day that the new outlines of racialized democracy in New York were first officially proposed, William contrasted in his diary the impressive setting of the general assembly chamber with “the crude & jacobinical speeches of unprincipled & ignorant demagogues.” See WJ, Diary, Sept. 12, Dec. 31, 1821.

42. 42. JCNY, 103.

43. 43. JCNY, 105–8.

44. 44. JCNY, 111–14.

45. 45. JCNY, 138–42.

46. 46. JCNY, 142; Reports of the Proceedings, 202.

47. 47. PAJ to JJ, Oct. 3, 1821, PJJ, Doc. 06250.

48. 48. JCNY, 176–83.

49. 49. JCNY, 179.

50. 50. JJ to PAJ, Oct.16, 1821, PJJ, Doc. 11609; see also PAJ to JJ, Oct. 10, Nov. 15, Nov. 22, 1821, PJJ, Docs. 06251, 06253, 06254.

51. 51. JCNY, 180, 187; Reports of the Proceedings, 370, 377, 378; Polgar, “Whenever They Judge it Expedient,” 13–17.

52. 52. JCNY, 194–98; Reports of the Proceedings, 487.

53. 53. PAJ to JJ, Oct. 28, 1821, PJJ, Doc. 06252; PAJ to Mary Clarkson Jay, Nov. 8, 1821; Reports of the Proceedings, 657, 661, 664.

54. 54. ACPAS, Nov. 27, Nov. 28, 1821, 2:780, 783–85, quotations 784.

55. 55. ACPAS, Nov. 28, 1821, 2:790–98, quotations 791, 792, 793; see also Oct. 3, 1821, 2:748; Mason, Slavery and Politics, 206. Subsequently, the NYMS and the American Convention moved more decisively to embrace the notion that emancipation should be coupled with Black removal; Harris, In the Shadow, 140–41; Peter A. Jay too softened his opposition to Black emigration, forming a group seeking to cooperate with the government of Haiti to recruit free Blacks to relocate to the Black republic where “they and their posterity may be placed in a situation to attain to a higher rank in civilization than we conceive it possible for them to arrive at among ourselves”; M. Clarkson, Peter A. Jay, J. Grisom; Geo Newbold, Theodore Dwight et al to Robert Walsh, Esq., July 10, 1824; [Box 1013B, Cope Collection, Thomas Pym Cope 1768–1854, Friends Mtg. Affairs; folder Cope, Thomas Pym (letters to)], Haverford Quaker Collection, scan graciously shared with author by Sara Fanning; Wilder, Ebony & Ivy, 257.

56. 56. Jay, Memorials, 64–81, 123–14; Pencak, “Salt of the Earth,” 247–48.

57. 57. WJ to JJ, July 4, July 26, 1816, PJJ, Docs. 09670, 09671; WJ to Elias Boudinot, Mar. 25, 1816; [WJ], Memoir, quotation 14; WJ to Boudinot, Apr. 25, May 15, 1816, all in JJH [scanned from Elias Boudinot Papers]; WJ to Rev. Dr. Romeyn, May 13, 1817, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, American Prose, Jay, William Author; Brier, Mr. Jay, 224. Den Hartog, Patriotism, profiles the Jays, father and sons, chaps. 1, 7 and 8, to chart what he describes more broadly as a transformation of Federalism from a political movement to one centered on religious and social reform; see also Heale, “From City Fathers.” On Peter’s involvement, see PAJ, May 13, 1816, two drafts of notes for an address to American Bible Society, NYHS—Ide collection box 3-misc /misc man folder; PAJ, in Proceedings of a Meeting, 9–15; Den Hartog, Patriotism, 112, 181, 188.

58. 58. WJ, Diary, entries for Christmas, Dec. 28, Dec. 31, 1817, and “Summary of political events for 1817.”

59. 59. North, “Amiable,” 4–5; WJ, Diary (entries Apr. 12, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27; May 11, 1818); quotation Apr. 27; MJB to WJ, May 6, 1812, on closeness of William and Sally. The following July, William and Augusta would name their fourth child Sarah Louisa.

60. 60. WJ. Diary, May 7, May 11, June 24, Dec. 31, 1818; June 16, 1819.

61. 61. His childhood friend and soon-to-be-famous novelist James Fenimore Cooper also assisted in securing this promotion; see WJ to James Fenimore Cooper, June 20, 1820, Cooper, ed. Correspondence, 1:88; Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, 247, 609 n.25; WJCM, 14; Budney, William Jay, 18; WJ, Diary, June 15, 1820.

62. 62. WJ, Diary, June 1, 1819; January 19, 1821.

63. 63. For examples of such punishments meted out by the Westchester courts, see General Sessions Minutes, Oyer & Terminer—Misc. 1830 Series 250 A-0312 (8)L, folder 9, Sept. 24, 1827; folder 10, May 26, 1828; folder 11, Sept. 23, 1828, WCA; Trendel, William Jay, 95–104, offers a valuable evaluation of William Jay’s “law and order” judicial record and temperament.

64. 64. Den Hartog, Patriotism, 112–15; JJ to S. S. Woodhull, Dec. 17, 1821; ABS to JJ, Jan. 3, 1822; PAJ to JJ, Jan.11, 1822; JJ to PAJ, Jan. 14, 1822; ABS to JJ, May 9,1822, PJJ, Docs. 13372 (original at JJH), 13373, 06255, 06256, 13377 & 13378 (original held by JJH). For two letters in which the sons acted as conduits for John to ABS meetings, see JJ to SS Woodhull, Apr. 23, 1822, and JJ to PAJ, Apr. 21, 1823, PJJ, Docs. 02922 (original held by ABS), 09992 (held by unknown repository); JJ, May 9, 1822, PJJ, Doc. 02918 (original held by ABS); Brier, Mr. Jay, 225–28.

65. 65. WJ [A Churchman of the Diocese of N-Y, pseud.], Letter to the Right Reverend Bishop Hobart, esp. 18, 49, 78; see also Bishop John Hobart [Corrector, pseud.], A Reply to a Letter to the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart; WJ, A Letter to the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart, in Reply to the Pamphlet Addressed By Him to the Author; Bishop John Hobart [Corrector, pseud.], A Reply to a Letter Addressed to the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart, by William Jay; WJ, A Reply to a Second Letter to the Author.

66. 66. WJ, Prize Essays, quotations 3, 32, 34–35.

67. 67. WJCM, 29; Gregoire, Enquiry; [Heyrich], Immediate. For evidence of William’s reading Gregoire, see WJ to Angelina Grimké, Feb. 1, 1837 and file notation, JJHF. Evidence of the influence of Heyrich is more speculative; see Sturge, Visit, 55–56; and Mayer, All on Fire, 70, 642n; Davis, Slavery, 145, 183–84; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 178–80, 639n.

68. 68. DeWitt Clinton, Sept. 20, 1826, Letter Book 7 (1825–26), 455, DeWitt Clinton Papers, Columbia University; WJ to PAJ, Sept. 23, 1826; WJCM, 29–31; WJ, View, 1st ed., 34.

69. 69. McMaster, History, 221–23; Journal of the House of Representatives, 224, 280, 309, 341, 367, 438, 457, 727.

70. 70. WJ to Cooper, Jan. 5, 1827, in Cooper, ed., Correspondence 1:114.

71. 71. WJ to Walker Todd, Jan. 8, 1828, JJHF; see also WJ to Minor, Apr. 21, 1828, JJHF; WJCM, 32–36; see also WJ to Thomas S. Williams, May 4, 1829, Papers of Timothy Pitkin, 1681–1847, HL.

72. 72. Oakes, Freedom National, 9–11; Scorpion’s Sting, 61, 107; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 187–88, 190–91. See chapters 2 and 4 of this book for fuller discussion of this decision and its implications.

73. 73. Will of Mary Jay, typed transcription; Will of (Blind) Peter Jay, typed transcription; 1810 US Census, Ancestry.com; Brier, Mr. Jay, 78; Jay Heritage Center, https://jayheritagecenter.org/land-ownership-residents/.

74. 74. JJ to PAJ, Nov. 4, 1824, PJJ, Doc. 06284; Brier, Mr. Jay, 131.

75. 75. Van Der Lyn, July 22, 1826, 1:91; Brier, Mr. Jay, 134, 239, 256–57; WJ, LJ, 1:443–44.

76. 76. WJ to PAJ, Mar. 28, 1827, PJJ, Doc. 11629; WJ to JCJ, Apr. 4, 1827, JJHF-WJ family letters. See also WJ to PAJ, Dec. 16, 1828, PJJ Doc. 11637.

77. 77. WJ to John Clarkson Jay, Mar. 18, 1828, JJHF-WJ family letters. Although Irish immigrants were the largest group of the Society’s applicants for placement, hundreds of free African Americans also sought out the Society’s assistance to find work. First Annual Report; Second Annual Report, see esp. 10–12; Armstead, Freedom’s Gardener, 55–56; Harris, In the Shadow, 183.

78. 78. For this and subsequent quotations from the will, see John Jay’s Will and Surrogate Court Record, Apr. 18, 1829, PJJ, Doc. 07377.

79. 79. Stahr, John Jay, 384.

7. Joining Forces

1. 1. Liberator, June 29, 1833.

2. 2. WJ to PAJ, Dec. 1, 1831 (typescript not original; emphasis retained from typescript); PAJ to WJ, May 16, 1833; see also WJ to MJB, Feb. 6, 1833; WJ to Anna Jay, Apr. 1, 1833; WJ to JJII, c. Apr. 5, 1833; Anna Jay to WJ, Apr. 8, 1836.

3. 3. WJ, LJ, 1:459, 463; see also1:294, 400, 428; and WJ to Timothy Pitkin, Feb. 21, 1832, Papers of Timothy Pitkin, 1681–1847, HL.

4. 4. WJ, LJ, 1:232–35, 285, 390–91, 396, 402, 408, 452–53.

5. 5. [Sedgwick], Practicability, esp. 10–14, 25–30, 37–42; WJ letter to Sedgwick quoted from WJCM, 37–38; WJCM, attributes the pamphlet to Henry D. Sedgwick, but the online Collections Guide to the Sedgwick Family Papers curated by the Massachusetts Historical Society indicates Theodore as the author; see http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0248. WJ to Cooper, Dec. 11, 1832, in Cooper, Correspondence, 1:301–3; Wilentz, Rise, 374–79; see also WJ to MJB, Jan. 7, 1833, on William’s anticipation that congressional compromise would stave off “either Civil war, or a dissolution of the Union.”

6. 6. Liberator, June 29, 1833 (emphasis in original); the letter was also published in The Abolitionist, Aug. 1, 1833; the latter was the official newspaper of the Garrisonian New England Anti-Slavery Society, with Garrison and his partner Isaac Knapp as publishers; Henderson, “History,” 5; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 81–82.

7. 7. WJ to Arthur Tappan, June 24, 1833, JJHF; Henderson, “History,” 9–10; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 103–4; Budney, William Jay, 30–32; Hewitt, “Peter Williams, Jr.,”117; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 224–25.

8. 8. Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 3–4, 6, 9; JJII, Constitutional Principles, 7 (collected in a bound volume of JJII speeches at NYHS); WJCM, 49–52, recounts Jay’s relationship to the process of founding the AAS; Mayer, All on Fire, 174–77; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, chap. 7, esp. 225–27; First Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 6; Hewitt, “Peter Williams, Jr.,” 118–19.

9. 9. William Lloyd Garrison to George W. Benson, Apr. 23, 1834, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:326–27; First Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 38; Henderson, “History,” 31.

10. 10. Union League Club, Memorial, May 15, 1894, JFP; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 114; according to Tuckerman, WJCM, 55, John Jay II lived at Cox’s house at the time of the riot.

11. 11. Numerous historians have described and accounted for the 1834 riots. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 556–59, offer a compelling synthesis; their account of this complex set of events should be supplemented by Kerber, “Abolitionists”; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 112–19; Richards, Gentlemen, 15, 43, 113–22, 132–34, 150–55; Weinbaum, Mobs, 22–33, 39–41, 44–49, 56; Gilje, Road, 152–70; Swift, Black Prophets, 64–71; Hodges, Root, 227–28, 335n2; David Ruggles, 63–65; Peterson, Black Gotham, 99–102. In addition to Richards, Gilje, and Weinbaum, for broader perspectives on mobs and riots, anti-abolitionist and otherwise during this era, see Wilentz, Rise, 408–10; Prince, “Great”; and Grimsted, “Rioting.”

12. 12. MBJ and Augusta Jay to JJJII, July 14, 1834, copy and transcription, JJII Box 1 (State), JJH; Richards, Gentlemen; see also Weinbaum, Mobs, 25–28; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 559; Peterson, Black Gotham, 99.

13. 13. Biographers and historians have not properly accounted for the deeply intertwined nature of the two men’s abolitionist careers; Pencak, “Salt of the Earth,” 246; Scharf, History, 536, however, are suggestive.

14. 14. Preamble and Constitution of the New-York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 7, 8; Muelder, Theodore Dwight Weld, 163; “Preamble and constitution of the anti-slavery society of Lane Seminary,” The Standard.—Extra. [n.d.]; Liberator, Aug. 3, 1833, Apr. 12, 1834; Leavitt, “Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society”; for additional context see Wilder, Ebony & Ivy, 265–70.

15. 15. Foner, “Columbia & Slavery,” Hawkey, “Hardly”; Kallstrom, “Entrenched”; and Odessky, “Possessed,” provide a wealth of information about Columbia during the era that John Jay II attended; for further background, see also, McVickar, Life, esp. 30, 39.

16. 16. For examples of his parents’ concern for his education and character development before and during college, see WJ to JJII, Nov. 22, 1831; Oct. 10, 1832; Jan. 20, May 31, June 12, 1834; Sarah Louisa Jay to JJII, Feb. 5, 1834, all in JJHF-family letters; AJ to JJII, May 18, Oct. 14, 1831; Mar. 22, 1832; Oct. 7, 1834; WJ, Feb. 4, Apr. 5, Apr. 13, 1832; and for JJII’s responses, see JJII, notes from a sermon by Francis Lister Hawks, Jan. 12, 1833, all in JFP. On the sermon by Mr. Holdridge, May 3, 1835; and Notes on sermon by Mr. Eastburn in Ascension Church, June 14, 1835, JFP.

17. 17. WJ to JJII, c. Apr. 5, 1833; WJ to JJII, Jan. 20, Feb. 5, Mar. 15, 1834, JJHF-family letters; Petition from the Freshman Class, Columbia College, re weekly reports, Oct. 17, 1832, JFP; Odessky, “Possessed of but One Idea,” notes, that JJII founded a fraternity chapter at Columbia during his senior year. See also JJII, 1836 draft, explaining to the Peithologian Society, JFP, that he had been less involved less of late in its activities because he had gotten engaged, further evidence of JJII’s eagerness to embrace the trappings of adulthood at an early age; on his early marriage plans, see also JJII to Eleanor Kingsland Field Jay, c. Oct. 10, 1836; Scharf, History, 536; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 112, 140.

18. 18. John Stanford to JJII, July 30, 1829, JJII Nina Iselin (Tolman) Ms Col, JJHF; AJ to JJII, May 11, 1835.

19. 19. Address of the New-York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 3, 7, 29; the pamphlet (13) footnoted a May 1834 published letter by William Jay on the latest judicially sanctioned kidnapping of a free Black man in Washington, D.C.

20. 20. Davis, Joshua Leavitt, 108; morally supervisory uplift by both whites and Blacks is a major theme of Harris, In the Shadow; First Annual Report of the New-York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 13.

21. 21. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 120–21; Kerber, “Abolitionists,” 36–37; Hodges, David Ruggles, 67; Henry C. Ludlow to WJ, n.d.; WJ to Ludlow, Oct. 25, 1834.

22. 22. Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 11; Letter from Judge Jay, to the Secretary of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society [From the Standard and Democrat],” Nov. 17, 1835, WJ clipping file, JJH; Henderson, “History,” 65, 69–70; WJ to Oliver Wetmore, Sept. 26, 1836, JJHF; “[From the New York American]” 1835, in WJ clipping file, JJH; WJ, Inquiry in MWS, 52, 116–19; WJ to William L. Stone, Aug. 4, 1836; Johnson and Wilentz, Kingdom, detail Matthias’s story. This account of the connection between the riots and William Jay’s plunge into the national abolitionist crusade is consistent with William Jay’s original biographer, Tuckerman, WJCM, 54–58, and with his most recent biographer, Budney, William Jay, 1–2, 33–35; see also Kerber, “Abolitionists,” 37; Trendel, William Jay, 181–83; Hodges, David Ruggles, 67.

23. 23. Many historians have told this story, including Sidbury, Becoming; Campbell, Middle Passages, 16–56, 60–64; Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, 183–208; see also Goodman, Of One Blood, 15–35; for a recent erudite assessment of colonization, see Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, 83–192.

24. 24. WJ to William L. Stone, Feb. 4, 1829; WJ to Robert Smith (draft), Jan. 2, 1834; Douglass, Eulogy, 25–26; Garrison, Thoughts; McDaniel, Problem, 37–39, 45, 46, 129; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 39–44; Mayer, All on Fire, 54, 61–62, 72–73, 77–78, 116, 134–40, 216–17, 641n, who argues that Garrison’s acceptance of colonizationism had been tepid; Hodges, David Ruggles, 70–75; Ruggles, Extinguisher; [Ruggles], Brief Review.

25. 25. WJ, Inquiry, epigraph and preface; unless otherwise noted, quotations and page numbers are taken from the first edition, published in 1835 by Leavitt, Lord & Co. in New York and Crocker and Brewster in Boston; in 1840, the AAS brought out a tenth edition of Inquiry.

26. 26. WJ, Inquiry, 21, 22.

27. 27. WJ, Inquiry, on Crandall and Connecticut, see 25–46; quotations 39, 46, 52.

28. 28. WJ, Inquiry, 53–69, quotation 69.

29. 29. WJ, Inquiry, 73, 75, 76, 77, 83, 90.

30. 30. WJ, Inquiry, 86, 98.

31. 31. WJ, Inquiry, 103; WJ, LJ, 1:235; Ruggles, Extinguisher, 32.

32. 32. WJ, Inquiry, 105–15, quotations 106, 107, 113; interestingly, Ruggles, Extinguisher, 10–11, also made an analogy to temperance.

33. 33. WJ, Inquiry, 119; JCNY, 179.

34. 34. Budney, William Jay, 36–37.

35. 35. WJ, Inquiry, 134, 136.

36. 36. WJ, Inquiry, 140–44, quotations 143, 148.

37. 37. WJ, Inquiry, 164; Jefferson, Notes, 138, 163.

38. 38. WJ, Inquiry, 166–73, quotation 172–73; [Heyrich], Immediate, 7.

39. 39. WJ, Inquiry, 176, 177, 185, 184–88; see Rugemer, Problem, 160–65, for a careful and informative reading of this part of Jay’s argument.

40. 40. WJ, Inquiry, quotations 194, 198, 202, see also 194–96.

41. 41. WJ, Inquiry, 189–90; WJ, Inquiry, 2nd ed., 194.

42. 42. WJ, Inquiry, 191–94; Rugemer, Problem, 164; Foner, Free Soil; Drescher, Abolition, 264, 296–97, 391–92.

43. 43. WJ, Slavery in America, vi; Filler, Crusade, 62; Budney, William Jay, 37–38; WJCM, 59–62; Trendel, William Jay, 188–89; Henderson, “History,” 24–25; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 114.

44. 44. AJ to MBJ, July 17,1830; also AJ to MBJ, Dec. 13, 1830 from NYC asking Maria to say hi to all the servants.; AJ to JJII, Oct. 8, 1831.

45. 45. AJ to MBJ, Jay, Aug. 5, 1830, JJH transcription in file provided to author marked Primary Documents w/ Mention of Slaves and Free Blacks; AJ to JJII, Feb. 19, 1831; Mar. 22, 1832.

46. 46. AJ to JJII, Oct. 8, 1833, in letter by MBJ to JJII, copy of transcription from Family Papers, in file provided by JJH.

47. 47. Anna Jay to NJ, Nov. 17, 1832; Catherine Beecher to WJ, Dec. 9, 1831, AJ to JJII, Dec. 17, 1831, Mar. 22, 1832; Sarah Louisa Jay to JJII, Feb. 5, 1834, JJH; MBJ (in a note from Augusta) to JJII, Feb. 22,1834; Horton, “Listening,” 118; MBJ to JJII, July 14, 1836, JJH copy of transcription from Family Papers, in file provided by JJH; see also MBJ to MJB, Feb. 6, 1836, JJH transcription of Columbia University letter.

48. 48. WJ to JJII, Apr. 13, 1834, JJHF; JJII to WJ, Apr. 12 and May 1, 1837, Nina Iselin (Tolman) Ms Col Friends gift, JJH. Gender divisions or not, in their letters to John II in the wake of the riots, both Maria and Augusta mentioned his role in acquiring a cook for the family in New York City; MBJ & AJ, July 14, 1834, scan and transcription, JJH, JJII Box 1 (State).

49. 49. WJ to JJII, May 14, 1836.

50. 50. Eliza Jay to WJ, May 2, 1836, JJH transcription of Family Papers; WJ to JJII, Jan. 14, 1837.

51. 51. Jay, Inquiry, 198.

52. 52. Commercial Advertiser, Mar. 24, 1835, quoted in Reese, Letters, 66; Filler, Crusade, 62.

53. 53. “Judge Jay against Colonization,” African Repository 11, no. 5 (May 1835): 132–33.

54. 54. Reese, Brief Review. For his effort, Reese had drawn the withering scorn of Ruggles; see Hodges, David Ruggles, 70–77, and note 24 earlier.

55. 55. Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 245; Reese, Letters, iii.

56. 56. Reese, Letters, vi–viii, x (emphasis in original).

57. 57. Reese, Letters, 79.

58. 58. Reese, Letters, 82, 83, 86.

59. 59. Reese, Letters, 59–60.

60. 60. Reese, Letters, 111.

61. 61. Reese, Letters, 115–16.

62. 62. JJII to AJ, June 1, 1835, Nina Iselin (Tolman) Ms Col Friends gift, JJH. That John Jay II took the attacks on his father personally is clear from the commentary, “Some remarks on an editorial review of Jay’s Inquiry into the Colonization & Anti-Slavery Societies by the editor of the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ ” blasting that paper’s review of Inquiry, JFP (folder dated Jan. 1, 1838, but the document itself contains no date and is almost certainly from 1835).

63. 63. WJ to JJII, June 3, 1835; see also WJ to JJII, May 8, 1835, in which William asks his son to forward an item in a colonizationist publication that took note of Inquiry.

64. 64. WJ to PAJ, June 11, 1835.

65. 65. JJ, May 9, 1822, PJJ, Doc. 02918 (original held by American Bible Society).

66. 66. WJ to D. M. Reese, M. D., Jan. 11, 1836, American Prose, HSP; WJ to William L. Stone, Aug. 4, 1836.

67. 67. WJ to Rev. D. Turner, Mar. 20, 1837, JJHF (emphasis in original); see also WJ to Turner, Sept. 1, 1836, JJHF.

68. 68. JJII, Report to New York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, c. Jan. 1, 1836, JFP.

69. 69. WJ to MJB, Mar. 16, 1837; MJB to JJII, Apr. 14, 1837, JJH transcription from Family in file provided by JJH; Horton, “Listening,” 123.

70. 70. Horton, “Listening” has deeply informed my sense of Zilpah’s trauma (on Clarinda, Zilpah, and isolation, see esp. 113, 118, 122–23, 125), as did Horton’s presentation of her research in November 2000 at Symposium: Slavery and Abolition in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century New York, The John Jay Homestead State Historic Site, Katonah, New York.

8. A Conservative on the Inside

1. 1. WJ to Samuel May, Apr. 20, 1836, JJHF (emphasis in original).

2. 2. Emancipator, Feb. 1, 1836.

3. 3. Liberator, Sept. 12, 1835.

4. 4. Emancipator, Jan. 1, 1836; see also Emancipation Extra. Protest of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Dec. 26, 1835, clipping file, JJH.

5. 5. WJ to LT, June 7 (draft), June 8, June 21 (draft), 1836, JJHF (emphasis in original).

6. 6. Liberator, July 9, 1836; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 251.

7. 7. Second Annual Report of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society, 17; WJ to Joel Doolittle (draft), Feb. 11, 1836.

8. 8. Emancipator, Dec. 1, 1836; WJ to Rev. Oliver Whetmore, Sept. 26, 1836, JJHF.

9. 9. WJ to Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Nov. 25, 1836, JJHF.

10. 10. Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 19, 171, 178–80, 282, 283.

11. 11. WJ to GS, July 12, 1836, GSP (emphasis in original).

12. 12. I was informed of Tappan’s role in a personal email from the scholar Michaël Roy.

13. 13. Cabinet of Freedom, Vols. 1–3 (New York: John S. Taylor, 1836); see also Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” 527–29. Classic but still valuable analyses of antebellum reform include Thomas, “Romantic Reform”; Walters, American Reformers; and Cross, Burned-Over District.

14. 14. Although Smith identified with the Garrisonian AAS, he continued until 1837 to consider colonization itself as a viable reform program if uncoupled from hostility to a broader emancipation. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 6–9, 19, 163–70, 187, 214; Stauffer, Black Hearts, 75–6, 81–82, 92–102; Henderson, “History,” 27, 32–41, 47–48, 66–69, 94.

15. 15. Fernald, Memoirs, 1–10, 185–90; Dictionary of American Biography, 3:347; Griswold, Prose, 354–56. Bush would later go on to become one of the nation’s leading Swedenborgian intellectuals, probing the mysteries of humans’ eternal spiritual essence and hoping to move humankind closer to earthly perfection; see Fernald, Memoirs, 10–31. N. F. Cabell in Fernald, Memoirs, 197–220, offers a nineteenth-century contextualization of Bush and the Swedenborgian challenge to conventional Protestantism. For modern scholarly appraisals of Swedenborg and of his influence in the United States, see Cross, Burned-Over District, 341–47; Walters, American Reformers, 167–68.

16. 16. Cabinet of Freedom, Vol. 1, No. 1.

17. 17. Clarkson, in Cabinet, 1:iv–v; 2:232–34, 240–45. Clarkson’s volume was only sporadically reprinted in the United States. Philadelphia editions came off the presses in 1808 and 1809, and another edition was printed in Wilmington, Delaware. Publication information on Clarkson’s book is based on reviewing American Bibliography; Checklist of American Imprints and a search of the WorldCat online database.

18. 18. Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 222; see GS to Thomas Clarkson, Nov. 2, 1840; Apr. 9, 1841, Papers of Thomas Clarkson, HL, for expressions of almost worshipful admiration, including joy at receiving a lock of Clarkson’s hair. On Parliament, see especially the last third of Clarkson’s History, including, Cabinet, 3:220. On the gag rule, see Wirls, “Only Mode”; Miller, Arguing.

19. 19. Clarkson, in Cabinet, 2:120, 32–35; Rugemer, Problem, 142.

20. 20. For Clarkson’s discussion of the adoption of this icon, see Cabinet, 2:64–65.

21. 21. Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” provides an important publication history of Ball’s narrative. Starling, Slave Narrative, divides this survey of the slave narrative into “The Slave Narrative before 1836” and “The Slave Narrative after 1836” and identifies the Ball narrative as “the first book-length narrative published under the aegis of the abolitionists” (106); he provides useful information about its popularity and publication history (106–7, 226–27, 232). Taylor, I Was Born a Slave, 1:xx–xxi, estimates that there were ten editions of Ball’s narrative prior to the Civil War and that it was one of the “most popular”; Ball’s is one of the oldest of the twenty narratives Taylor selected for his two volumes, in part chosen based on popularity. Taylor’s distinction between earlier “spiritual journey” oriented African American memoirs and those specifically designed as antislavery exposés also supports the idea that Ball’s narrative should be considered as being on the leading edge of Black-voiced American abolitionist autobiographical writing. Of the “Black Autobiographies and Memoirs” listed in the bibliography of John Blassingame, Slave Community, 384–87, Ball’s is among the earliest listed; Davis and Gates, Slave’s Narrative, 319–27, offer a chronology that also supports the notion that Ball’s narrative precedes the steady stream of narratives that followed.

22. 22. Roy, “Cheap Editions,” warns against reifying the slave narrative as a single genre, when the conditions of production and distribution of various antebellum African American autobiographies differed markedly; he also suggests that the presumed whiteness of the audience is more speculation than fact.

23. 23. WJ to Prof. Bush, Aug. 6, 1836, HSP; WJ to GS, Sept. 13, 1836, JJHF and GSP (emphasis in original); WJ to Isaac Fisher, Nov. 24, 1836, JJHF; Foner, editorial introduction to Ball, Fifty Years, v–vi; Taylor, I Was Born a Slave, 1:260–22. For a modern scholarly defense of the dependability of Ball’s narrative, see Blassingame, Slave Testimony, xxiii–xxvi, and Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” 540. For the white abolitionist front matter to the Douglass and Jacobs narratives, see Gates, Classic; I am inferring that Jay authored the preface to the Cabinet of Freedom edition of Fifty Years in Chains, based on Jay’s spearheading the project, suggesting an introduction, and the language of the introduction itself.

24. 24. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, i–ii, iv, v, vi–viii; Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” 529–32, 538, 539. On the standard features of published slave narratives, including attestation of authenticity, see Olney, “ ‘I Was Born,’ ” 152.

25. 25. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 15–23, 38–39; Johnson, Soul by Soul, a landmark study of the internal slave trade, makes use of the Ball narrative several times.

26. 26. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 54–55. Interestingly, Isaac Fisher, who originally produced Ball’s narrative, emphasized Ball’s encounters with the “old aristocracy” in his brief preface to the narrative—see Yuval, I Was Born a Slave, 264.

27. 27. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 124–27, 162, 164–66, 187, 271, 343, 372–78, 483.

28. 28. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 480–83, 497, 514–17. It is worth noting that Isaac Fisher openly stated that he “carefully excluded” all expressions of “bitterness” from the Ball narrative, and thus set the tone of the account at the end as elsewhere; see Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” 517–21, 532; and Yuval, I Was Born a Slave, 264; for further remarks on Fisher’s editorial interventions, see Andrews, To Tell a Free Story, 81–86.

29. 29. WJ to LT, Mar. 25, 1837 (emphasis in original) JJHF; Emancipator, June 15, 1837; also mentioned on May 4, 1837; Roy, “Vanishing Slave,” 532–45, describes the volume’s notoriety, including a new edition in the 1850s. Starling, Slave Narrative, 227–28, confirms that the revelation that a contemporaneous slave narrative was actually the product of a white novelist fueled suspicions of the Ball book; see also Yuval, I Was Born a Slave, 261; and Blassingame, Slave Testimony, xxiii–xxvi.

30. 30. Although Newman, Transformation, may overcredit his own organizing premise, nonetheless he rightly highlights the emergence of “mass action” as a distinguishing characteristic of the immediate abolition movement, a reflection perhaps of an expanding democratic political culture. But as Richards, Slave Power, shows, that culture was not open to challenges to slavery channeled through the national government. DeLombard, Slavery, 7, 41, 49, 50, 69, 109, and throughout; see especially her comment on 41 on how Jay and others “repositioned themselves vis-à-vis American public opinion by identifying the Slave Power with a corrupt judiciary and the suppression of free speech”—an assertion borne out here, although DeLombard does not work at all with the Ball narrative or the Cabinet of Freedom.

31. 31. The Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society board on which John Jay II served was also integrated; see JJII to WJ, Apr. 12, 1837, Nina Iselin (Tolman) Ms. Col. Friends gift, JJH. It is worth noting that William still had qualms about whether public abolitionist meetings featuring Black speakers aided the cause; see LT to Theodore Weld, Mar. 15, 1836, in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, 275–77. Hodges, David Ruggles, includes a detailed study of the Committee of Vigilance.

32. 32. WJ to David Ruggles, Dec. 10, 1836; for apparent follow-up on the case, see WJ to Caleb Roscoe, Jan. 18, 1837, JJHF.

33. 33. Emancipator, Mar. 16, 1837 (emphasis in original).

34. 34. Emancipator, May 4, 1837.

35. 35. WJ to the Editor of the Albany Argus, Apr. 11, 1837 (copy), JJH; “Mr. Wm. Jay’s argum’t that Congress have no constitutional right to legislate on the subject of delivering up fugitives from Justice, or from labor,” no precise date, 1838 (4-page typescript).

36. 36. Colored American, Jan. 14, 1837; Hodges, David Ruggles, 98–99, recounts the Lee affair, the attack on Ruggles, and the anniversary meeting; Nash was also undaunted, several years later, successfully filing a civil suit for libel against abolitionist publisher S. W. Benedict for depicting Nash as a kidnapper in the pages of an antislavery publication; see NASS, Apr. 1, 1841.

37. 37. Samuel Cornish to WJ, Nov. 3, 1838; Cornish enclosed a clipping on the suit from the Colored American in his letter to Jay; WJ to Cornish, Nov. 5, 1838; Hodges, Ruggles, 145–52; Harris, In the Shadow, 202–16.

38. 38. WJ, “Mr. Wm. Jay’s argum’t”; WJ to LT, Feb. 20, 1837; JCNY, 70–71.

39. 39. WJ to GS, Sept. 25, 1838, which includes a marked draft of the proposed letter; GS to WJ, Sept. 21, Oct. 1, 1838.

40. 40. GS to WJ, Oct. 19, 1838; Fox, Decline, 378–79; [William Jay, Gerrit Smith, and Luther Bradish], An Examination, 5–13 (emphasis in original); Luther Bradish to GS, Oct. 10, 1838, GSP.

41. 41. WJ to WHS, Oct. 1, 1838, WHSP; Bancroft, Life, 1:70–71; Hammond, History, 2:456; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 51.

42. 42. Sewell, Ballots, 17–18; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 51; GS speech in Emancipator, Nov. 1, 1838. Fox, Decline, 378–79; Hammond, History, 2:485–87, who was often encyclopedic in his approach, did not even mention the petition in his narrative; Bancroft, Life, 1:72; Goodwin, Team, 80–81.

43. 43. John Jay II to Mr. Editor, c. Nov. 1838, JFP.

44. 44. Emancipator, May 17, 1838; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 50–51.

45. 45. WJ to Joshua Leavitt (draft), Mar. 13, 1838; WJ to LT, Mar. 28, 1838; WJ to Loring, Mar. 29, 1838.

46. 46. JJII to WJ, Apr. 22, 1838; William Lloyd Garrison to Helen Garrison, May 4, 1838, in The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:349.

47. 47. Emancipator, May 31, 1838; Jay noted in the introductory letter accompanying the published version of his remarks that he revised the original text presented at the AAS annual meeting; see also Emancipator, May 17, 1838; and WJ to Elizur Wright, Apr. 13, 1838.

48. 48. William Lloyd Garrison to Helen Garrison, May 7, 1838, in The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:351; Theodore Weld to Angelina Grimké, May 8, 1838, in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, 670; Fifth Annual Report, 4, 9–10, 14, 49; WJ to Elizur Wright, Apr. 13, 1838.

49. 49. WJ to Gamaliel Bailey, Sept. 1, 1838; WJ to Elizur Wright, Nov. 13, 1838; WJ to Abel Libolt, Dec. 14, 1838.

50. 50. WJ to Abel Libolt, Jan. 28, 1839; WJ to Joseph Pierce, June 22, 1839.

51. 51. WJ, View, 13–15, 183–98.

52. 52. WJ to John S. Taylor, Feb. 8, 1839.

53. 53. WJ, View, 19–22, 24, 27–28.

54. 54. WJ, View, 29–32, 47–50, 53–58.

55. 55. WJ, View, 63–91, 91–120, quotation 103.

56. 56. WJ, View, 126–44, quotations, 126, 132, 141, 159 (emphasis in original).

57. 57. WJ, View, 177–80.

58. 58. WJ, View, 182–98. Jay’s inclusion as an appendix the AAS executive board’s forceful 1835 response to President Jackson (199–217) reaffirmed that analyzing the historical record in no way precluded a strategy of vigorous antislavery publicity.

59. 59. WJ to Thomas Pyne, Mar. 25, 1839.

60. 60. S. W. Benedict to WJ, June 6, 1839; LT to WJ, Aug. 20, 1839; WJ to Benedict, June 17, 1839; see also, WJ to JJII, June [n.d.], 1839; WJ to Executive Committee of AAS, Nov. 27, 1839; James Gillespie Birney to WJ, Dec. 6, 1839.

61. 61. WJ, View, 2nd ed., ix, x, xix, xx, 36–39, 150–66, 212–13. Based on the introduction to the second edition, one can see why supporters of Alvan Stewart and Garrisonians had grown impatient with a narrow reading of the US Constitution. Interestingly, the New York Anti-Slavery Society’s 1844 reissue of the book went back to the first edition; WJ, View, 1844 ed.

62. 62. Samuel Hanson Cox to WJ, Feb. 13, 1840; Leavitt to WJ, Feb. 6, 1840; SPC, Jan. 5, 1841 and editor’s note, in Chase, Salmon P. Chase Papers, 1:147.

9. Breaking Ranks

1. 1. JJII to WJ, May 14, 1840 (emphasis in original); Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 263.

2. 2. WJ, Inquiry, 4th ed., 30, 32, and the next several pages; see also chapter 7 of this book.

3. 3. Sklar, Women’s Rights, provides a highly accessible summary of the Grimké sisters and their rise to fame; see also Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 270–82.

4. 4. Not coincidentally, it should be noted, Elizabeth Heyrich and Prudence Crandall also emerged from the Quaker tradition. On Crandall’s Quaker background, see Mayer, All on Fire, 145, though in WJ, Inquiry, 4th ed., 30, Jay refers to her as a Baptist, the religion of the minister she married after shutting down her school (Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 230).

5. 5. WJ to Angelina Grimké, Feb. 1, 1837, JJHF (emphasis in original).

6. 6. [Grimké], Letters, 45; Sklar, Women’s Rights, 29–31.

7. 7. In characterizing and adapting a vocabulary for writing about the Jay family and gender in this and the next subsection, I draw on Lystra, Searching, 121–56; Jabour, Marriage, 2–7; and Rotundo, American Manhood, 129–66; schemas for assessing gender in nineteenth-century white middle-class homes do not map perfectly onto the Jays, as the following pages also demonstrate.

8. 8. Lystra, Searching, 123–24, 129–36; Rotundo, American Manhood, 130–32.

9. 9. WJ to Anna Jay Balch, Apr. 11, 1839; see also Lewis Penn W. Balch Sr. to WJ, Apr. 15, 1839.

10. 10. On Peter Williams Jr., see Hewitt, “Peter Williams”; for more on Williams, his parish, and the Episcopal Church, see chapter 12.

11. 11. WJ to Anna Jay, Nov. 4, 1840.

12. 12. There was another model of adult femininity for William and Augusta’s daughters to take notice of—that of their aunts Maria Jay Banyer and Ann “Nancy” Jay. Maria’s combined inheritance from her father, her husband Goldsborough Banyer, and her subsequent widowhood made her one of the thousand or so wealthiest people in Manhattan. She and Nancy, who never married, lived together for the rest of their lives; although they were educated, informed, and philanthropic, theirs was not a model that could have been readily adapted by William and Augusta’s daughters, nor did Maria and Nancy defy patriarchal or gendered norms by pursuing public lives in the fashion of their female contemporaries in the abolitionist movement. See North, “Amiable,” 3–4; Beach, Wealth; Cooke, Funeral Sermons.

13. 13. AJ to JJ, July 8, 1816; June 20, 1817; May 29, 1818. The Jay marriage exhibited some traits and tensions of emerging companionate ideals of supportive intimacy while also reflecting the particularities of the couple’s status, wealth, and personalities. Jabour, Marriage, 2–7, articulates the ideal and the tensions that almost inevitably resulted in practice; see also, Rotundo, American Manhood, 129–32; Lystra, Searching, 127.

14. 14. WJCM, 163–67; Rotundo, American Manhood, 133, 140, 157; Lystra, Searching, 129–36. According to Beach, Wealth, William Jay possessed a fortune of $150,000. The 2018 dollar value of $150,000 is worth at least $3.85 million; however, if one uses the unskilled wage index the figure becomes almost $42 million, and if one uses GDP per capita it balloons to almost $93 million; calculations from “Measuring Worth” (accessed Sept. 11, 2020).

15. 15. AJ to JJII, May 11, 1835.

16. 16. AJ to JJII, May 21, [1836].

17. 17. WJ to JJII, April 17, 1837; I borrow the phrase “activist couples” from Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 285.

18. 18. AJ and WJ to JJII, June 21, 1836.

19. 19. AJ to JJII, n.d.; AJ to JJII, May 27, 1831; AJ to JJII, May 1, 1838; AJ to MBJ, Aug. 14, 1830; AJ to JJII, April 7, 1831; natural history mentioned in AJ to JJI, June 20, 1832; several years before, she queried her daughter Maria about her studies, hoping that “Natural Philosophy” remained part of her curriculum (AJ to MBJ, July 12, 1827).

20. 20. AJ to JJII, May 18, Feb. 19, March 19, 1831; Catherine Esther Beecher to WJ, Dec. 9, 1831; Lystra, Searching, 126–27.

21. 21. AJ to JJII, Apr. 7, 1831; AJ to MBJ, Aug. 19, Nov. 26, 1830; June 5, 1832; AJ to JJII, May 27, 1831; May 11, 1838; Nov. 7, 1839; Oct. 11, 1843, Oct. 8, 1845; see also Anna Jay (Balch) to WJ, Apr. 24, 1836.

22. 22. AJ to JJII, Jan. 18, 1838.

23. 23. AJ to JJII, n.d. (c. 1838–39); AJ to Louisa Jay, Oct. 23, 1850, John Jay Ide Collection, NYHS; JJII to Eliza Constable Jay, Aug. 12, 1844, JFP, on Augusta’s legacy as a mother, with some tension over how many granddaughters should be named in her honor.

24. 24. AJ to Anna Moore McVickar, Mar. 12, 1827.

25. 25. AJ to MBJ, March 31, Apr. 6, 1830; AJ to JJII, Mar. 19; 1831; see also AJ to MBJ, Mar. 31, Apr. 3., Aug. 7, Aug. 11, Aug. 14, Nov. 26, Dec. 13, 1830; AJ to JJII, Feb. 19, Apr. 7, 1831.

26. 26. WJ to Rev. John McVickar, Jan. 15, 1831, JJHF.

27. 27. WJ to AJ, July 22, 1833 (emphasis in original); in a slightly less romantic but still sweet vein, William wrote Augusta earlier that summer from New York, where President Jackson was also passing through, that he would rather spend time with her than in Jackson’s “train” (WJ to AJ, June 11, 1833); AJ to WJ, Nov. 25, 1840; see also AJ to MBJ, July 12, 1827; Dec. 10, 1830, for expressions of affection for her husband.

28. 28. See note 37.

29. 29. AJ to JJII, June 20, 1832; AJ and WJ to JJII, Feb. 10, 1846.

30. 30. Mayer, All on Fire, 249–51, 254–56, 258, 260–62; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 92–97, 112–13; McDaniel, Problem, 10, 69–70, 92, 106, 112, 113–15, 135, and more generally, emphasizes the democratic potential of Garrisonian doctrines; for a thorough consideration of nonresistance theory and its relation to antislavery, see Perry, Radical, 55–91; for a philosophical take on the subject by a turn of the twentieth-century writer with an attachment to the Garrisonian and Jay traditions, see JJC, “Doctrine.”

31. 31. Chapman, Right and Wrong, 11–13; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 261; Mayer, All on Fire, 264–67.

32. 32. WJ to Lewis Tappan, Aug. 23, 1839; WJ to Joseph Pierce, Dec. 14, 1839.

33. 33. WJ to Committee of Arrangements, Connecticut AAS, Apr. 17, 1840.

34. 34. Mayer, All on Fire, 278–82; JJII to WJ, May 14, 1840; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 198.

35. 35. Constitution of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society included in Leavitt to WJ, July 2, 1840.

36. 36. JJII to WJ, May 14, 1840; Davis, Joshua Leavitt, 157–61, 181; NASS, Sept. 26, Oct. 3, Oct. 24, 1844; Jan. 9, Jan. 23, Jan. 30, Mar. 27, 1845; Mayer, All on Fire, 277; and chapter 12 of this book.

37. 37. WJ to James Caleb Jackson, June 8, 1840 (emphasis in original).

38. 38. NASS, July 16, 1840 (emphasis in original); see also Chapman, Right and Wrong, for an extensive defense of the AAS that is highly critical of New York abolitionists, though she does not name Jay specifically.

39. 39. Art. IV, Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 4; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 256, 285–86; Kraditor, Means and Ends, 39–77; Mayer, All on Fire, 282–84; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 118–19; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 197–200.

40. 40. WJ to Joseph Pierce, Dec. 14, 1839 (emphasis in original).

41. 41. WJ to LT, Sept. 22, 1840 (emphasis in original); Mayer, All on Fire, 277; JJII, “The Dignity of the Abolition Cause as Compared with the Political Schemes of the Day. Speech of John Jay, of New [sic] Bedford, N.Y.,” scrapbook, JJH; Sewell, Ballots, 43.

42. 42. WJ, Address to the Friends of Constitutional Liberty, on the Violation by the United States House of Representatives of the Right to Petition, in MWS, 397–408, esp. 405.

43. 43. Sewell, Ballots, 43–74; see 64 for reference to Jay’s View; see also Kraut, “Forgotten,” esp. 135, 141–43.

44. 44. GS to WJ, July 20, 1840; Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 186–87.

45. 45. WJ to GS, July 25, 1840 (emphasis in original).

46. 46. WJ to GS, July 25, 1840; Wilentz, Rise, 493; Fox, Decline, 378–79; Bancroft, Life, 101–3; Hammond, History, 2:520–21; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 57–58, 64–66; two years later, Jay praised Seward directly for his handling of the Virginia matter—WJ to William Henry Seward, June 23, 1842, WHSP.

47. 47. WJ to Birney, Apr. 22, 1836, copy provided by Clements Library, University of Michigan; WJ to James Gillespie Birney, Apr. 20, 1840; WJ to Birney, Mar. 28, 1840; James Gillespie Birney to WJ, Dec. 6, 1839; WJ to Lewis Tappan, Sept. 22, 1840; Sewell, Ballots, 44, 74–75, shows that Jay was not alone in his low expectations.

48. 48. Deskins et al., Presidential Elections, 119; Wilentz, Rise, 493–507, 530; Fox, Decline, 406; Hammond, History, 2:528, Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 191; Bancroft, Seward, 104–6; Van Deusen, Seward, 66–67, 74–75; Valentine, Manual, 366; Sewell, Ballots, 72, 76–79.

49. 49. For a sharp disparagement of public opinion as “a contemptible idol,” see WJ to JJII, Feb. 23, 1841. McDaniel, Problem, 89–112, offers a learned and nuanced discussion on abolitionist conceptions of public opinion.

50. 50. WJ to Hickson W. Field, Dec. 16, 1840 (emphasis in original).

51. 51. Liberator, Feb. 19, 1841; Renwick, Lives of Jay and Hamilton; WJ to JJII, Jan. 17, Feb. 23, 1841, JJHF.

10. The Condition of Free People of Color

1. 1. NASS, Nov. 25, 1841.

2. 2. Wyatt-Brown, “Proslavery,” 308–36, esp. 312, 316–38, insightfully frames the class perspective of abolitionists.

3. 3. Wood, “Town,” 622.

4. 4. Jones, Birthright, emphasizes Black self-advocacy in the battle for citizenship.

5. 5. JJII, Thoughts on the duty of the Episcopal Church, 6, 8.

6. 6. WJ, Condition in MWS, 373, 374. As the pamphlet was about to come out, William expressly anticipated the reaction of a new family nemesis, the Episcopal bishop of New York, a riper target for his and John’s disdain; see WJ to JJII, Oct. 19, 1839. As an anti-colonizationist, Jay implicitly supported birthright citizenship, but here he framed his argument explicitly through Christian universalism; Jones, Birthright, 1, 13, chap. 2.

7. 7. WJ, Condition, 374–75; Jones, Birthright, 3, 5, 11, emphasizes the multiple ways in addition to voting rights that free African Americans sought to instantiate their citizenship rights.

8. 8. WJ, Condition, 375–81.

9. 9. WJ, Condition, 381.

10. 10. WJ, Condition, 389–93.

11. 11. WJ, Condition, 382–83.

12. 12. John Jay II, Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839. See also “Cinque and Heroes of the American Revolution,” Colored American, Mar. 27, 1841.

13. 13. Jones, Mutiny, 11, 14–30; Rediker, Amistad, 1–95, esp. 1–2, 43–52, 68–79.

14. 14. Emancipator, Sept. 12, 1839 (emphasis in original); WJ to LT, Sept. 7, 1839; the letter was also reprinted in Liberator, Sept. 20, 1839; Bemis, John Quincy Adams, 391.

15. 15. John Jay II, Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839; see Basker, Amazing Grace, 428–31; Joshua Leavitt to WJ, Sept. 10, 1839, written on back of “Extra Sun” featuring Cinqué. Rediker, Amistad, 9–10, 171, 207, 235, notes how African Americans were particularly keen to make links between the Amistad uprising and the American Revolution; he also provides an extensive, nuanced analysis of the iconography of the rebellion, including the Sun extra, and the rapidity with which the rebellion insinuated itself into popular culture, 99–104, 114–18, 127–28.

16. 16. John Quincy Adams to WJ, Sept. 17, 1839; Bemis, John Quincy Adams, 394; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 212.

17. 17. WJ to JJII, May 10, 1840; WJ to Lewis Tappan, Nov. 6, 1840; Jones, Mutiny, esp. 44, 129–35, 140–43.

18. 18. WJ to LT, Oct. 13, Nov. 6, 1840 (emphasis in original).

19. 19. WJ to LT, Oct. 31, 1840; NASS, Dec. 17, 1840; Jones, Mutiny, 146–48, 153.

20. 20. WJ to LT, Jan. 23, 1841, as quoted in Jones, Mutiny, 168; see also 169.

21. 21. Jones, Mutiny, 188–94.

22. 22. Rediker, Amistad, 122–60, 179–83, does a particularly good job emphasizing the critical role of the Africans in winning their own freedom.

23. 23. Jones, Mutiny, 192–93, 205, 218–20; Rediker, 106, 171, 206–11, 213–16; Sinha, 411.

24. 24. Jones, “Peculiar Institution,” 28–34; Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole, esp. 99, 109–10.

25. 25. NASS, Mar. 24, 1842 (emphasis in original); “Letter from Judge Jay to Joseph Sturge on the Creole Case,” Scrapbook, JJH.

26. 26. [WJ], Creole Case, 12, 21; NASS, Mar. 24, 1842.

27. 27. [WJ], Creole Case, 16, 22.

28. 28. [WJ], Creole Case, 26–27, 29; Channing, Duty; Oakes, Freedom National, 1–41, esp. 22–26, which makes reference to the Creole and to William Jay; Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 31, 105–56; see also Rugemer, Problem, 175–76.

29. 29. [WJ], Creole Case, 30–31.

30. 30. NASS, Apr. 14, 1842 (emphasis in original); Liberator, May 13, 1842.

31. 31. WJ, Condition, 383.

32. 32. Crummell, “Jubilate,” 33; Peterson, Black Gotham, 108–12.

33. 33. PAJ, Thirtieth Annual Report, esp. 4–5; see also Harris, In the Shadow, 144; WJ, Condition, 383. A year after publishing these remarks in his pamphlet on race, Jay was still concerned that the doors of colleges remained largely closed to Blacks. As Jay noted to Tappan, there was an inherent link between “lessen[ing], the prejudice against color” and improving the actual lives of Black people. To that end, he suggested to his wealthy abolitionist friend, “I am inclined to believe that the founding of a few scholarships in some of our colleges for coloured young men, would do much good”; WJ to LT, Sept. 22, 1840; the expansion of public schooling for whites and the exclusion of Blacks from these schools are the subject of Moss, Schooling.

34. 34. Crummell, “Eulogium,” 58–59, and Moses’s introduction to Crummell, in Destiny and Race, 3–4; Moses, Alexander Crummell, 20–22; see also Moss, Schooling, 1–3; Peterson, Black Gotham, 106–7.

35. 35. Moses, Alexander Crummell, 24; Crummell, “Jubilate,” 32; Hewitt, “Peter Williams”; Peterson, Black Gotham, 101–2; Townsend, Faith, 30–31, 38, 40, 53, and throughout; WJ, Condition, 387–88.

36. 36. Crummell, “Jubilate,” 32–33, 42–43; JJII to Thomas Pyne, Sept. 20, 1839 (draft), JFP; JJII to WJ, Sept. 27, 1839; [JJII], Caste, 6–9, 14; Moses, Alexander Crummell, 27–29; Emancipator, Oct. 3, 1839; Proceedings of the Board of Trustees, 220, 229, 233, 238.

37. 37. WJ to GS, Oct. 1, 1839; WJ to JJII, Oct. 19, 1839.

38. 38. John A. Vaughan to WJ, Dec. 10, 1840, and WJ’s draft response to Vaughan recorded on the back; Moses, Alexander Crummell, 29–33, 310n, and chap. 3; Crummell, “Jubilate,” 33–34; WJ to Thomas Pyne, Dec. 10, 1839; American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, Oct. 1840, 41–42.

39. 39. JJ Flournoy to WJ, Dec. 21, 1838 (emphasis in original); ironically, Flournoy, who was deaf, was trying to end legal discrimination against deaf people and to establish a school for this population; J. J. Flournoy letter headnote; Frederickson, Black Image, 133. For a fascinating review of the so-called curse of Ham in Western intellectual discourse, see Braude, “Sons of Noah.”

40. 40. Richard Moran to WJ, Apr. 16, 1839; WJ to Moran, Apr. 29, 1839 (draft?).

41. 41. WJ, Condition, 393–94 (emphasis in original).

42. 42. WJ, Condition, 373–74.