John Jay: Man of Order, Jus­tice, Free­dom

by John M. Paf­ford

John Jay: Found­ing Fa­ther
by Wal­ter Stahr.
Ham­ble­don & Lon­don (Lon­don) 482 pp., $29.95 cloth, 2005.

John Jay ar­guably is the least known of the most sig­nif­i­cant Found­ing Fa­thers. Yet at one time, he was con­sid­ered by many to be the log­i­cal suc­ces­sor to Wash­ing­ton as chief ex­ec­u­tive of the new coun­try. His résumé is the most im­pres­sive of those who did not serve as pres­i­dent. Among the po­si­tions he held were: pres­i­dent of the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress, min­is­ter plenipo­ten­tiary to Spain, mem­ber of the peace com­mis­sion which ne­go­ti­ated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, sec­re­tary of for­eign af­fairs, co-au­thor of The Fed­er­al­ist, first chief jus­tice of the United States Supreme Court, and two term gov­er­nor of New York. In re­tire­ment, he was pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Bible So­ci­ety. Al­ways, he demon­strated in­tegrity and abil­ity.

With this book, his first, Wal­ter Stahr has filled a void in Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal writ­ing and has surged into the ranks of sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can his­to­ri­ans. Not since Frank Mon­aghan’s study of Jay came out in 1935 has there been pub­lished a com­plete bi­og­ra­phy of this great but too lit­tle known mem­ber of our found­ing gen­er­a­tion. Stahr spec­u­lates on the dearth of Jay stud­ies, sug­gest­ing that his being the most con­ser­v­a­tive of the major founders could have been a fac­tor. He also came to sup­port in­de­pen­dence later than most other key lead­ers. Fur­ther, al­though a firm sup­porter of lib­erty and free elec­tions, he was sus­pi­cious of too much democ­racy. Fi­nally, he was a de­vout Chris­t­ian. All these points are ac­cu­rate, but the ne­glect of Jay may be more at­trib­ut­able to his not being a mil­i­tary leader, a pres­i­dent, or a col­or­ful char­ac­ter about whom juicy scan­dals could be re­lated.

Stahr dis­cusses Jay’s slow evo­lu­tion to sup­port of in­de­pen­dence. He was a con­ser­v­a­tive who be­lieved, as Rus­sell Kirk later set forth, that a civ­i­lized so­ci­ety must have order, jus­tice, and free­dom. The se­quence is es­sen­tial. With­out order, noth­ing can func­tion. Once order is es­tab­lished, jus­tice can come into being and once order and jus­tice pre­vail, free­dom can arise and flour­ish. Jay was con­cerned lest war come be­fore other op­tions had been ex­hausted and that mob rule could re­sult from the poli­cies and ac­tions of some ad­vo­cates of in­de­pen­dence. When he be­came con­vinced that noth­ing else would se­cure free­dom for the colonists, he be­came a fer­vent sup­porter of the war. Dur­ing the con­flict, he served hon­or­ably and ef­fec­tively in the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress, cul­mi­nat­ing in the pres­i­dency of that body, as a key counter-in­tel­li­gence leader, and as a diplo­mat.