John Jay’s Founding Constitutionalism and Defense of National Interest with Jonathan Den Hartog

0:00 he is engaged in serving in in public service either at the state level or the national level that’s amazing and so as you kind of hinted at it’s a real challenge to boil that down he doesn’t do one thing he does all kinds of things and if you think about that as president of congress he was in the

0:20 legislative branch and he had a little bit of an executive role and he had diplomatic posts multiple times and he served in the judiciary so even though he was a great believer in the separation of powers he actually served in each part of those branches of american governance [Music]

0:44 hi this is tony williams senior fellow at bri and we are pleased to bring you another episode of scholar talks for this episode we’re honored to have on scholar jonathan den hartog who is going to discuss john jay sort of a forgotten founder but not for long as part of the american founder series

1:04 now the guiding question for this series is what core contribution did the founder to liberty and constitutional self-governance by way of introduction jonathan dunhartog is a professor of history and the history department chair at samford university he’s a specialist in american political and religious

1:25 history and he’s the author of patriotism and piety federalist politics and religion religious struggle in the new american nation which was the subject of a previous dri scholar talk so please check that out he’s also contributed an essay for the bri resource life liberty and the pursuit of happiness he’s the author of

1:47 numerous articles published articles on john jay and is working on a forthcoming book uh so jonathan uh congratulations on that and uh thank you for joining me well thanks so much tony i always i always enjoy these talks you do a great job with at bri with them oh thanks great uh you know uh john jay so i’m reading through

2:08 all of your articles uh just some some really fascinating works uh there’s also a lot in him on your book patriotism and piety he’s just a figure whose lifetime of public service just spanned across uh you know the american revolution founding early republic

2:29 it’s just incredible the number of jobs he had serving the republic from from new york provincial congress and the continental congress sort of one that one of those unknown presidents of the of the early congress uh right up through first supreme court justice first chief justice uh of new york state as well a diplomat i mean he runs the

2:51 gamut it’s just an incredible but but as we alluded to a really a forgotten founder right i mean this is this is one of the challenges is uh he serves for 27 years in uninterrupted public service from 1774 with the first continental congress

3:12 until his retirement as governor of new york in 1801 he is engaged in serving in in public service either at the state level or the national level that’s amazing and so as you kind of hinted at it’s a real challenge to boil that down he doesn’t do one thing he does all kinds of things and if you think about that

3:34 as president of congress he was in the legislative branch and he had a little bit of an executive role and he had diplomatic posts multiple times and he served in the judiciary so even though he was a great believer in the separation of powers he actually served in each part of those branches of american governance

3:55 right yeah just just fascinating and i thought you know george washington and alexander hamilton who i’ve written about have done a lot but john jay may have done i he did as much or more than anyone uh for public service during the founding really incredible so uh so let’s jump into the conversation uh during these these three periods i

4:16 mentioned sort of the the the revolutionary period the the founding constitution stratification uh sort of the partisanship of the early republic there seems to be sort of a thread running through this uh for jay’s political thought a really rooted kind of in republicanism republican ideology a smaller republican uh and

4:39 also you know a very strong strain of constitutionalism can can you dig around in that a little bit yeah and i think those those two concepts are really connected uh because uh how do we understand republicanism right and classical or we say small r republicanism uh is committed

5:00 to self-government and to the rule of law so that that connects directly to his interest in constitutionalism uh but further i would say that that jay understood uh republican self-government to be uh to have devotion to the flourishing of the entire community

5:20 or we might say for the common good or the public good uh and so it’s not just uh so you need a certain type of citizenry to make that work you need a certain type of leadership to make that work and you need a certain type of uh legal or constitutional system to make that work

5:42 so all of these concepts are connected both in his thought and in his writing in the founding i’ll just mention on the republicanism side that very clearly we can see him uh imbibing these ideas even from an early age he studies college at king’s college in new york city or what today we would

6:03 call columbia university uh so shout out to colombia jay was there before it was named colombia but as a student he’s reading especially english theorists and thinking about them and then as he’s studying law in his free time he’s reading some of these great classics of republican thought especially the end essays by uh

6:26 trenchard and gordon who are very well known in the republicanism discourse and from them i think he gets a real approach and we also know that he gets a lot of his mottos or strategies uh for governance from trencher and gordon we can we can trace that uh and so he’s gonna apply that

6:46 throughout his life i really think that’s a driving force for all of this public service in his career and then on the constitutional piece you alluded to this but i am just struck by the way jay returns time and again to legal and constitutional both questions and constitutional service so

7:06 uh even before independence he’s thinking about constitutions in fact he’s a great advocate for the british constitution right the common law constitution which was said to defend american rights why do we resist british overreach because we have a constitution that protects us

7:28 and then when that constitution could no longer restrain british abuses of power jay becomes a reluctant revolutionary but what does he do he when he’s in new york uh he helps to write the first constitution for the state of new york uh under independence so he’s he’s

7:49 deeply wrapped up in crafting that and then his next job is the first chief justice of the state of new york right because he’s thinking that if we’re going to be independent we also need constitutional frameworks to make this work that’s also driving his interest in the 1780s he’s not at the constitutional

8:10 convention new york state intentionally kept him out there’s a there’s some politicking going on there but of course he contributes five of the federalist papers and writes his own pamphlets supporting the constitution he really believes in it and in that way he’s allied with uh hamilton and madison uh he worked for ratification in new

8:31 york state which was not a foregone conclusion and then of course when he really could have had his pick of jobs in the new government after consulting with washington he agrees to become the first chief justice of the supreme court so very clearly he thinks it’s the legal and constitutional structures which give a framework for american liberty

8:54 right uh and and so you mentioned um the citizenry uh and leaders uh that were needed in our public and and that leads me to my my uh next question which is rudolph of course jay is as you point out a very devout christian uh and

9:15 uh strong personal religious beliefs and and but it also plays a very important role in in crafting his understanding uh of a republican self-government uh of of this virtuous citizenry and leaders uh am i on the right track here no i i think you definitely are and of course just

9:36 that was one of my first discoveries researching jay was how personally devout he was um he doesn’t necessarily lead with it in a lot of his public speeches or letters but he was he was deeply devout uh he was a part of the anglican church and then when the anglicans became independent he was an episcopalian

9:56 uh he and his family were deeply involved in trinity church uh uh in lower manhattan right which is still present which is still where alexander hamilton is buried um so he was deeply involved in that church he took an active role in the congregation uh he kept many religious writings on of

10:17 his own and he was the second president of the american bible society which when i saw that i said that’s fantastic that’s fabulous to think that this public figure in his retirement was working to advance uh bible distribution in the country but you’re right more than just kind of a personal devotion

10:38 jay saw a tie and and i think you alluded to it where jay did not want an established church i think that’s important to point out he was worried about giving power to any any denomination he did not advocate for that instead he did believe that there was space both at the state level at the

11:00 kind of uh country level and i i think i could read into it even at the national political level for religious acknowledgements that would say this is not a violation of the first amendment this is simply a kind of cultural or a community statement of uh recognition

11:22 of god thanksgiving for god’s blessings and gratitude for for the political situation of the country um we see this when he’s governor of new york state he issues under his hand a very clear thanksgiving proclamation which is giving thanks to god for his generous gifts

11:43 and there’s a wonderful moment at the very end of his life in 1826 it’s the 50th anniversary of independence and he’s still alive right you’ll recall on july 4th is the day that both thomas jefferson and john adams die on the same day jay is still alive and he sends to the city of manhattan the city of new york

12:03 and he says you know having a patriotic celebration is great but it should be joined to a religious acknowledgement that our political liberties our civil liberties also come from god so he saw those as working together and that the government could encourage that not enforce it and that that would encourage citizens

12:24 to themselves become more religious which he believed would then make them more virtuous and that virtue would sustain self-governing liberty so these these concepts and these activities are really linked in jay’s mind right uh and and just as a side note you know i i think it’s fascinating to think you know we hear sort of blanket

12:44 statements about the founders they were all deus or they were you know all you know atheists or what have you um and and jay’s a very devout christian now now not all the founders were there’s just a great diversity uh in in their personal religious views but i i think by and large they all all agreed on on the point you finished on that you know

13:06 a religious and moral citizenry really is the basis for self-government uh and and if that collapses then then the experiment in liberty collapses for instance that’s expressed in george washington’s farewell address which although jay did not write we know that hamilton asked jay for input on washington’s farewell address and i think that’s just a wonderful

13:27 touchstone expressing how so many of the uh early founders looked at this that you can’t claim to be a patriot if you’re trying to undermine religious belief and practice among the people right um so my next question is you know jesus in many ways a forgotten founder um but in in many ways what’s even more

13:49 forgotten about him uh is the fact that he was a very important diplomat uh he negotiated some of the most important treaties of the founding era uh particularly uh the peace treaty uh at the end of the revolutionary war and also the infamous g treaty so uh what was his experience as a minister

14:10 right so the first thing to say is of course just like so many founders in so many settings jay was self-taught in international relations right before the revolution he was a lawyer now he he he was concerned about international trade and the laws of the sea um he actually has some of those books in his library beforehand but he

14:31 really had to become a quick student of diplomacy and the practices of diplomacy uh which he did so congress sent him first to spain and then from spain he was part of the team negotiating the treaty of paris which secured american independence um maybe some of our viewers will think

14:52 about that uh very famous historical painting i believe it’s by benjamin west um right where the american delegation is president and the british just never decided to sit for the treaty uh the for the painting um and i was looked at that was like lo and behold front and center is ben franklin

15:12 and john adams right because they’re there and as the story is usually told yeah these big names they were there and then john jay is just kind of standing off to the side but as i’ve researched this i’ve been so impressed that i think jay was the critical negotiator in for the treaty of paris um because at the kind of

15:34 decision making points franklin was often incapacitated he was he was sick and uh john adams didn’t come to slightly later let’s point out that when john adams did arrive uh he and jay agreed entirely on their strategy and uh they actually became fast friends through this experience of negotiating

15:56 the treaty of paris but it was jay who said to pursue american interest uh we have to stand up to both the british and the french uh even though the french were their allies right the british because the british at first didn’t want to treat them as equals they wanted to treat them as

16:16 subjects and jay said no before we go forward you have to have diplomatic uh instructions and uh and and you know licenses to uh tree with us as equals then the french were working behind the scenes to tell the british yeah make a

16:37 peace treaty but you don’t have to give them very much right and and the french were telling the americans don’t ask for very much um if we had followed the french guidelines our western border would have stretched to what is present-day basically toledo ohio south to tallahassee florida and that was it

16:58 and it was jay who both argued with the french and actually went behind the back of the french negotiators to say we could get a better treaty and so it was that strategic thinking that pushed our border all the way to the mississippi river so without jay you don’t get a good treaty of paris that’s

17:19 important then fast forward a decade america is more secure but lo and behold with the wars of the french revolution uh there’s tension growing between america and britain britain is stopping american ships uh seizing seizing goods and pressing sailors

17:40 there’s a real threat that we might have to go to war with great britain again in 1794. washington wants a policy of neutrality how can he assure that and the answer is he needs to send the best man that he can trust to london to negotiate a treaty and he kind of goes through his list and he settles on john

18:03 jay who’s the chief justice of the supreme court so here’s jay straddling two roles simultaneously jake doesn’t want to do it he says this is hard this is i have to leave my family again no chance no guarantee of success but he finally decides no washington is called my country needs me i’ll do this

18:25 so he goes to london sits down with the british and and crafts a treaty to diffuse some of the problems between the two countries and then he sends it back to america he says this is the best we could do sends it back washington largely wants to keep this treaty quiet he thinks this should just

18:46 be discussed in the senate and uh that’ll be good enough well some of the opponents of the treaty leak it to the press i mean this is an early leak to the newspapers and when this happens then this becomes a huge political debate and the emerging democratic republicans

19:06 the supporters of jefferson think it’s awful right john jay has sold out the country right like he’s given away the farm he hasn’t gotten anything for it um and there are accounts of of mobs getting together and hoisting up these effigies of john jay and burning him because he’s sold out

19:27 his country on the other hand the federalist party the supporters of the administration look at this and they say well this is pretty good this solves some of our problems and it moves us closer to england there’s nothing wrong with this let’s pass it and in fact that the j treaty gets passed now the third perspective would be my perspective as a

19:47 historian to say how do i evaluate this this treaty two centuries on and i keep coming back to i think it was the best treaty he could have gotten did it solve all the problems no um did it totally resolve the question of impressment of sailors no they’ll wait have to wait until the war of 1812

20:08 to deal with that but remember jay was was negotiating from a real position of weakness at a time when britain was deeply concerned about its own survival so i really think it’s about the best that could have happened at that time so i’m willing to say thank you john jay for negotiating this even though it

20:29 really tended to besmirch his memory and i think that’s unfair right uh oh yeah excellent um and you know as you alluded to earlier uh you know jay recognized i think that you know self-governance is not just about government you know we tend to kind of focus on that a lot but but rather a

20:50 healthy civil society of sort of local self-governance citizens mutually supporting each other in their communities and so how does jay support those voluntary societies and that healthy civil uh order uh particularly later on during his retirement right again this is part of his story that often people don’t know about that jay

21:13 retires in 1801 he says oh you know i want to spend time with my family by which he really meant he wanted to spend time with his family he wants to you know retire he builds a retirement home up in westchester county new york thinks he’ll live there for a few years before dying he ends up living another 28 years so he has a long time left and he uses

21:34 that for not political service but community service and what’s really interesting is so great you have a self-governing republic what exists between the citizens and the government and so americans are trying to create a type of public space a third

21:55 space if you will or or a public area that’s not political but is public and uh to fast forward in the 1830s a frenchman by the name of alexis de tocqueville comes to america and he looks around he says these voluntary societies are one of the best ways that americans kind of

22:16 channel democracy and make it work and lo and behold john jay is in on the ground floor of that creation so he commits his time to local societies so for instance the westchester county agricultural improvement society he supports that and gives money to it um he supports historical societies

22:37 which i appreciate the new york historical society the american antiquarian society he’s supporting them to say let’s remember the revolution correctly so in other words he says let’s make sure we have the records which then historians will use so he might actually be happy that 200 years later we’re talking about the american revolution and then as we mentioned he’s the

22:58 president of the american bible society which becomes a national society its headquarters are in new york but it has state branches and has local branches and what i always like to say is these voluntary societies when they work nationally they kind of look like the constitution right you have a national directing body

23:20 you have federalist federalism operating to the states and you have grassroots opportunities for involvement well lo and behold so many of these voluntary societies were led by federalists so i think i think jay is taking that kind of governance metaphor and applying it to to public life

23:40 and i think that’s a really important development in the new nation right uh and you know as we mentioned the great diversity in in personal religious views uh there was also a remarkable amount of diversity in terms of how how a lot of the founders um

24:01 viewed slavery but then also took actions surrounding it so and jay is one of those founders with with some really strong anti-slavery views but he also acts on those beliefs which is very interesting so how did he do so personally and also politically especially in new york that’s right and i think this is a story

24:22 that’s worth telling because it reveals a lot about kind of the choices that are available to people in the founding generation um and you’re right who will who will actually put their money where their mouth is who will uh who who will practice this and who is willing to sacrifice

24:43 uh and lose something to uh to stand up against slavery and a great story is that jay grows in this right in our discussions presently about racial matters jay groves let’s remember that in colonial new york lots of people own slaves but let’s make

25:04 it more direct john jay’s family owned slaves john grew up in a family with enslaved people when his father died he inherited slaves and yet and yet john said this does not line up with revolutionary

25:25 ideals so what steps can we take over time gradually moderately to end this and so he was an advocate of uh gradual emancipation to say yes we need to end this but we also need to do it in a way that’s not going to

25:46 kind of destroy society in the process so he wasn’t an immediate abolitionist he was not uh like william white garrison but instead he favored gradual emancipation in the 1780s uh he is the he becomes the president of the new york manufacturing society the one of the

26:07 earliest anti-slavery societies in america that’s noteworthy and then in the 1790s as governor he actually makes it work he’s working with allies to make sure that they introduce emancipation law

26:28 bills in new york state he knows he can’t lead the way because it would probably uh torpedo the bill so he works with allies and through multiple sessions of the legislature they gain support and they finally bring a bill to john jay’s desk and he is able to sign it so john jay is

26:48 the governor who helps to outlaw slavery in new york state and in fact his his son later said this was the bill that made jay happier than anything else he did as governor so legally he really does uh work even though it costs him a number of votes we know i could talk all day uh we’re we’re down

27:10 our final question i have a few minutes left uh and so so in a nutshell i know we can uh go and go on and on about this but but what are some of the most important ways that john jay advances liberty and self governance top three uh commitments or contributions that jay makes first of all we just mentioned this he

27:32 helps to end slavery in new york that is advancing liberty there are again it’s imperfect we would probably wouldn’t want would want to have accelerated that transition to liberty but he did he did sign that bill into law he did advocate for it and then he he encouraged uh emancipation elsewhere and

27:54 he stood up for the anti-slavery cause so that that is a real contribution secondly he made this contribution to con constitutional thinking what we started with working for to write the federalist papers working to write his own pro-constitution essay working to see the constitution ratified in new york working as the first supreme court

28:15 justice he knew that in order for constitutionalism as a practice to work you needed good constitutions to start with and so he was a great advocate for that and he thought in constitutional ways and then my final piece i want to leave us with is simply his character that he demonstrated that commitment to

28:38 what was right even when it was costly and he gave up his private interest to serve the public good so i i think he was virtuous in that way and i think he needs the definition of a statesman that he would have seen and and so by embodying that and showing how to

28:59 kind of practically do good politics he’s a model that we can really attend to well that’s a good that’s a great note to end on i i think he he would be a model uh today for for uh all of us but maybe particularly our politicians so uh jonathan dunhart i want to thank you very much for joining us and we look

29:19 forward to uh the publication of your book on john jay well thank you it’s been a delight and thank you for all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our other interviews in the american founder series and also check out our other interviews on on the american county including rob mcdonald

29:40 on thomas jefferson david stewart on george washington lindsey stravinsky on washington’s cabinet and bradley thompson on the declaration of independence among others and also check out bri many resources on the american county including our resource life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the updated

30:02 being an american thank you you