Chapter VIII
Death of Judge Jay.—His Position Among Antislavery Men.—His Other Public and Philanthropic Interests.—His Private Life.—His Character.
Judge Jay was not destined to live to see the triumph of the antislavery cause and of the constitutional principles to which he had devoted his life. Several years of failing health preceded his death, which took place at Bedford, October the 14th, 1858.
His career in the antislavery cause, dating from the Missouri Compromise in 1821, was in several respects unique, and among the leaders of the movement his position continued to be distinctive.
His first active efforts in favour of the slave, the presentation to Congress in 1826 of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, were marked by a careful regard to the provisions of the United States Constitution. At the first formation of antislavery societies he feared that philanthropic enthusiasm might place the movement in a wrong position by a failure to recognize those provisions. His advice was asked by the men who organized the American Society in Philadelphia, and it was carried into effect by the insertion into the constitution of the society of a complete recognition of the supreme national law, in strict accordance with which, only, the objects of the society should be sought. To maintain the abolitionists in the impregnable position thus adopted was the constant and characteristic labour of Jay’s life. This position, consistently held by him against unconstitutional doctrines advanced by both abolitionists and slaveholders, was the position adopted by the Republican party in 1854, and maintained until real union and real liberty were won together.
The antislavery movement was begun and supported by those whom Lincoln called “the plain people.” Men of “property and standing” were generally passively if not actively hostile. It received little help from the churches, from the learned professions or the wealthy mercantile classes. It was a very unpopular cause, denounced by politicians, merchants, and lawyers, despised by many of the clergy, certain to bring social and business injury, if not active persecution, to whomsoever adopted it. Hence the championship of William Jay derived a special importance. His judicial and social position, his independent means, his active membership in the most aristocratic of churches, made him a leader of peculiar value. His advocacy of the cause could be attributed neither to ignorant fanaticism nor to disorganizing tendencies. He set an example to the class most able and least willing to oppose the curse of slavery.
A third peculiarity of Jay’s position among antislavery men was the nature of the work which he performed. Without health sufficient to make long journeys at a time when travelling was difficult, seldom leaving his country home, he was rarely seen at the meetings and conventions of the abolitionists. He was a voice, speaking words of reason, moderation and authority in times of blind excitement; a voice which spoke at the right moment and was always heard with respect. Jay’s activity lay in his pen. In a crisis when the judicious course of action or the accurate view of events was obscured by doubt and passion, a pamphlet or a public letter from Judge Jay cast a clear and steady light. His writings were consulted by the most eminent men when considering subjects connected with slavery. Of this a notable instance was the use made of Jay’s argument on the “Amistad” case by John Quincy Adams when addressing the House of Representatives in that celebrated cause. These writings form a continuous and lucid commentary on the history of the long and varied struggle between the forces of slavery and of freedom.
The published works of Judge Jay present but a part of the fruits and the influence of his pen. His correspondence was voluminous and extended to the rank and file as well as to the leaders of the antislavery movement. Constant resort was made to him for information and advice, which was always given with frankness and care.E
We may close appropriately our review of Jay’s antislavery work with remarks made after his death to the coloured people of New York by Frederick Douglass, who escaped from the slave-driver to urge with native eloquence the emancipation of his race: “In common with you, my friends, I wear the hated complexion which William Jay never hated. I have worn the galling chain which William Jay earnestly endeavoured to break. I have felt the heavy lash, and have experienced in my own person the cruel wrongs which caused his manly heart to melt in pity for the slave.... In view of the mighty struggle for freedom in which we are now engaged, and the tremendous odds arrayed against us, every coloured man and every friend of the coloured man in this country must deeply feel the great loss we have sustained in this death, and look around with anxious solicitude for the man who shall rise to fill the place now made vacant. With emphasis it may be said of him, he was our wise counsellor, our firm friend, and our liberal benefactor. Against the fierce onsets of popular abuse he was our shield; against governmental intrigue and oppression he was our learned, able, and faithful defender; against the crafty counsels of wickedness in high places, where mischief is framed by law and sin is sanctioned and supported by religion, he was a perpetual and burning rebuke.”
Besides his work for the negro race, William Jay had various public and philanthropic interests. Prominent among these were the duties of judge of Westchester County, which he exercised for more than twenty-five years. Jay revised the rules of the court, which had been handed down almost unchanged since 1728; and he introduced a strict observance of forms, which, combined with his prompt and explicit decisions, made the Westchester court one of the most dignified in the country. The sittings were held alternately at White Plains and at Bedford, the half-shire towns of the county. Jay also attended to chamber business in other towns. At that period the Westchester bar embraced many lawyers of marked ability, such as R. R. Voorhis, Aaron Ward, William Nelson, Peter Jay Munro, J. W. Strong, Minot Mitchell, and James Smith; and from New York, Alexander McDonald, William M. Price, and Peter Augustus Jay frequently appeared among them. It has been said of Judge Jay’s charges to grand juries that “they commanded attention, from their clear exposition of the law without the slightest concession to the popular currents of the day and with careful regard to constitutional rights, morality, and justice.” These charges were frequently requested for publication as timely reminders of legal and moral truths, the relation of which to current events was being overlooked. Judge Jay’s conduct on the bench caused his reappointment term after term by governors of opposing political parties; and after his death, when a pro-slavery faction endeavoured to remove his portrait from the court-house at White Plains, members of the bar who disagreed with Jay’s abolition opinions were foremost in preventing any act of disrespect to his memory.
Jay’s philanthropy was religious in its motive and practical in its activity. A life-long worker in the cause of temperance, his efforts produced substantial results, as in the legislation proposed by him which forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors on credit.
For many years a member and president of the Peace Society, he was not satisfied with exposing the evils of war. His mind sought and found a remedy for it in the system of international arbitration, of which the practicability was immediately acknowledged, and towards which the civilized world has since turned with constantly growing confidence.
The organization of the American Bible Society in the face of the opposition of the authorities in his own church displayed in Jay’s early life the self-reliance and independence of character which gave so much strength to his later career. Always true to his church, he never compromised his convictions to fit a position in which that church was untrue to itself. During the antislavery movement the churches were hostile. Fearful of alienating their Southern members and the Northern men whose business interests demanded subserviency to the Slave Power, hardly any ecclesiastical organization was guiltless of lending a passive support to slavery. Theological students, on leaving their seminary, were cautioned by their instructors to avoid the troublesome topic if they would be successful ministers of Christ. Clergymen who preached that property in man was sinful were disciplined by ecclesiastical superiors or cast off by outraged Christian congregations. An orthodox religious newspaper was the safest printed matter for a Northern man to have in his possession when travelling in the South. The Episcopal Church had its slaveholding bishops and ministers, not a few of whom justified slavery from the Scriptures. It had in the North its “cotton divines,” who enjoined from the pulpit obedience to the odious law which sought to make slave-catchers of Christian men and women. It went so far as persistently to infringe its own laws by shutting the doors of its conventions upon legally chosen delegates of congregations composed of free coloured men. The church of Christ was turned into a social club which did not hesitate to exclude a black man as an “unfit associate.” Shocked at this attitude, many conscientious men withdrew from the communion. But such a course was inconsistent with Jay’s character. False and repulsive as was to him such a conception of the Christian religion, he refused, as a churchman, to accept it. He remained in the ranks, striving by his own conduct to show that a man could be a good churchman and hate slavery at the same time. Fearless in his expression of Christian truth, he was for twenty years a thorn in the side of pro-slavery churchmen, and a rallying-point for those who understood better the spirit of Christianity and recognized the brotherhood of man before God.
Jay’s private life was happy and peaceful. The library at Bedford, with its book-shelves crowded to the ceiling and its windows looking out over the hills of Westchester to the blue outlines of the Catskills, claimed a considerable portion of every day. The hours there passed in reflection and in literary labour were hours of pleasure, enhanced by the desire and the hope of usefulness.
Out-of-doors were the avocations of a country life, which Jay was well constituted to enjoy: the farm, with its interesting record of crops and growing livestock; the garden, where a great variety of flowers and vegetables flourished within hedges of old box; the lawn, with its trees planted by his father and himself—all these gave occupation in pleasing contrast to that of the library. The public roads in the neighbourhood of the Jay farm are now adorned and shaded by noble trees planted by the Judge. Along these roads and over the Westchester hills he loved to ride on horseback, an exercise and pleasure which he enjoyed until the last year of his life. Judge Jay preferred to consider Bedford as a farm rather than as a country seat, and he observed to Bishop Coxe in this regard that a farm without a gate or a fence out of repair was more to his taste than an ornamental estate. The weak eyesight and somewhat delicate health which in his youth seemed a misfortune as debarring him from a career of activity in the city turned in the end to his advantage. A happier life than that at Bedford could hardly have been devised for him; and it is probable that the studious retirement of his country library gave to his views on public questions a thoroughness and moderation greater than could have been attained amidst the hurry and distraction of a great city.
In his family relations, Jay was still more fortunate. His wife lived to be his sympathetic companion until 1856, when he himself was near his end. Her accomplishments, especially in reading and drawing, her grace, gentleness, and goodness, her natural charity, added immeasurably to the happiness of Jay’s life. “I have always regarded her,” said the late Rev. J. W. Alexander, “as one of the happiest specimens of a Christian lady that it has been my lot to meet. Intelligent, graceful, pious, gentle, sportive in the right place, generous and catholic, she awakened a sincere respect and attachment, and our memory of her is blessed.” The late Bishop Horatio Potter of New York, speaking of her later life, said: “The serene composure, the sweet simplicity and dignity, bespoke a peaceful and elevated spirit, and made an impression on the most transient visitor never to be effaced.” Dr. John Henry Hobart, son of the Bishop, wrote to John Jay: “Your mother, always gentle, placid, and cheerful, with an unfailing smile and pleasant words for her young guests, sympathizing with their boyish enthusiasm for poetry and romance, and tempering their ardour with counsel and caution, which her own sensitive spirit conveyed in the most delicate forms—of her I must speak thus feelingly; it only indicates the debt of gratitude I owe to her memory.”
Judge Jay had one brother, Peter Augustus Jay, who was thirteen years his senior. Between the brothers there continued through life an uninterrupted affection and confidence. Peter Augustus led an active professional and social life in New York City, holding office as judge, as recorder, and as a member of the State Assembly. On his death, in 1843, high tributes to his ability as a jurist and to his character as a public-spirited citizen were paid by Chancellor Kent, Chief-Justice Samuel Jones, and David B. Ogden. As a member of the Assembly, he was conspicuous in the advocacy of various important measures, among which may be mentioned his efforts to extend the right of suffrage to black citizens of the State. Peter Augustus Jay was not himself prominent in the antislavery cause, but he was generally in sympathy with his brother’s work.
The Right Reverend A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York, was a frequent visitor in his youth at Bedford. Some extracts from a letter written by him to John Jay afford an interesting view of the domestic life of the Judge’s home:
“William Jay was one of those true sons of the Republic who inherited sound views of its constitutional system from your illustrious grandfather, and from personal acquaintance with some other fathers of the nation who were high in the confidence of Washington and shared his just and lofty ideas of national policy. Your father was one of those born statesmen who breathed under the inspiration of such ideas, and was animated by them to efforts for the preservation of the Constitution itself in degenerate days. Those were the days when the ‘spoils-system’ had begun to act with corrosive effect on public affairs and public men. The science of true statesmanship seemed ready to perish. The country fell into the hands of mere politicians, with whom legislation was a trade and a struggle for personal aggrandizement. The epoch had little use for men of pure patriotism, but your father, incapable of ambition or the pursuit of personal ends, stood aside and devoted himself with intrepidity to unpopular principles, of which he foresaw the utility, while he was hardly less prophetic of the cruel war which must be the consequence of popular indifference and blindness to the national perils. He was little seen, but greatly felt, and has left a mark on the diplomacy of his time which is a gain to humanity and to civilization.
“I cannot forget the charms of that domestic life which he made so attractive to his children and to the large circle of kindred and friends who were admitted to its enjoyments. It was in 1836 that, with our beloved friend Hobart, I was invited to spend the Christmas holidays at Bedford. We were boys together at that time, and I remember to what hours we prolonged our recreations, with no other restriction than your father’s cheerful injunction, as he bade us good-night: ‘Young gentlemen, please remember not to laugh too loudly; it might deprive some of us of the sleep which you seem not to require for yourselves.’ How merrily we ‘saw the old year out and the new year in,’ that Christmas-tide! I often thought of Irving’s ‘Bracebridge Hall’ as realized in America, in the home of your happy boyhood. Year after year, winter and summer, through college life, you led me to renew my holidays in Bedford. How much I learned from your father’s condescension to boyhood in conversing with his boy-visitors as if they were men! He drew out our opinions and encouraged us to state them frankly when he suspected that we had the boldness to prefer our crude ideas to his own judicial and grave conceptions of fact and principle. He played chess with his youthful guests, but never permitted them to beat him, as that would have been no compliment to lads who worked hard and wished to win in a fair game.
“I have rarely seen a household in which family life was ordered more particularly with reference to religion. There was much of the Huguenot in the piety of the Judge, but nothing of the Puritan. Family prayers were observed twice a day, the servants attending and sharing in the responses. After-evening prayers in those early days, we enjoyed a few cotillons and contra-dances, Mrs. Jay presiding at the piano. And when the ladies had withdrawn, chess-playing and other games occupied us, not infrequently until after midnight. Sundays in the old homestead, after church-going, were like other days, save in the chastened cheerfulness of conversation and employment. A feature of Sunday evenings was the custom for every member of the family to recite something in prose or poetry, and the Judge often closed such recitals by reading selections from Bishop Heber, Mr. Milman, and other favourites of those times. In the third decade of this century, the daughters of ‘the governor,’ Mrs. Banyer and Miss Jay, were often the guests of their brother. They would have been interesting figures in any society, and were eminent in New York for their Christian virtues and devotion to every good work. The elder sister, born in Spain, seemed to preserve in her face and carriage something borrowed from her native climate, while Mrs. Banyer, born in France, was not less conspicuously marked by characteristics of her French ancestry. While the only son of Judge Jay is a recognized type of his father’s principles and character, his daughters not less resembled their mother—a lady whose memory I hold in very great respect, with an affectionate estimate of her worth as a beautiful example of her gracious sex, in all characteristics ‘wherein there is virtue and wherein there is praise.’
“I feel, at this distance of time, that I owe much to the friendship of Judge Jay, apart from the pleasures it conferred upon me. How much he taught me! How often his maxims led me to correct my faults, though he never seemed to instruct, much less to rebuke! Even in his decline, and when he was nearing the end, he favoured me with an occasional letter. Need I say that, while entirely free from cant and pharisaic professions, such letters were models of Christian submission, and not less of ‘faith, hope, and charity’? I have frequently reflected upon them as I find myself approaching the end. His lofty example leads me to say with the inspired moralist: ‘Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.’”