John Jay: Founding Father by Walter Stahr

Author:Walter Stahr [Stahr, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY/United States/Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-11-11T23:00:00+00:00

Some Antifederalists had argued that treaties, like all other laws, should be made by the legislature, that is by Congress. Jay responded that these critics “seem not to consider that the judgments of our courts, and the commissions constitutionally given by our governor, are as valid and as binding on all persons whom they concern as the laws passed by our legislature.” There were thus many varieties of law, not all of them made by the legislature, and it was perfectly proper to assign to the President and Senate responsibility for this type of law. To those who argued that Congress should have the right to repeal a treaty, he responded that a treaty is a bargain between nations, that it would be “impossible to find a nation who would make any bargain with us, which should be binding on them absolutely, but on us only so long and so far as we may think proper to be bound by it.” He had made the same point as Secretary for Foreign Affairs and would have occasions to make it again as Chief Justice.27

In mid-April, Jay was almost taken out of the constitutional debate by a rock thrown at a riot. For many months, there had been protests in New York City that doctors and medical students were robbing graves to obtain cadavers for dissection. The protests took fire when a boy saw a discarded limb through the window of a hospital. A crowd stormed the hospital, wrecked the dissection room, and captured several medical students. The crowd later released the students to Mayor Duane, who put them in the city jail that night for their own protection. On the next afternoon, however, a far larger crowd gathered around the jail, which they threatened to attack to get at the students. Jay learned of the threat when his friend Matthew Clarkson burst into the Jays’ home and shouted for a sword. According to Sarah, her husband “ran up stairs and handing General Clarkson one sword, to my great concern armed himself with another, and went towards the jail.” There they found Governor Clinton, General Von Steuben, and a handful of militiamen defending the jail against an angry mob. The defenders were “bombarded with rocks and brickbats,” one of which struck Jay on the forehead, and he dropped to the ground. At about this point, the militia opened fire and killed at least three people. The crowd fled. Jay was taken by his friends first to the nearby poorhouse and then to his home. Sarah was appalled to see her husband returning “with two large holes in his forehead” and feared that some permanent damage might have been done. The family doctor dressed the wound and gave him a strong sleeping potion. He was in bed for several days with black and swollen eyes and “vast pain from his neck and shoulders.”28

While Jay was still recuperating at home, his unsigned Address to the People of the State of New York appeared as a pamphlet.

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