Jay Treaty

The Treaty

The Jay Treaty of 1794 (also known as Jay's Treaty or the Treaty of London), was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain signed in November 1794, and ratified in 1795. The goals were designed primarily by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, with strong support from President George Washington and chief negotiator John Jay. The treaty angered the friends of France, which was at war with Britain, and became a central issue in the politics of the First Party System. The treaty avoided a threatened war and resolved most (but not all) of the grievances between the two nations and opened a decade of peace and commercial prosperity.

Issues

From the British perspective, the war with France made it imperative to improve relations with the U.S., lest that country fall into the French orbit. From the American viewpoint, the most pressing foreign policy issues were normalizing trade relations with Britain, America's leading trading partner, and resolving issues left over from the American Revolution that ended in 1783. Even more serious were the issues arising from the ongoing war between Britain and France. In 1793-1794, the British Navy captured hundreds of American neutral ships and the British in Canada were supporting Indian tribes fighting the U.S. in Ohio (territory the British gave the U.S. in 1783). Congress voted an embargo for two months. Hamilton and the Federalists favored Britain over France, and sought to normalize relations. Hamilton designed the plan and Washington sent Chief Justice Jay to London to negotiate a comprehensive treaty.

The American government had a number of issues it wanted dealt with:

• Britain was still occupying a number of forts on U.S. territory in the Great Lakes region.
• American merchants wanted compensation for goods and ships confiscated during the American Revolutionary War.
• Southerners wanted compensation for the slaves the British had taken from them during the revolution.
• Merchants wanted the British West Indies reopened to American trade.

Treaty terms

Jay's negotiations with the British were largely successful. The British agreed to vacate the western forts by June 1796 (which was done), and to compensate American ship owners (the British paid $10,345,200 by 1802). In return, the Americans gave most favored nation trading status to the British, acquiesced in British anti-French maritime policies. The United States guaranteed the payment of British private prewar debts (the U.S. paid £600,000 in 1802). Two joint boundary commissions were set up to establish correctly the boundary line in the northeast (it agreed on the Saint Croix River) and in the northwest (this one never met). The British refused to give any more concessions unless the United States provided compensation for the Loyalist property seized during the Revolution. The British also refused to allow trade between the U.S. and its Caribbean colonies. Jay, a strong opponent of slavery, did not press the issue of compensation for slaves. The treaty failed to deal with an issue that eventually led to the War of 1812, the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy.

Aboriginal rights

Article III of the Jay Treaty declared the right of aboriginal peoples (people indigenous to Canada and/or the US) to trade and travel between the United States and Canada, which was then a territory of Great Britain. This right was restated in section 289 of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act: Nothing in this title shall be construed to affect the right of American Indians born in Canada to pass the borders of the United States, but such right shall extend only to persons who possess at least 50 per centum of blood of the American Indian race.[1]

Approval and dissent

Washington submitted the treaty to the United States Senate for ratification in June 1795. The treaty was unpopular at first, and gave the Jeffersonians a platform to rally new supporters. Jeffersonians were Anglophobes, who demanded support for France in the French Revolutionary Wars, arguing the treaty with France from 1778 was still in effect. They looked at Britain as the center of aristocracy and the main threat to America's republican values. Therefore they denounced Hamilton and Jay (and even Washington) as monarchists who betrayed American values. They organized public protests against Jay and his treaty; one of their rallying cries went:

Damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won't damn John Jay! Damn every one that won't put lights in his window and sit up all night damning John Jay!

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison strongly opposed the Treaty--they favored France--thus setting up foreign policy as a major dispute between the new Federalist and Republican parties. Furthermore they had a counterproposal designed to establish "a direct system of commercial hostility with Great Britain," even at the risk of war. The Jeffersonians raised public opinion to fever pitch by accusing the British of promoting Indian atrocities on the frontier. The fierce debates over the Treaty in 1794-95, according to one historian, "transformed the Republican movement into a Republican party." To fight the treaty the Jeffersonians "established coordination in activity between leaders at the capital, and leaders, actives and popular folowings in the states, counties and towns."

The Federalists fought back and Congress rejected the Jefferson-Madison counterproposals. Washington threw his enormous prestige behind the treaty, and Federalists rallied public opinion more effectively than the opponents. Hamilton convinced President Washington it was the best treaty that could be expected. Washington, who insisted the U.S. must remain neutral in the European wars then raging, signed it and his prestige carried the day in Congress. The Federalists, however, made a strong appeal to public opinion which rallied their own supporters and shifted the debate. Washington and Hamilton outmaneuvered Madison as opposition leader. Hamilton, now out of the government, was the dominant figure who helped secure its approval by the needed 2/3 vote. The Senate passed a resolution on June 24 advising the president to amend the treaty by suspending the 12th article, which concerned trade between the U.S. and the West Indies. On August 14, the Senate ratified the treaty 20-10, with the condition that the treaty contain specific language regarding the June 24th resolution. President Washington signed it in late August. The Treaty was proclaimed in effect on February 29, 1796 and in the series of close votes the House funded the Treaty in April 1796. [2]

After defeat in Congress, the Jeffersonian Republicans fought and lost the 1796 presidential election on the issue.

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he did not repudiate the treaty, and instead kept the Federalist minister in London Rufus King to negotiate a successful resolution to outstanding issues regarding cash payments and boundaries. The amity broke down finally in 1805, as relations turned hostile, leading to the War of 1812. In 1815, the Jay treaty was replaced by the Treaty of Ghent. >

Evaluations

Elkins and McKitrick note that in convential diplomatic terms, as a "piece of adversary bargaining", Jay "got much the worst of the 'bargain'. Such a view has to a great degree persisted ever since." conclude that although Jay got nowhere on the matter of neutral rights, he did get "his other sine qua nons[sic]"; he got none of things that were "desirable, but not indispensible." They add "Jay's record on the "soft" it was open to many objections; on the "hard" side, it was a substantial success, which included the prevention of war with Great Britain."

Historian Marshall Smelser argues that the treaty effectively postponed war with Britain (war finally did break out in 1812).

Bradford Perkins argued in 1955 that the treaty was the first establishment of a special relationship between Britain and America, with a second installment under Lord Salisbury. In his view, the treaty worked for ten years to secure peace between Britain and America: "The decade may he characterized as the period of "The First Rapprochement." As Perkins concludes, "For about ten years there was peace on the frontier, joint recognition of the value of commercial intercourse, and even, by comparison with both preceding and succeeding epochs, a muting of strife over ship seizures and impressment. Two controversies with France... pushed the English-speaking powers even more closely together." Starting at swords' point in 1794 the Jay treaty reversed the tensions, Perkins concludes: "Through a decade of world war and peace, successive governments on both sides of the Atlantic were able to bring about and preserve a cordiality which often approached genuine friendship."

More recently, Perkins has not only quoted the opinion of the "great historian" Henry Adams that the treaty was a "bad one":

"No one would venture on its merits to defend it now. There has been no time since 1810 when the United States would not prefer war to peace on such terms":

but added, that (saving perhaps the opening of trade with British India), "Jay did fail to win anything the Americans were not obviously entitled to, liberation of territory recognized as theirs since 1782, and compensation for seizures that even Britain admitted were illegal." In addition to the immediate gains, Perkins reports major delayed gains in that that the British became much friedlier, stopped intriguing with the Indians, opened their Caribbean island ports. In addition, reports Perkins, the Royal Navy treated American commerce with "relative leniency" during the wars, and many impressed seamen were returned to America. Furthermore, Spain, seeing an informal British-American alliance shaping up, became more favorable regarding American usage of the Mississippi River and signed the Pinckney Treaty which the Americans wanted. When Jefferson took office he gained renewal of the commercial articles that had greatly benefitted American shipping.

Elkins and McKitrick find this more positive view open to "one big difficulty": it would require that the British have negotiated in the same spirit. They find "little indication of this"; preferring to view the British not as future-oriented, but, having had no indication that America required attention, wishing to take it off the long list of things that did.

Joseph Ellis finds the terms of the treaty "one-sided in Britain's favor" , but asserts a consensus of historians that it

"a shrewd bargain for the United States. It bet, in effect, on England rather than France as the hegemonic European power of the future, which proved prophetic. It recognized the massive dependence of the American economy on trade with England. In a sense it was a precocious preview of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), for it linked American security and economic development to the British fleet, which provided a protective shield of incalculable value throughout the nineteenth century. Mostly, it postponed war with England until America was economically and politically more capable of fighting one."

References

• Bemis, Samuel Flagg. Jay's Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (1923) remains the standard narrative of how treaty was written
• Charles, Joseph. "The Jay Treaty: The Origins of the American Party System," in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 12, No. 4. (Oct., 1955), pp. 581-630. online at JSTOR
• Combs, Jerald. A. The Jay Treaty: Political Background of Founding Fathers (1970) (ISBN 0-520-01573-8) Focusing on the domestic and ideological aspects, Combs dislikes Hamilton's quest for national power and a "heroic state" dominating the Western Hemisphere, but concludes the Federalists "followed the proper policy" because the treaty preserved peace with Britain
• Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. (1994), ch. 9
• Estes, Todd, "The Art of Presidential Leadership: George Washington and the Jay Treaty," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 2001, vol 109, no. 2.
• Estes, Todd, "Shaping the Politics of Public Opinion: Federalists and the Jay Treaty Debate." Journal of the Early Republic (2000) 20(3): 393-422. Issn: 0275-1275; online at JSTOR
• Farrell, James M. "Fisher Ames and Political Judgment: Reason, Passion, and Vehement Style in the Jay Treaty Speech," Quarterly Journal of Speech 1990 76(4): 415-434.
• Fewster, Joseph M. "The Jay Treaty and British Ship Seizures: the Martinique Cases." William and Mary Quarterly 1988 45(3): 426-452. Issn: 0043-5597 22:09, online at JSTOR
• Perkins, Bradford. The First Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1795-1805 1955.
• American Indian Law Alliance. "Border Crossing Rights." (PDF available at http://www.ailanyc.org/Bordercrossing.htm)

See also

• List of treaties
• Timeline of United States diplomatic history

External links

• Jay's Treaty and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Jay Treaty of 1794 -- various documents from The Avalon Project
• "Native American Free Passage Rights Under the 1794 Jay Treaty: Survival Under United States Statutory Law and Canadian Common Law" in Boston College International and Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 24:2, 2001, pp. 313-340