Jays Treaty

Jay's Treaty concluded in 1794 between the United States and Great Britain to settle difficulties arising mainly out of violations of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 and to regulate commerce and navigation.

Negotiations

War threatened when the British admiralty ordered the seizure of American vessels trading with the French West Indies. To avert further difficulties, George Washington in Apr., 1794, named Chief Justice John Jay as envoy extraordinary for the negotiation of a treaty. The principal American objects were to secure surrender of the posts in the Old Northwest, to obtain compensation for losses and damages resulting from seizure of American vessels and provisions as contraband of war and for the impressment of American sailors, and to remove the restrictions on American commerce, especially on the British West Indies trade. Jay, arriving in England in June, was received favorably, and the treaty was signed on Nov. 19, 1794, by Jay and Lord Grenville .

Treaty Provisions

The treaty provided for British evacuation of the Northwestern posts by June 1, 1796, allowing settlers the option of becoming Americans or remaining British citizens, with full protection of property guaranteed. It referred settlement of the northwest and northeast boundaries and the questions of debts and compensations to mixed commissions; provided for unrestricted navigation of the Mississippi and free trade between the North American territories of the two countries; granted equal privileges to American and British vessels in Great Britain and the East Indies, but placed severe and humiliating restrictions upon American trade with the British West Indies; and permitted admission of British vessels to American ports on terms of the most-favored nation. No discrimination in duties was to be made, and articles provided for extradition of criminals and defined contraband material. Indemnity for those Americans whose slaves were carried off by Britain's evacuating armies was not allowed; protection to American sailors against impressment was not guaranteed; and no recognition of the principles of international maritime law was secured.

A Stormy Reception

The treaty, which owed much to the influence of Alexander Hamilton , caused a storm of indignation in America. Jay was denounced and burned in effigy, Hamilton was stoned while speaking in its defense, and the treaty was called a complete surrender of American rights. It was submitted to the U.S. Senate, in special session, on June 8, 1795, and on June 24, after stormy debate, it was ratified with a special reservation on the clause relative to trade with the West Indies. It was signed by Washington.

When the treaty was proclaimed as law, after the exchange of ratifications at London in 1796, the U.S. House of Representatives called upon the President for papers relating to the negotiation. In a special message Washington refused to comply with the request of the House. After lengthy debate the House passed a resolution, by three votes, declaring it expedient to pass laws making the treaty effective, and an act was finally passed (Apr. 30, 1796) making appropriations for carrying the treaty into effect.

Bibliography

See studies by S. F. Bemis (1923, rev. ed. 1962) and J. A. Combs (1970).

Jay's Treaty a treaty between the United States and Great Britain to regulate commerce and navigation. It corrected problems arising from violations of the Treaty of Paris of 1793.

Jay's Treaty (1795).After the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the British refused to turn over the Great Lakes forts on the American side of the new border with Canada. This was only fair, they argued, because the Americans were refusing to honor their promises to compensate the Loyalists for their wartime losses and to enforce payment of prewar debts American citizens owed to British subjects. The British also refused to reopen their West Indian colonies to American ships and to compensate Americans for escaped slaves they had carried off at the end of the war.

The resulting tensions escalated dramatically when, after revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain in 1793, the British began to seize neutral American ships carrying goods to France. As Britain and the United States approached the brink of war in 1794, the embryonic Jeffersonian Republican party in Congress wanted to force the British to settle on American terms by cutting off Anglo‐American trade. Instead, President George Washington commissioned the Federalist John Jay to negotiate a settlement.

The terms of the resulting treaty became known in March 1795. In return for giving up America's right to retaliate commercially against Britain for ten years, the British relinquished the Great Lakes posts and agreed to turn over to neutral arbitration the issues of Loyalist compensation, prewar debts, Canadian border disputes, and the most egregious of British ship seizures. The British also agreed to open the West Indies to certain American ships, but the concession was so meager and contingent that the Senate rejected this part of the treaty. To the dismay of both northern shippers and southern slaveholders, Jay secured neither a guarantee of American neutral rights nor compensation for escaped slaves.

The Senate ratified the treaty in June 1795, and the House of Representatives voted the funds to implement it in 1796. But the acrimonious congressional and public debates over whether peace with the powerful British was worth the cost of the treaty helped to convert the Federalists and Republicans from limited congressional factions into full‐scale party organizations among the public at large. The treaty also alienated France and helped bring on the 1798 Quasi‐War with that country.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federalist Party; Jefferson, Thomas; Political Parties; Quasi‐War with France.

Bibliography

Samuel Flagg Bemis , Jay's Treaty, rev. ed., 1962.
Jerald A. Combs , The Jay Treaty, 1970.
Daniel G. Lang , Foreign Policy in the Early Republic, 1985.

Jerald A. Combs