Historians and the Debate over John Jay’s Antislavery Credentials

The view that Jay zealously combatted slavery, first promulgated by his abolitionist son William in his Life of John Jay (1833), has received general acceptance. The foremost modern John Jay scholar, Richard B. Morris, attempted to depict Jay as strongly antislavery, as did later scholars such as Daniel Littlefield, Joseph J. Ellis, David Gellman, Paul Finkelman, and Sarah Gronningsater. However, apart from the presidency of the New York Manumission Society, which he held from 1785 to 1789, when he abruptly resigned membership to become chief justice of the United States, Jay neither said nor did anything against slavery until old age. Several historians claim that Jay freed all of his slaves, although he did not. They prefer to consider Jay an abolitionist so that they can have a Founding Father for a hero.