Jay’s Attitude Toward Slavery: Fact Versus Fiction

John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were lukewarm in the matter of opposing slavery. In 1787, although president of the New York Manumission Society (NYMS), Jay took Hamilton’s advice and failed to send an antislavery petition to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. Jay’s most memorable antislavery statements at this time were in personal letters. He did not publicly oppose slavery at New York State’s constitutional convention in 1777, and at the peace negotiations in Paris in 1782 he demanded that the British return the runaway slaves that had gone with them to British territories after the American Revolution. In the late 1780s, New York State’s slave population increased to 21,000, with only 4500 free blacks, although in New York City at this time the number of free blacks exceeded the number of those enslaved. Despite its long years of agitation against slavery, the NYMS played little role in the 1799 abolition law’s passage. In 1799, as the state’s governor, Jay, who downplayed his antislavery views during his unsuccessful run for the governorship in 1792, failed to propose a gradual abolition law to the assembly. Jay failed to free his slaves during the 1790s and was not solicitous regarding the proper treatment of those slaves he hired out to others.