Jay’s Attitude Toward Slavery in Old Age

During his long retirement from politics after 1801, Jay demonstrated little interest in abolishing slavery or helping African Americans. He corresponded with William Wilberforce, a prominent British abolitionist whom he had met in London in 1794, agreeing with his opposition to the international slave trade and the growth of democracy. However, Jay’s ardent opposition to admitting Missouri to the Union as a slave state in 1819–1820 inspired the most fervent antislavery attitudes of his life. He advised that Congress abolish the interstate slave trade, which nurtured the expansion of bondage, and prohibit the admission of new slave states. Arguing that slavery violated the Declaration of Independence and retarded national prosperity, he praised abolitionist resolutions adopted at a Trenton antislavery meeting in October 1819. Elias Boudinot published Jay’s antislavery letter to him denouncing the Missouri Compromise and urging Congress to abolish the domestic slave trade in the original thirteen states. The letter appeared in many Northern newspapers.