The Jay Papers I: Mission To Spain (Februrary 1968 | Volume: 19, Issue: 2)

The Jay Papers I: Mission To Spain

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Authors: Richard B. Morris

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Februrary 1968 | Volume 19, Issue 2

John Jay was only thirty-three when Congress picked him for the delicate assignment to Madrid. A tall, spare figure with aristocratic bearing (left), he never forgot for a moment that he was a lawyer, and lie had a lawyer’s capacity for close analysis and a lawyer’s caution both in action and language. Lacking neither self-assurance nor self-esteem, he had his own peculiar streak of obstinacy and was the kind of man who is not easily intimidated. These were some of the reasons behind his selection. But Congress also felt that court circles at Madrid would be impressed by Jay’s rank among the patriots and believed that he would favor France’s war aims and thereby prove a less obnoxious choice than some of the volubly anti-Gallican members of the isolationist wing of Congress.

France’s good will was important. She had come into the war as an ally of America in early 1778. Spain had secretly agreed to intervene on France’s side in the spring of 1779 and was openly at war with England a few months later. Sympathetic to one Bourbon house, Jay might be counted upon to persuade the frugal, devout, and highly intelligent Charles III (right), the hawk-visaged Bourbon ruler of Spain, of the merits of America’s cause.

America had great expectations of Spain, including large-scale aid and even an alliance. She also assumed that Spain, once she was in the war, would be willing to allow Americans to ship goods down the Mississippi, which, as a result of a transfer of territory from France to Spain in 1763, was now Spain’s exclusive preserve. There was little point in talking about a trans-Appalachian nation while navigation of the Mississippi was barred to its people. The furtherance of all these expectations, then, was John Jay’s mission when he and his wife of five years, Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, stepped aboard the Continental frigate Confederacy at Chester, Pennsylvania, on Delaware Bay on October 20, 1779.

Sarah was the beautiful and gracious daughter of William Livingston, governor of New Jersey and a leading patriot intellectual. She worshipped her “Mr. Jay,” senior to her by ten years, and he in turn was deeply in love with his “Sally.” Their marriage proved a tender and affectionate, as well as a durable, partnership. The Jays left their three-and-a-half-year-old son Peter Augustus in the care of Sally’s parents, but took in his place a twelve-year-old nephew, Peter Jay Mtinro. In addition, Jay, doubtless by persuasion of his wife, chose as his personal secretary Sally’s illnatured and somewhat overbearing brother, Colonel Henry Brockholst Livingston, a twenty-two-year-old veteran of the Revolutionary War. Also accompanying the Jays was William Carmichael of Maryland, whom Congress had designated as secretary to the Jay mission. Among their fellow passengers was jay’s friend Conrad Alexandre Gérard, the retiring French minister plenipotentiary to the United States, and Mme. Gérard.

Before departure, Sally received a touching