Jay Treaty

The Jay Treaty—officially the Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America—was an agreement signed by representatives of the United States and Great Britain on November 19, 1794, during the administration of US president George Washington. Its primary purpose was to resolve tensions that had persisted between the two nations since the end of the American Revolution (1775–1783). Washington believed that the United States and Britain would have gone to war again if the Jay Treaty not been created.

Negotiated for the United States principally by chief justice of the Supreme Court John Jay, the Jay Treaty was intended to address several issues that had been angering both countries for the previous decade. These issues included the continued British occupation of forts in the United States' northwestern frontier, the British blocking of American exports, and the impressment of American sailors into Britain's navy. However, the United States had little bargaining power with Great Britain, and the Jay Treaty that emerged in 1794 was heavily weighted in Britain's favor. The American people fiercely protested the weakness of the Jay Treaty, but Washington was pleased knowing that it likely had prevented another British-American war.

Background

The American Revolutionary War concluded in 1783 when representatives of Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris. The treaty's main objective was to acquire British recognition of the United States as an independent nation rather than a collection of British colonies. Included in the treaty were a number of practical matters to be addressed by both countries.

Great Britain was to permit American fishermen to access the Grand Banks fishing areas off the coast of Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. In addition, Britain was to vacate all its territory in the United States from the Allegheny Mountains near the East Coast to the Mississippi River in the west (the present-day American Midwest). Simultaneously, the Treaty of Paris required the United States to make some concessions. The US government was to ensure that all American debts owed to the British since before the American Revolution were paid and that the individual state governments stopped confiscating the estates of Loyalists, the American colonists who had remained devoted to Great Britain during the revolution.

Over the next decade, both countries violated the promises they set forth in the treaty. American state courts delayed the collection of debts owed to the British while allowing state governments to continue seizing Loyalist properties. Great Britain, meanwhile, did not leave its forts in the United States' northwestern frontier as it had promised. Additionally, Britain had begun commandeering American merchant ships in the West Indies and forcing American sailors into service in the British navy. This was done in the context of the French Revolutionary Wars that had erupted in the early 1790s, during which France went to war with Britain and various other European countries. Great Britain attacked even neutral ships if they were attempting to trade with France or French colonies, such as those in the West Indies.

All these British offenses angered Americans, but the federal government, led by President George Washington at the time, had to choose its response carefully. Many politicians in Congress advocated hostile measures, such as stopping all trade with Britain or aggressively defending American interests at sea. Washington, however, considered avoiding war with Great Britain to be of utmost importance. He feared that such a war could jeopardize the safety of the United States. In the spring of 1794, therefore, Washington appointed John Jay, chief justice of the Supreme Court, to travel to Great Britain and negotiate with the British government to resolve these ongoing problems.

Overview

Washington instructed his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, to brief Jay on the concessions he was to procure from the British in a potential treaty. Hamilton wanted Jay to produce peace between the United States and Britain while also negotiating terms that would increase American-British commerce. At the same time, Hamilton directed Jay to encourage the British to agree to leave the United States' northwestern forts and to repay the United States for merchant ships it had seized in the West Indies. In return, the United States would ensure that British lenders were paid the American debts they were owed.

Jay's obstacle in obtaining these compromises was the United States' reluctance to go to war with Britain under any circumstances. Jay knew that, without the threat of war, the United States was entering the treaty negotiations from a position of weakness. The only warning Jay could issue to the British was that if American demands were not met, the United States would arm Denmark and Sweden so they could defend their own merchant ships from British seizure. Hamilton, however, had already secretly revealed to the British government that the United States would not actually do this.

Jay arrived in Britain in the summer of 1794 and started negotiating a peace treaty with British foreign secretary William Wyndham Grenville. With little bargaining power, Jay ultimately made more concessions than demands. The resulting Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America—later known as the Jay Treaty or Jay's Treaty—earned the United States almost nothing beyond what it had already been entitled by the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

Britain agreed to vacate its forts in the American frontier and grant the United States special rights to trade in British markets. Despite this, Britain refused to respect the neutrality of American merchant ships at sea and agreed to allow only American ships weighing less than seventy tons to trade in the West Indies (and only for a set number of years). Repayment for seized American commercial ships was to be resolved at a later date by arbitration, meaning the issue would not be addressed in an actual court.

The Jay Treaty was completed in November of 1794 and approved by the US Senate in June of 1795. The debated Senate the terms of the treaty furiously and in secret. A senator soon leaked the contents of the treaty to the American public, who began staging anti-British protests in response. Washington was troubled by the widespread public criticism the Jay Treaty received, but even he admitted the document was greatly flawed. Nevertheless, he signed the treaty later in the summer of 1795 satisfied in knowing that it had temporarily prevented another war between the United States and Great Britain.

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