Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: January 18, 2014
Caption: John Jay
Additional Description: This portrait of John Jay by Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. It was begun in 1784 and completed in 1818.

“President George Washington chose John Jay to be the first chief justice of the United States. Jay had played an important part in negotiating the treaty bringing the Revolution to a close, and was the postwar secretary of foreign affairs. An advocate for a stronger national government, Jay had helped persuade New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, contributing five newspaper essays to the series that became known as the Federalist Papers. In 1794, when war with England threatened, Washington sent Chief justice jay to London to defuse the crisis. The treaty that Jay negotiated, which Jeffersonian Republicans seized upon as a repudiation of America's wartime alliance with France and a return to English dominance, set off the cry of ‘Damn John Jay.’ Nonetheless, the controversial Jay Treaty avoided a war that the young republic was ill-equipped to wage.” — National Portrait Gallery.
Submitted: June 16, 2015, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p311413
File Size: 0.479 Megabytes

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