Mr. Jay Rides Circuit

Abstract

Mr. Jay Rides Circuit LANDA M. FREEMAN Several years ago, when two John Jay Homestead1 colleagues, Louise V North and Janet M. Wedge, and I contemplated compiling and editing a book of correspondence between John Jay and his wife Sarah Livingston Jay, we agreed that our goal would be to chronicle the personal lives of the Jays in the tumultuous times during and after the American Revolution. In the process of choosing the letters for The Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay, published in 2005, we came to a true appreciation of the Jays’ commitment toward their country. John Jay devoted his working life to winning independence for the United States and establishing it as a nation. He was the only Founding Father to serve in all three branches of government: executive (Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Governor of New York State), legislative (member of the First and Second Continental Congresses, as well as president ofthe latter), and judicial (chiefjus­ tice ofthe State ofNew York, and later, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court). He also served in diplomatic roles, as minister plenipotentiary to Spain and as a peace commissioner dur­ ing the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War. In 1794, he was named envoy extraordi­ nary to Great Britain, charged with negotiating the treaty that bears his name, an agreement that postponed until 1812 another war with Britain. Sarah Livingston Jay was equally support­ ive of her country. Completely committed to her husband, she dedicated herself to sustain­ ing and assisting him in his career. Although she was amenable to “giving Mr. Jayto thepub­ lic,” she missed him terribly when they were separated. Theirs was an abiding love that en­ abled Sarah to be a devoted and affectionate wife, a loving mother to their five children, and a competent manager of their household. In addition, she was an astute observer of life and a superb letter-writer. In 1789, when John Jay was invited by newly elected President George Washington to become the first ChiefJustice of the Supreme Court, he accepted the position with gracious humility. To complete appointments to the Court, President Washington named five other men from five different states as Associate Justices. Together, the Justices began to carry MR. JAY RIDES CIRCUIT 19 Once appointed to the Supreme Court in 1789, Chief Justice John Jay and his fellow Justices set out to establish an effective federal court system that would help bind the nation together. out the Judiciary Act passed by Congress in 1789. Their goal was to establish an effec­ tive federal court system that would help bind the nation together. Under the Judiciary Act, Congress created a separate federal circuit court for each state, staffed by two Supreme Court Justices and one local district judge. It also determined the dates and places of court sessions and required the six Justices to cover them—that is, to “ride circuit” twice a year. The country was divided into three judi­ cial circuits—the eastern, the middle, and the southern—and each Justice was assigned to the circuit that included his home state. Given the distances ridden, it was often not possi­ ble to return home between court sessions, so that a Justice who left on circuit might return home weeks or even months later. When it be­ came clearthat the southern circuit entailed the greatest distances and the worst roads, a rota­ tion of circuits was implemented among the Justices.2 Riding circuit in the eighteenth century was not easy. Letter-writing was the only means of communication—and it was an un­ certain one at best. With regular mail service in its infancy, letters were often entrusted to friends as well as to post riders. The mail sometimes reached its destination and some­ times did not. Frequently, it arrived afterthe in­ tended recipient (at least in the case ofSupreme CourtJustices) had departed for another locale. Hence, the first sentence ofmost letters usually included a listing ofcorrespondence written as well as received, so that both writer and recipi­ ent could tell whether letters had “miscarried” or not. While John Jay was away, usually on the eastern circuit...