Treaties and Supreme Court Justice

A One-Vote Oddity

Chief Justice John Jay (Continued from page 58)

Jay defended the treaty as the best that could be garnered under the circumstance.⁴⁰  President Washington was also displeased with it but agreed with the Chief Justice. It would keep the country from an ill-timed war and would eventually lead to a resolution of the problems between Britainand America.

Washington tried to keep the terms of the treaty secret for fear of the criticism it might arouse. For its part, the Senate also tried to keep it under wraps. For two weeks the debate raged between the Federalist who supported the treaty and the Democratic-Republicans who wanted no part of it.

Ratification of treaties requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate.  Both sides knew that the vote would be close. On June 24, 1795, the treaty was approved by a vote of 20-10.

 

All eighteen Federalist senators, one independent, and one lone Republican senator approved the measure. If any of these senators had defected, one of the most important treaties in our nation’s history would have been rejected by a single vote!⁴¹

 

The President and Senate hoped that the treaty could be kept under wraps until after it had been signed officially by the British. It was not to be. A Republican senator leaked the treaty information to a Philadelphia newspaper and in a short time the news spread to all of the states. The Secretary of the Treasury, A. Hamilton, who favored the treaty, was pelted with rocks at a speaking engagement in New York. In Kentucky, a senator who had voted for the treaty was beaten and nearly drowned by a mob.

But it was John Jay who received the most abuse. It was said that John Jay could walk from one end of the country to the other “and find his way by the light of fires burning him in effigy.”⁴²

But the John Jay brokered treaty of 1795 bought the tiny nation of the United States the seventeen years it needed to grow strong enough to fight and win the war of 1812—and it all came about because of one vote! Remember that on Election Day.

   

Footnotes

40.  One Massachusetts’ man wrote the following on his fence for all to see. “Damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!” 

41. Lindop, 17-19.

42. Lindop, 20.