The New John Jay Acquisitions

RICHARD K AIORRIS AND ELI FABER

AS a result of the generosity of the Columbia College Class
/'X of '25, a new and important collection of the papers of
A )\ John Jay, Class of 1764, has been acquired by Special
Collections. Totaling some 145 items, this acquisition supplements
the already rich and major collection of the John Jay Papers in the
Columbia University Libtaries and will importantly contribute to
the task of providing a definitive edition of the unpublished Papers
of John Jay, a project which has been going forward over the past
decade. In addition to the correspondence to and from John Jay,
the new collection includes receipt books for the years 17 7 o-17 8 2
and 1789-1802, chronicling rhe day-ro-day business activities of
an eighteenth-century statesman.

The collection given by the Class of '25 includes holograph let¬
ters from such prominent personages as rhe Conire de Vergennes,
Robert R. Livingston, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and William
Carmichael, secretary to Jay's Spanish mission. It casts new light
on virtually every aspect of Jay's public career. For example,
Jay's activities during the summer of 1776 have previously been
thinly documented. Covering a period when Jay was dispatched
by the New York Provincial Congress to secure cannon for
the defense of the Hudson, the new collection helps immeasur¬
ably to fill this gap with notes kept by Jay during a trip to Con¬
necticut in quest of artillery pieces. The collection also includes a
number of letters written in cipher. An example is shown on the
following page from Robert R. Livingston's letter to Jay in De¬
cember, 1781.

Jay and Hamilron were the two foremost adx'ocates of the
ratification of the Constitution at the Poughkeepsie Convention
which convened in the summer of 1788. Unfortunately Jay was

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