John Jay
John Jay was an important player in both the movement for American independence and the creation of the new nation. Conservative by nature, he did not favor separation from England at first, but eventually became a negotiator and signer of the Treaty of Paris. A graduate of King's College (now Columbia), he studied law and married Sarah, daughter of New Jersey Governor William Livingston, before the war started. A member of the Continental Congress from 1774-1776, he left to form the New York State constitution and was appointed the state's chief justice in May of 1777. He resigned in December 1778 to become president of the Continental Congress, and left that post the following September to serve as Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain. After negotiating the Treaty of Paris and treaties with other European powers, he returned to New York in July of 1784 to learn that he had been elected Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The frustrations he encountered in that office, which he held until the establishment of the federal government in 1798, convinced him of the importance of creating a government more powerful than that under the Articles of Confederation. Washington appointed him the first Chief Justice of the United States on September 26, 1789, and he served until his resignation June 29, 1795. While Chief Justice, he was sent by Washington to negotiate a new treaty with the British and discovered on his return in 1795 that he had been elected Governor of New York. He retired from public life in 1801, refusing reappointment as chief justice or reelection as governor. He died in 1829, at the age of 83.
[credit: engraving in Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, Volume II, by
Benson J. Lossing, 1850]