It is February 11th. Welcome to Episode 42 of History in a Year. Today, war with Great Britain seems inevitable. The British are seizing American ships and impressing sailors. George Washington knows the young United States cannot survive a war, so he sends Chief Justice John Jay to London on a desperate mission for peace. Jay returns with a treaty so hated that mobs burn him in effigy and throw rocks at Alexander Hamilton’s face. We witness the first time an American President ignored the screaming crowds to do what was right, not what was popular.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 11th. Welcome to Episode 42. Yesterday, we saw “Mad Anthony” Wayne secure the Ohio Territory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
LEAH:
That solved the problem on land. But the United States had a much bigger problem at sea.
STEPHEN:
It’s 1794. Britain and France are at war. And the United States is caught in the middle. We were trying to be neutral, trading with everyone.
LEAH:
But the British didn’t respect our neutrality. They looked at American ships carrying grain to France and said, “That’s contraband.”
STEPHEN:
So, the Royal Navy started seizing American merchant ships. In just one year, they captured 250 American vessels. They stole the cargo and threw the crews in prison.
LEAH:
And even worse was Impressment.
STEPHEN:
This is going to be a huge theme for the next 20 years. The British Navy was desperate for sailors. Life in the Royal Navy was brutal, so sailors deserted all the time.
LEAH:
British captains would stop American ships, line up the crew, and say, “You! You sound British. You’re coming with us.” They would kidnap American citizens and force them to serve on British warships.
STEPHEN:
Americans were furious. The cry went up: “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights!” People were demanding war.
LEAH:
But George Washington knew the truth. The United States had no navy. We had no money. If we went to war with Great Britain in 1794, we would be crushed. The experiment would be over.
STEPHEN:
So, he decided to buy peace. He sent the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, to London to negotiate a treaty.
LEAH:
Jay was a brilliant man, but he was a terrible politician. He was stiff, aristocratic, and frankly, a bit of an anglophile. He liked the British.
STEPHEN:
He arrived in London and sat down with the British ministers. But he had very little leverage. Britain was a superpower; America was a startup.
LEAH:
The treaty he signed—The Jay Treaty—was… disappointing.
STEPHEN:
Here is what we got:
The British agreed to finally leave the forts in the Northwest Territory (which they were supposed to do 10 years ago).
They agreed to pay for some of the ships they seized.
They allowed us to trade a little bit with India and the Caribbean.
LEAH:
But here is what we didn’t get:
They didn’t agree to stop impressing sailors.
They didn’t agree to stop seizing our ships in the future.
And we had to promise not to trade cotton or sugar with France.
STEPHEN:
When Jay came back to America in 1795, the public reaction was nuclear.
LEAH:
They hated it. They called it a surrender. They said John Jay had sold his country for British gold.
STEPHEN:
The mobs went crazy. They built effigies of John Jay (basically dolls made of straw), stuffed them with gunpowder, and set them on fire right in front of Federal Hall.
LEAH:
John Jay famously said, “I could travel from Boston to Philadelphia by the light of my own burning effigies.”
STEPHEN:
Even Alexander Hamilton—who supported the treaty—couldn’t calm them down. He went to a rally in New York to defend the treaty. The crowd threw stones at him! One hit him right in the forehead.
LEAH:
He had to leave the stage, bleeding, saying, “If you use such striking arguments, I must retire.”
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans had a field day. They called Washington a traitor. They said he was secretly working for King George.
LEAH:
So, the treaty sat on Washington’s desk. He hated it too. He knew it was weak. But he also knew the alternative was war.
STEPHEN:
So, on August 18, 1795, George Washington signed it.
LEAH:
He spent his own popularity to save the country. He took the heat so the nation could have peace.
STEPHEN:
And historically? He was right. The Jay Treaty prevented a war with Britain for 17 years. It gave the United States time to grow, to build an economy, and eventually, to build the navy that would fight in 1812.
LEAH:
But the political cost was permanent. The era of unity was gone. Washington was no longer the untouchable god. He was just a Federalist politician.
STEPHEN:
And while the politicians were fighting in the streets, a different kind of scandal was brewing behind closed doors.
LEAH:
Alexander Hamilton had a secret. A few years earlier, a beautiful young woman named Maria Reynolds had knocked on his door asking for help.
STEPHEN:
Hamilton helped her. Then he slept with her. Then her husband found out and started blackmailing him.
LEAH:
Now, in 1797, that secret is about to come out.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 43. The Reynolds Pamphlet. The first major sex scandal in American political history. We see how Alexander Hamilton destroyed his own reputation to prove he wasn’t a crook… by admitting he was an adulterer.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.