As a statesman, diplomat, and jurist, John Jay contributed significantly to the formation of republican order in America. Both his private correspondence and his public communications testify to his staunch integrity and unswerving commitment to the cause of liberty and justice among men. Although peaceful in temperament and reluctant to rush headlong into armed conflict with Great Britain, he consistently opposed absolute parliamentary sovereignty as incompatible with American liberties. A careful survey of Jay's published works, most of them public documents which appeared without acknowledgment of his authorship, establishes him as one of America's foremost political writers.

John Jay, the sixth son of merchant Peter Jay and his wife, Mary Van Cortlandt, was born in New York City on 12 December 1745. His paternal grandfather, Auguste, had come to New York around 1686 as a French Huguenot exile. Peter Jay, who described his son John's disposition as "very grave" and "very...