De Alexander

He will always be remembered in history as judge-advocate of the court that tried Major André.

He set the custom of dictating bills in chancery to an amanuensis, doing it with such accuracy that a word had seldom to be changed.

He was making brilliant way in politics, showing himself an administrator, a debater, and a leader of consummate ability; but he steadily refused to withdraw from the professional path along which he was to move with such distinction.

If Jay had never done anything else, the appointment of Kent would immortalise him, just as the selection of John Marshall placed a halo about the head of President Adams.

Jay's administration might be called the reward days of earnest, able men, whose meritorious service became their passport to office.

Under Jay's humane plea for mercy the death penalty was limited to treason, murder, and stealing from a church.

Up to that time men might have been executed for stealing a few loaves of high-priced bread to relieve the sufferings of a hungry family.

Nevertheless the country was greatly and permanently benefited.

No one can be blind to the finger of party spirit, visible in these and similar transactions.

Trivial facts frequently throw light upon important designs.

In a night the whole State was thrown into a ferment of intense excitement, the storm of vituperation seeming to centre in New York city.

Such a sudden and tempestuous change in the popularity of a public official is unprecedented in the history of American politics.

Its disclosure on July 2, the day after Jay's inauguration, turned the applause of that joyous occasion into the most exasperating abuse.

This arbitrary proceeding led to twenty years of corrupt methods and political scandals.

Clinton argued that the governor, being charged under the Constitution with the execution of the laws, was vested with exclusive discretion as to the number of officers necessary to their execution, whereas, if left to one not responsible…

It has had many successors at the polls, in the Legislature, and at the primaries, but none bolder and more harmful, or ruder and more outrageously wrong.

DeWitt Clinton, for instance, not yet in office, was soon to be in the Assembly, in the State Senate, and in the United States Senate--a greater force than any man of his time in New York, save Hamilton.

The people having cut loose from royalty, now proposed cutting loose from silk stockings, knee breeches, powdered hair, pigtails, shoe buckles, and ruffled shirts--the emblems of nobility.

Federalists and anti-Federalists were alike convulsed by a movement which was the offspring of a genuine and irresistible enthusiasm of that strong, far-reaching kind that makes epochs in the history of politics.

The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable.

Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury.

No other American save John Quincy Adams and John Marshall ever served his country so continuously in such exalted and responsible place.

There had never been a time since John Jay entered public life that he was not the most popular man in the city of New York.

Not content with the exalted office to which he had suddenly fallen heir, he now began looking for higher honours; and when it came time to select candidates for governor, he invoked the tactics that won him a place in the United States…

The great statesman had achieved success as secretary of the treasury, but as a political manager, his lack of tact, impatience of control, and infirmity of temper, had crippled the organisation.