Jay's Treaty Quotes

Jay: Looks like you misspelled the Treaty of Versailles. Sara: Yeah, well. My brother's natural ability for languages didn't rub off on me. Jay: ...I'm not talking about Versailles. I have no idea if you spelled that right. I'm talking about the word 'treaty.

For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington. By settling all outstanding issues left over from the Revolution, the treaty removed the last impediments to improved relations with England and promised sustained prosperity.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat was invited to spend more time in the White House than any other foreign leader—thirteen invitations.303 Clinton was dead set on helping the Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace. He pushed the Israelis to grant ever-greater concessions until the Israelis were willing to grant the Palestinians up to 98 percent of all the territory they requested. And what was the Palestinian response? They walked away from the bargaining table and launched the wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks known as the Second Intifada. And what of Osama bin Laden? Even while America was granting concessions to Palestinians—and thereby theoretically easing the conditions that provided much of the pretext for Muslim terror—bin Laden was bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen, and was well into the planning stages of the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. After President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, bringing American troops into direct ground combat with jihadists half a world away, many Americans quickly forgot the recent past and blamed American acts of self-defense for “inflaming” jihad. One of those Americans was Barack Obama. Soon after his election, Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he delivered a now-infamous speech that signaled America’s massive policy shifts. The United States pulled entirely out of Iraq despite the pleas of “all the major Iraqi parties.”304 In Egypt, the United States actually backed the Muslim Brotherhood government, going so far as agreeing to give it advanced F-16 fighters and M1 Abrams main battle tanks, even as the Muslim Brotherhood government was violating its peace treaty with Israel and persecuting Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community. The Obama administration continued supporting the Brotherhood, even when it stood aside and allowed jihadists to storm the American embassy, raising the black flag of jihad over an American diplomatic facility. In Libya, the United States persuaded its allies to come to the aid of a motley group of rebels, including jihadists. Then many of these same jihadists promptly turned their anger on the United States, attacking our diplomatic compound in Benghazi the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2012—killing the American ambassador and three more brave Americans. Compounding this disaster, the administration had steadfastly refused to reinforce the American security presence in spite of a deteriorating security situation, afraid that it would anger the local population. This naïve and foolish administration decision cost American lives.

Eliza, this is the way of honor with gentlemen.” “If it’s honor that you value, then perhaps you ought to guard the esteem your country still has for you by not offering to brawl in the streets like a madman.” “I am not mad.” “No?” I asked, thinking his behavior erratic. To prove it, I held up three different scribblings I’d found on his desk. “What do I see here? An essay in defense of the Jay Treaty that you wrote for the papers under one pen name. A second, written under a different name in which you anonymously praise yourself for writing the first. And then a raving third, pretending to add to the imaginary choir! It’s madness.

As many Republicans had predicted, the French had retaliated against the Jay Treaty by allowing their privateers to prey on American ships carrying contraband cargo bound for British ports. With Napoleon emerging as the new French military strongman, Hamilton had little doubt that his troops would spread despotism across Europe.

On April 30, 1796, Federalists eked out a razor-thin victory of fifty-one to forty-eight in the House to make money available for the Jay Treaty.

What Madison had hit upon in the “Vices” was a problem that modern economists call the collective action dilemma—namely, the challenge that individual agents (be they people or sovereign states) face when they try to work together to produce a good that will benefit them all. In many circumstances, it is in the interests of each agent to cheat, or not work for the public benefit, and instead let the others do the work. Since everybody has such an interest, the result is that nobody works to make things better. This is exactly what had happened among the thirteen states when it came to instituting commercial and financial regulations, enforcing international law, and supplying money for the national treasury. Collectively, the nation would be better off if the states did what they were supposed to do—pay their requisitions, abide by international treaties, and enact responsible monetary policy—but each individual state had an incentive to free ride, as today’s economists would say, placing its own concerns above the national good.

The world is capable to end child labor. We have the technology. We have the resources. We have laws and international treaties. We have everything. The only thing is that we have to feel compassion for others. My struggle is for the globalization of compassion.

At the peace treaty ending the war, signed in Paris in 1783, the American diplomats John Adams and John Jay had insisted that all the lands controlled by the British west of the Allegheny Mountains and northwest of the Ohio River east of the Mississippi, be ceded to the new United States.

The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics—the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.

of an Indian war in the Old Northwest. Since the Jay Treaty, British officials had walked a fine line with their native allies, whom they called “Nitchies” (a corruption of the Ojibway/Chippewa word “Niigii,” which

The Battle of Tippecanoe (1811) The other development that contributed to Anglo-American discord in 1811 was the outbreak of an Indian war in the Old Northwest. Since the Jay Treaty, British officials had walked a fine line with their native allies, whom they called “Nitchies” (a corruption of the Ojibway/Chippewa word “Niigii,” which means “friend” or “comrade”).

This is, after all, a man who was president of a nation he never wished to come into being. Monroe had opposed the Constitution. And he helped Jefferson oppose damned near everything else. The debt, the bank, the Jay Treaty, and a standing army that would’ve prevented the nation’s capital from being burned to the ground. In short, James Monroe set himself against nearly every good