Jay’s Treaty
| Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and The United States of America | |
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First page of the Jay Treaty
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| Context | To relieve post-war tension between Britain and the United States |
| Signed | November 19, 1794 |
| Location | London |
| Effective | February 29, 1796 |
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The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, commonly known as the Jay Treaty, and also as Jay's Treaty, was a 1795 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that averted war, resolved issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (which ended the American Revolutionary War), and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792. The Treaty was designed by Alexander Hamilton and supported by President George Washington. It angered France and bitterly divided Americans. It led to the formation of two opposing parties in every state, the pro-Treaty Federalists and the anti-Treaty Republicans.
The Treaty was negotiated by John Jay and gained many of the primary American goals. This included the withdrawal of British Army units from forts in the Northwest Territory it had refused to relinquish under the Paris Peace Treaty. The British were retaliating for the United States reneging on Articles 4 and 6 of the 1783 treaty; American state courts impeded the collection of debts owed the British creditors and upheld the continued confiscation of Loyalist estates in spite of an explicit undertaking that the prosecutions would be immediately discontinued. The parties agreed that disputes over wartime debts and the American–Canadian boundary were to be sent to arbitration—one of the first major uses of arbitration in diplomatic history, which set the precedent used by other nations. The Americans were granted limited rights to trade with British colonies in the Caribbean in exchange for some limits on the American export of cotton.
The Jay treaty was signed on November 19, 1794, and submitted to the United States Senate for its advice and consent the following June. It was ratified by the Senate on June 24, 1795 by a two-thirds majority vote of 20–10 (the exact number necessary for concurrence). It was also ratified by the British government, and took effect February 29, 1796, the day when ratifications were officially exchanged.
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