From John Jay to Jedidiah Morse, 30 January 1799
To Jedidiah Morse
Albany, 30 January 1799
Dear Sir
You will herewith recieve Copies of the acts of our two last Sessions.1 a variety of official and other affairs, which altho’ in numerous Instances of little Importance, yet required to be dispatched with punctuality, induced me from time to time to postpone replying to your obliging Letter of the 19th. of Novr. & to thank you for the interesting Pamphlets you was so kind as to send with it:2
We see many things my dear Sir! which might be altered for the better; and that I believe has been the Case at all Times— But at this Period there certainly are an uncommon number and Series of Events & Circumstances which assume an aspect unusually portentuous. The Seeds of Trouble are sowing and germinating in our Country, as well as in many others. Infidelity has become a political Engine, alarming both by the Force and the Extent of its operations. It is doubtless permitted to be used for wise Ends, tho’ we do not clearly discern them— when those Ends shall be accomplished, it will be laid aside.—
much ill use has been, and will yet be made of Secret Societies— I think with you that they should not be encouraged; and that the most virtuous and innocent of them would do well to concur in suspending them for the present—
what precisely is to be understood by the Death and Resurrection of the Witnesses, will probably be explained only by the Event. I have an Idea that either the old and new Testaments, or the moral and revealed Laws, are the two witnesses— witnesses to the Existence, Attributes Promises and Denunciations of the Supreme Being— Atheism is killing these witnesses. That all true and pious apostles or Believers are every where, or generally to be slain, seems hardly credible. Whatever or whoever the Witnesses may be, it is certain that the Slaughter is not yet perfected. I much doubt whether in any View of the Subject, the Clergy of the Church of Rome are of the Number. The Pope has lost his triple Crown, and his spiritual Dominion is rapidly declining. The Turk is now a party to the War— whether any and what Consequences will result from it to Mahomet, is yet to be seen. wide is the Field open for Conjecture.
That our Country is to drink very deep of the Cup of Tribulation, I am not apprehensive— that we shall entirely escape, does not appear to me very probable. I suspect that the Jacobins are still more numerous, more desperate, and more active in this Country than is generally supposed. It is true they are less indecorous and less clamorous than they have been. How few of their Leaders have abandoned their Errors, their associations, their opposition to their own Government, and their Devotion to a foreign one! Why and by whom were the Kentucky & Virginia Resolutions contrived, and for what purposes—3
I often think of Pandora’s Box—altho’ it contained every kind of Evil, yet it is said that Hope was placed at the bottom. this is a singular Fable, and it admits of many (and some of them very extensive) applications—4 with very sincere Esteem and Regard, I am Dear Sir Your most obt. Servt
John Jay
The Revd. Doctr. Morse
ALS, PHi: Gratz (EJ: 01175). Endorsed: “… ansd—Feby—99.” Note: “reflections on the / designs of Infidels in / our country / who are the 2 witnesses / in Scriptures?” Dft, NNC (EJ: 09536); Tr, NN: Bancroft (EJ: 01079); WJ, 2: 286–88; HPJ, 4: 252–54. The Dft contains many illegible excisions not noted here. Morse replied to this letter on 12 Feb. 1799, ALS, NNC (EJ: 09549).
1. See N.Y. State Laws, 21st sess. (January 1798), and N.Y. State Laws, 22nd sess. (August 1798).
2. Morse to JJ, 19 Nov. 1798, ALS, NNC (EJ: 09548). Morse discussed his support for the anti-Illuminati, anti-Masonic writings of John Robison (1739–1805), professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, who authored Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and reading societies. Collected from good authorities (Ireland, 1798). Robison drew on the fourth volume of the French priest Augustin Barruel’s (1741–1820) Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (French: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, London, 1798–99), which blamed the French Revolution on a conspiracy of Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasons, and Enlightenment thinkers. Citing the Second Psalm and the 26th Chapter of Isaiah, Morse spoke in apocalyptic terms of the attacks on religion, the destruction of the true “witnesses” and the rising power of the “Beast”, associating them with “Philosophism or Atheism” and “Jacobinism”. The pamphlets Morse enclosed with his letter probably included Nathaniel Emmons, A discourse, delivered May 9, 1798. Being the day of fasting and prayer throughout the United States (Wrentham, [1798]; Early Am. Imprints, series 1, no. 33674); and Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon delivered before the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at a public installation of the officers of the Corinthian Lodge, at Concord, in the county of Middlesex, June 25th, 1798 (Leonminster, 1798; Early Am. Imprints, series 1, no. 34150). For sermons that Morse had previously sent to JJ and a further discussion of the Illuminati controversy, see JJ to Morse, 4 Sept. 1798, Dft, NNC (EJ: 09535).
3. No other comments by JJ on the resolutions have been found. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions passed by the legislatures of those states in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 argued that the federal government had no authority to exercise power not specifically delegated to it in the Constitution. The Virginia Resolution, authored by JM, said that by enacting the Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress was exercising “a power not delegated by the Constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is leveled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.” Virginia Resolutions, In the House of Delegates, 21 Dec. 1798, PJM, 17: 189–90.
JM hoped that other states would similarly register their opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts as beyond the powers given to Congress. The Kentucky Resolutions, composed by TJ, challenged the notion that individual states followed the “principle of unlimited submission to their General Government”, further asserting that the states “delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” III. Resolutions Adopted by the Kentucky General Assembly, 10 Nov. 1798, PTJ, 30: 550.
The resolutions were sent to the other states for approval. Half of the states expressed disapproval; two (Georgia and Tennessee) supported the call for repeal of the Sedition Act; two legislatures deadlocked; and two made no response. At least six, including New York, asserted that the federal courts, not the states, determined questions of constitutionality.
JJ submitted copies of the resolutions to the New York state legislature without recommendation on 12 Jan. 1799. He also transmitted to the legislature, on 4 Mar., Delaware’s response to the resolutions. The state assembly, after a period of debate in a committee of the whole, on 18 Feb. approved by a 50–43 vote, a resolution making no statement about the merits of the Sedition Act, but strongly asserting that the right of deciding constitutionality appertained to the Judiciary and not to the states.
The state senate after debate in a committee of the whole responded on 5 Mar. 1799, with a stronger statement, supporting the necessity of the Sedition Act and proclaiming:
… the Senate not perceiving that the rights of the particular states have been violated, nor any unconstitutional powers assumed by the general government, cannot forbear to express the anxiety and regret with which they observe the inflammatory and pernicious sentiments and doctrines which are contained in the resolutions of the Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky; sentiments and doctrines no less repugnant to the constitution of the United States and the principles of their Union, than destructive to the federal government, and unjust to those whom the people have elected to administer it.
Wherefore, Resolved, That while this Senate feel themselves constrained to bear unequivocal testimony against such sentiments and doctrines, they deem it a duty no less indispensable, explicitly to declare their incompetency as a branch of the Legislature of this State to supervise the acts of the general government.
See N.Y. Senate Journal, 22nd sess., 2nd meeting (1799), 15, 59, 63, 65–67; N.Y. Assembly Journal, 22nd sess., 2nd meeting (1799), 69–74, 114–17, 119–23; NYGM, 2: 428–31, 438. As directed, JJ forwarded the senate’s statement to the other states, but he did not circulate the assembly resolution. However, the actions of both bodies were widely reported in the newspapers. See, for example, Otsego Herald (Cooperstown), 7, 21, and 28 Feb.; Albany Gazette, 18 Feb., 1 and 8 Mar.; Albany Centinel, 19 Feb. and 8 Mar.; New York Gazette, 22 Feb.; Spectator (New York), 27 Feb.; Providence Gazette, 2 Mar.; Philadelphia Gazette, 4 and 8 Mar.; Greenleaf’s New-York Journal, 5 Mar.; New Hampshire Sun (Dover), 6 Mar.; New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth), 6 Mar.; New York Journal, 16 Mar.; Amherst Village Messenger, 16 Mar.; and Federal Observer (Portsmouth), 21 Mar. 1799.
On the New York response to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, see also RK to JJ, 18 May 1799, Dft, UkWC-A (EJ: 00008); WJ, 2: 290–91; HPJ, 4: 255–56; PAJ to Augustus B. Woodward, 17 Feb. 1799, Dft, NNC (EJ: 10038).
4. Here, in the Dft, JJ added, then excised, the following paragraph discussing a sermon by Thomas Ellison (1759–1802), Rector of St. Peter’s Church of Albany (1787–1802): “In a late Sermon preached ^here^ by the Revd. Mr Ellison, who gives us many excellent Discourses, there was an Idea a Topic which [illegible] ^he managed^ ingeniously. His Sermons are often adapted to the Times and calculated to prove the Truth of our Religion— among other very obvious topics he advanced this— ^the Topic I allude was this^— that natural Religion was given to men when they were innocent and that to a State of Innocence it was consequently perfectly well adapted and competent— to But that when men became guilty a ^new^ Religion adapted to that ^new^ State became requisite—.”