Following New York’s ratification of the Constitution, Jay continued to play a central role in the activities of the Confederation. As head of a principal department he contributed to the smooth transition from the government under the Articles of Confederation to its constitutionally created successor. Although all through 1788 Congress, verging on dissolution, had difficulty in obtaining a quorum, it managed to make two important decisions. It set the calendar for the electoral machinery to pick a president, and after a spirited contest between competing cities it settled on New York as the first capital in the three stages determined upon to serve as the seats respectively of the new government.1

Both of these actions involved Jay. When the votes of the electors for President were counted on 6 April 1789, George Washington was the unanimous choice for president, but the second choice ballots were divided. John Adams, who secured thirty-four votes, became Vice President. Jay, with nine votes, had the second largest number of votes.2 With New York as the initial capital, the year 1788 saw a flurry of preparations to put the City Hall (Federal Hall) in order to accommodate the new Congress. Jay was among the group of substantial New Yorkers who had “lent their Credit for drawing Monies out of the Bank of New York [in the amount of £13,000] to be applied toward the addition and Alteration to the City Hall for the accommodation of Congress.” In turn the Common Council, at the request of Jay’s group, petitioned the legislature for their indemnification and to raise additional funds for completing the building.3

Meantime, in the months before the assembling of the new federal Congress and the inauguration of President Washington, Jay continued to conduct the foreign relations of the Confederation, advised Washington, and warded off federal job-seekers, while Jay and his wife continued to act as a principal host and hostess.4

Abigail Adams, who arrived in New York in January 1789 to visit her daughter Abigail Adams Smith, finally met the Jays and reported her impressions: “[Jay] is a[s] plain as a Quaker, and as mild as New milk, but under all this, an abundance of Rogury in his Eye’s. I need to say to you who so well know him, that he possesse’ an excellent Heart. mrs. Jay has all the vivacity of a French woman blended with the modesty & softness of an American Lady.”5

The imminence of President-elect Washington’s arrival in the city sparked a flurry of renewed activity, with virtually all of the pre-inaugural and inaugural events involving Jay. When Vice-President Adams, who preceded Washington by a few days, arrived at New York on the afternoon of 20 April 1789, he first alighted at Jay’s residence at 133 Broadway, where a committee of both houses of Congress attended to congratulate him.6 In his triumphal procession across New Jersey, Washington spent the night at Liberty Hall in Elizabethtown,7 the home of Jay’s father-in-law, William Livingston. There early in the morning of 23 April he was received by a delegation from both houses of Congress, and the heads of the three departments, notably Jay, as secretary for foreign affairs, General Knox, secretary at war, and the three commissioners of the treasury, Samuel Osgood, Arthur Lee, and Walter Livingston, along with Ebenezer Hazard, the postmaster general. The department heads crossed the bay to New York City in one of the three barges that conveyed Washington and his party.8 Jay attended all the other formal receptions, including the official reception of the president in the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall on 29 April, and the inaugural ceremony itself.9 Meantime, the president had politely declined Jay’s invitation to be his guest while in New York, choosing instead, diplomatically, to accept a residence Congress had selected for him.10 In the weeks following the president’s arrival, and then Martha Washington’s on 27 May, newspapers made frequent reference to the Jays dining with the president and his wife and to social calls between the couples, including the presence of the Jays at “an elegant Ball and Entertainment” given on 7 May in honor of the president by Jay’s old revived “Dancing Assembly.”11