Eventually the stalemate over New York’s choice of congressional delegates was broken, and on 27 July 1774 the mechanics endorsed the slate that had been proposed by the Fifty-one more than three weeks earlier. Polls held in the city the next day brought the unanimous election of John Jay, John Alsop, Philip Livingston, and James Duane—a resounding defeat for radical Whig John Morin Scott. Endorsement of these delegates by four rural counties followed, and the nominees were ready to proceed to the First Continental Congress. John Jay joined his father-in-law, William Livingston, a New Jersey delegate, for the journey to Philadelphia, where both were present for the opening session on 5 September 1774.1

The New York delegation allied itself with the moderate and conservative blocs in Congress on such preliminary issues as the choice of a meeting hall and of a secretary. Joseph Galloway, the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, proposed the statehouse, which the New Yorkers preferred as “a piece of respect” due Galloway, but the prevailing view preferred Carpenter’s Hall as being “highly agreeable to the mechanics and citizens in general.” John Jay and his New York colleagues supported Silas Deane as secretary over the more openly acknowledged radical Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania, but again they were defeated.

Jay’s first victory was gained in contesting Patrick Henry’s proposal that voting should be proportionate to population, slaves excluded from the count. Carried away by his own eloquence, Henry declared: “Government is at an End. All Distinctions are thrown out. All America is thrown into one Mass.” In short, “We are in a State of Nature.” In this first confrontation between a freshly converted nationalist, ultimately to be the prototype of states’ rights Antifederalism, and John Jay, one day to be a foremost nationalist and critic of state sovereignty, both parties played roles that they were later to repudiate. Mindful that in the Stamp Act Congress the vote had been by colony and respectful of the decisions by which the delegates were bound, Jay injected a sobering note in his reply to Henry. “Could I suppose,” he queried, “that We came to frame an American Constitution, instead of indeavouring to correct the faults in an old one—I cant yet think that all Government is at an End. The Measure of Arbitrary Power is not full, and I think it must run over, before We undertake to frame a new Constitution.” Jay’s supporters prevailed. It was agreed that each colony should have one vote, without the decision serving as a binding precedent. A binding precedent, however, it did become throughout the lifetime of this Congress and the succeeding Second Congress.2

Consistent with Jay’s position on the three opening issues in contention, he supported the more conservative plan of union proposed to Congress (28 September) by Joseph Galloway, a proposal defeated by a margin of one vote. Jay’s moderate stance did not prevent him from signing the Continental Association of 22 October, which instituted a complicated system of nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption.3