The Patriots Club Read Online Free PDF

in 1793 at the age of thirty-eight.
    “How much does she know?” asked Mr. Pendleton. “Any names? Any specifics? Did you get around to discussing any of our initiatives?”
    The mood in the room changed as dramatically as a shift in the wind. The yardarm had swung from reconciliation to confrontation.
    “Nothing specific,” said Mr. Jay, pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles to the bridge of his nose. He was a short man, and rotund, sparse white hair crowning a pinched, sour face. “But she knows we exist and, I would gather, that I’m a member. I assured her that we view ourselves as being entirely at the President’s disposal. To help out in those times when extraordinary actions are needed. Actions best not mentioned to the public.”
    “Wasn’t she curious?” asked Mr. King. “I mean, didn’t she want to know who exactly we were? What we’ve done in the past?”
    “Make no mistake, Mrs. McCoy was curious. I talked to her about a few things we’d helped out with. The Jay Treaty.”
    “Did you tell her everything?” Mr. King appeared shocked at the prospect.
    “What I didn’t tell her, I let her guess. She’s a smart woman.”
    Mr. King exhaled slowly. In their history, only one President had refused to join. John Adams. But then, he was a President in name only. While he closeted himself away in Braintree, Alexander Hamilton was pulling all the strings, through his close friends in Adams’s cabinet. Mr. King’s palms grew moist and clammy. The entire state of affairs made him more than a little uncomfortable. He was a journalist. It was one thing to report on momentous events. It was another to bring them to pass.
    On the desk in front of him lay an aged, leather-bound volume in which the minutes of each meeting were recorded. The newest member of the club, King had inherited the job of “secretary.” It fell to him to faithfully continue the record. He had studied the minutes—in this volume, and in the five others that preceded it—with an interest bordering on the feverish.
    The Jay Treaty. Yes, he thought, it was the only place to begin.
     
    In the summer of 1795, the country was in an uproar. America was caught between its allegiance to France—its ally in the war for independence, and itself in the throes of a wild and violent democratic revolution—and its hatred of England, which had reneged on many of the main points of the Paris treaty signed twelve years earlier. Britain had brazenly boarded over 250 U.S. merchantmen in the past year, seizing their cargoes and impressing their sailors. (“Impressment” was the practice of forcing captured seamen into the service of one’s own military—in this case, the British navy.) British ships had even been so arrogant as to station themselves in a picket at the mouth of New York Harbor and had seized four ships in a single day. Up and down the Eastern seaboard, there were calls for war with Britain. Riots broke out in Philadelphia and New York. The country was aflame with patriotic fervor.
    Hoping to quell the dispute between the two nations, George Washington had sent John Jay, recently retired from his post as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, to England. The treaty he negotiated reconfirmed an alliance between England and the United States, but was viewed by many as traitorous because it failed to force Britain to repay the debts it had earlier promised. Angry voices claimed the Jay Treaty returned the United States to its role as subordinate to England and that the United States might as well be a colony all over again with George III its king.
    The issue was discussed during a meeting held in June of 1795.
    June 12, 1795
    Present: General Washington, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Jay, Mr. Morris, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. King.
    Mr. Hamilton states that signature of the Jay Treaty is a necessity and of paramount concern to the Union. Friendship and trade with Britain are crucial to the country’s growth as an economic power and to its future