John Jay (1745–1829) was a member of the Continental Congress (1774–1776, 1778–1779). He also served as that body’s president (1778–1779). He went on to hold a variety of diplomatic roles, and was one of the negotiators and signers of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. From 1784 to 1789, Jay was secretary of foreign affairs. He was also author, with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, of The Federalist (1788), a landmark collection of essays promoting the US Constitution. In 1789, Jay accepted Washington’s...