During his college days the Anti-Slavery movement began to be the all-absorbing topic of the hour, but there are few of the rising generation who can appreciate the difficulties which a young man of talent and ancestral name would encounter in allying himself to the then unpopular party, and identifying himself with the avowed opponents of the system which was supported by the wealth and power of the country, and the authority of the Church, and declared to be in full accord alike with the teachings of the Bible and the Constiiution, established by the founders of the republic, which controlle d the actions of every department of the government, and moulded the views and commanded the supf.ort of every officer, from the President to the postmaster of the humblest village. To those who can understand the power and influence of this institution in the day when Mr. Jay began his life-work, the destruction of slavery must appear as the miracle of modern times.

In 1834 he became a manager of the New York Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society. On the 4th of July of that year, a day sacred to freedom, an antislavery meeting in New York was disj^ersed by a mob, and the citj' was the scene of riot and outrage, against which the authorities afforded no protection. Among the residences marked out for attack was that of Dr. Abraham R. Cox, with whom Mr. Jay was then living, but the determined action of a few young men, who, with himself, prepared for an armed resistance, in-