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-

I Tills sketch was prepared and inserted by the editor.

duced the mob to pass on to places that were not protected by equally brave defenders. From that time until the day when slavery came to an ignominious end he was in full accord with the leaders of emancipation, and in 1839 he took an active part in preparing the way by which the Abolitionists became a distinct political party, with platforms and candidates of their own. In that year he presented to the Whig National Convention an elaborate report as to the powers and duty of Congress under the Constitutioa to exclude slavery from the Territories, and in a speech on the " Dignity of the Abolition Cause," he urged political action and the use of the ballot, calling upon the friends of the cause to no longer confine themselves to appeals to the conscience and understanding. During the same year he was brought still more prominently into notice through a controversy with some of the higher officials of the Episcopal Church, arising from the exclusion from the Theological Seminary of a colored candidate for priestly orders. In 1842 he delivered an address on the " Progress and Results of Emancipation in the West Indies," and to his far-seeing mind the time seemed not distant when a similar result would be accomplished in our own land. la 1844, when the question of Texan annexation was attracting the attention of the country, he was the organizer of a demonstration against the project, and was supported by many of the most distinguished men of the day, the presiding officer of the meeting being the venerable Albert Gallatin, the last survivor of the Cabinet of Jefferson.