Jay Treaty

The Jay Treaty was a treaty signed between the United States and Great Britain on 19 November 1794, designed by Alexander Hamilton and negotiated by John Jay. The treaty secured the withdrawal of the British Army from forts in the Northwest Territory, allowed for international arbitration over wartime debts and the US-Canadian border, and granted American merchants limited trade rights in British colonies in exchange for limitations on Southern cotton exports. While the treaty averted war with Britain and established closer economic ties with America's former adversary, it was resisted by Jeffersonians across the country, as they feared that ties with Britain would strengthen Hamilton's Federalist Party, promote aristocracy, and undercut republicanism. The treaty solidified partisan divisions between the pro-British Federalists and the pro-French Democratic-Republicans, and President Thomas Jefferson refused to sign a similar treaty on the Jay Treaty's expiry in 1806.