LIn the late nineteenth century, historian Henry Adams declared, "That Mr. Jay's treaty was a bad one few persons even then ventured to dispute; no one would venture on its merits would defend it now" (Bemis, 370).  From the day news of the treaty reached American citizens, Americans have asked: is this good enough?  Today historians try to judge the terms of the treaty, but also the situation of negotiation between America and Britain. 

The question of every historian of the Jay treaty is whether Jay could have negotiated a better deal for U.S. interests.  There were cessions made that might have been better negotiated by a professional diplomat instead of a court justice.  Jay might have pushed for U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction over mixed commissions, or perhaps drawn a harder line on Indian and frontier issues.  Whether these pushes would have resulted in British cession is hard to say.  Many Southerners at the time were angered that Jay had let go the request for compensation of slaves abducted during the war, but he would have been lacking the moral high ground.  His personal anti-slavery views may have also led him to not press the issue, but this is speculation.  The primary problem, it is still agreed, is Article XII, regarding Caribbean trade, which the Senate rejected at the ratification.

Whether or not Jay could have done better, the treaty, complete with its cessions, "was the price paid by the Federalists for a peace which they believed indispensable to the perpetuation of American nationality" (Bemis, 373).  Though the treaty was damaging to French relations, the American position between Britain and France was seen as navigating between Scylla and Charybdis. It seemed that, even with a policy of neutrality, America would be on tense terms with at least one of the superpowers.  By negotiating a treaty and good relations with Britain, America helped its interests far more than it would have if it had turned a shoulder to Britain and warmed more to France.  As Bradford Perkins assessed, "Friendship with France would have been but little help in case of trouble with England, but British cordiality could and did greatly aid the American government when it became involved with controversy with France." (Perkins, 43)

Henry Adams's full condemnation of the treaty does not seem to give enough credit to the fact that America at the time was a small new state with little power dealing with its former ruler and world power.  It would have been entirely unreasonable to imagine that a representative from this disorganized young republic to come away with the upper hand on a treaty.  That the British Foreign Minister met with John Jay and ceded to any of his requests at all was a testament to America.  Samuel Flagg Bemis, one of the most renowned Jay Treaty historians, wrote that while the "concessions of principle were enormous, we must remember Admiral Mahan's statement that the signature by England of any treaty at all with the United States at that time was an event of "epochal significance," a recognition of the existence of American nationality of far greater import than the technical recognition of independence forced from George III in 1783." (Bemis, 370-1). Perhaps the treaty was not, as the Democratic-Republicans feared at its news, a submission to the old British power, but the first true sign of independence.