John Jay (1745– 1829) is best known as co-author of the Federalist Papers, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the American diplomat who negotiated the controversial Jay Treaty of 1794. His father and grandfather invested in the Atlantic slave trade as underwriters of more than ten ships that brought dozens of enslaved people into New York. Jay founded the New York Manumission Society in 1785, yet he owned 17 enslaved people in his lifetime, manumitting most before 1810. Richard Lushington (1745–1790) was a native of South Carolina and a Quaker. Despite the Quaker requirement that members not take up arms, Lushington fought for the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War.. Lushington wrote to Jay in February of 1786 to express his opinion that the enslaved people he witnessed being auctioned in Charleston, SC, were kidnapped. In this brief letter to Richard Lushington, Jay argues that the “honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity” required the emancipation of enslaved people. Both Lushington and Jay enslaved people in their lifetimes, thus benefiting from the system financially while supporting abolition in writing.