The bookish youth graduated with a B.A. from King's College (now Columbia University) in 1764, studied law in Benjamin Kissam's firm, and gained admission to the bar on 26 October 1768. In Kissam's law office Jay first demonstrated an especially lucid literary style--one that would later appear strikingly similar to Alexander Hamilton's. Jay's religious heritage and legal training left their imprint on all that he wrote.
On 28 April 1774, Jay married Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, youngest daughter of politically powerful William Livingston. Six months later, as a delegate to the First Continental Congress, he joined the first rank of republican propagandists by drafting the congress's address, To the People of Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson recalled that the reading of Jay's draft evoked "but one sentiment of admiration" among the assembled delegates, and Jefferson labeled it "a production certainly of the finest pen in America ... the first composition in the English language." Demonstrating Jay's early adherence to the principle that sovereignty rests ultimately with the people rather than the government, the document appealed directly to the people of Great Britain and asked them to prevent Parliamentary ministers from forging additional links in the chain that had enslaved the colonists since 1763.
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