George Hammond was the first minister from Great Britain to the United States, serving from 1791 to 1795. As a young man, he attended the negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Paris (1783). During the rest of the 1780s he completed his education at Oxford and held minor diplomatic posts in Vienna and Copenhagen. When he arrived in Philadelphia in 1791, he had a delicate and difficult task: resolve the outstanding differences over implementation of the Treaty of Paris and open up discussions for a commercial agreement between the United States and Great Britain.

The British wanted the United States to provide restitution for Loyalists and facilitate the collection of debts. The United States wanted the British to evacuate their forts in the Northwest, open trade in the West Indies, return slaves who had left with the British army, and sign a commercial treaty. Although there were many people in both countries who wanted to resolve these differences, Hammond made little progress because he ran afoul of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson's anglophobia. Rather than entering into direct talks, Jefferson insisted on an exchange of letters in which he pressed Hammond to admit that he had limited authority to complete a commercial agreement and then blamed the British for violating the treaty first in a response that made any serious negotiations impossible. Hammond, however, developed an open exchange of ideas and sympathies with Alexander Hamilton, who worked at cross-purposes with Jefferson.

Amid the controversy of the Anglo-American crisis of 1794, Hammond decided to return to Great Britain. He did, however, gain one success while in the United States: He married Margaret Allen, who was reputed to be one of the prettiest young women in Philadelphia. After returning to London, he became one of the undersecretaries at the Foreign Office, a position he retained for much of the time between 1795 and 1809. In 1815 he joined an arbitration committee in France, serving until 1828 in what was his last official post.

Bibliography:

1) Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);

2) Frank T. Reuter, Trials and Triumphs: George Washington's Foreign Policy (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1983).

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