George Hammond

George Hammond (1763–1853) first encountered American diplomacy as David Hartley’s secretary during the Paris peace negotiations of 1783. Educated at Merton College, Oxford, he subsequently worked at European courts before becoming Britain’s first accredited minister to the United States in 1791. His American mission was based in Philadelphia. ^{1, 2}

Hammond pressed the United States to satisfy the peace treaty’s provisions concerning British creditors and Loyalists. Thomas Jefferson countered with complaints about Britain’s retention of frontier posts and its removal of enslaved people from American territory. The disputes exposed the limits of Hammond’s negotiating authority and helped lead to John Jay’s separate London mission. Popular hostility to the resulting Jay Treaty reached Hammond’s own residence in 1795, when demonstrators protested there. ^{2, 1}

Before leaving America, Hammond forwarded an intercepted dispatch by French minister Jean Antoine Joseph Fauchet to the Washington administration. Cabinet opponents used it to accuse Secretary of State Edmund Randolph of betraying information and seeking French money. Randolph resigned in August 1795. The State Department’s historical account rejects the corruption allegation. ^{2, 3}

Back in London, Hammond became a Foreign Office under-secretary, worked closely with Grenville and George Canning, and contributed to the Anti-Jacobin literary and political circle. His government service included further European missions and two periods as under-secretary before his final resignation in 1809. From 1815 to 1828 he helped arbitrate compensation for British property losses during the French Revolution. He then retired and died in London in 1853. ¹