George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, KG, KT, PC, FRS, FRSE, FSA Scot (28 January 1784 – 14 December 1860[1]), styled Lord Haddo from 1791 to 1801, was a British statesman, diplomat and landowner, successively a Tory, Conservative and Peelite politician and specialist in foreign affairs. He served as Prime Minister from 1852 until 1855 in a coalition between the Whigs and Peelites, with Radical and Irish support. The Aberdeen ministry was filled with powerful and talented politicians, whom Aberdeen was largely unable to control and direct. Despite his trying to avoid this happening, it took Britain into the Crimean War, and fell when its conduct became unpopular, after which Aberdeen retired from politics.
"Lord Aberdeen" and "The Earl of Aberdeen" redirect here. For other holders of the title, see Earl of Aberdeen.
The Earl of Aberdeen
The Viscount Palmerston
The Viscount Palmerston
The Viscount Palmerston
Sir Robert Peel
The Duke of Wellington
14 December 1860 (aged 76)[1]
St James's, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Peelite (1846–1859)
Liberal (1859–1860)
Conservative (1834–1846)
Tory (before 1834)
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Harriet Douglas(m. 1815; died 1833)
9, including George
George Gordon, Lord Haddo
Charlotte Baird
Born into a wealthy family with the largest estates in Scotland, his personal life was marked by the loss of both parents by the time he was eleven, and of his first wife after only seven years of a happy marriage. His daughters died young, and his relations with his sons were difficult.[2] He travelled extensively in Europe, including Greece, and he had a serious interest in the classical civilisations and their archaeology. His Scottish estates having been neglected by his father, he devoted himself (when he came of age) to modernising them according to the latest standards.
After 1812 he became a diplomat, and in 1813, at age 29, was given the critically important embassy to Vienna, where he organised and financed the sixth coalition that defeated Napoleon. His rise in politics was equally rapid and lucky, and "two accidents — Canning's death and Wellington's impulsive acceptance of the Canningite resignations" led to his becoming Foreign Secretary for Prime Minister Wellington in 1828 despite "an almost ludicrous lack of official experience"; he had been a minister for less than six months. After holding the position for two years, followed by another cabinet role, by 1841 his experience led to his appointment as Foreign Secretary again under Robert Peel for a longer term.[3] His diplomatic successes include organizing the coalition against Napoleon in 1812–1814, normalizing relations with post-Napoleonic France, settling the old border dispute between Canada and the United States, and ending the First Opium War with China in 1842, whereby Hong Kong was obtained. Aberdeen was a poor speaker, but this scarcely mattered in the House of Lords. He exhibited a "dour, awkward, occasionally sarcastic exterior".[4] His friend William Ewart Gladstone, said of him that he was "the man in public life of all others whom I have loved. I say emphatically loved. I have loved others, but never like him".[5]
Early life[edit]
Born in Edinburgh on 28 January 1784, he was the eldest son of George Gordon, Lord Haddo, son of George Gordon, 3rd Earl of Aberdeen. His mother was Charlotte, youngest daughter of William Baird of Newbyth.[6] He lost his father on 18 October 1791 and his mother in 1795, and he was brought up by Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, and William Pitt the Younger.[1] He was educated at Harrow, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1804.[7] Before this, however, he had become Earl of Aberdeen on his grandfather's death in 1801,[1] and had travelled all over Europe. On his return to Britain, he founded the Society of Athenian Travellers. In 1805, he married Lady Catherine Elizabeth, daughter of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn.[8]
Relations with the United States[edit]
British-American relations had been troublesome under Palmerston, but Aberdeen proved much more conciliatory, and worked well with Daniel Webster, the American Secretary of State who was himself an Anglophile. In 1842, Aberdeen sent Lord Ashburton to Washington to settle all disputes, especially the border between Canada and Maine, the boundary along the Great Lakes, the Oregon boundary, the African slave trade, the Caroline affair about boundaries in 1837 and the Creole case of 1841 involving a slave revolt on the high seas.[35] The Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 solved the most of the problems amicably. Thus Maine got most of the disputed land, but Canada obtained a vital, strategic strip of land connecting it to a warm water port.[36] Aberdeen helped solve the Oregon dispute amicably in 1846. However, as prime minister, Aberdeen had trouble with the United States. In 1854 an American naval vessel bombarded the mosquito port of Greytown, Nicaragua in retaliation for an insult; Britain protested. Later in 1846, the United States announced its intention of annexing Hawaii, and Britain not only complained but sent a naval force to make the point. Negotiations for reciprocal trade agreement between the United States and Canada dragged on for eight years until a reciprocity treaty was reached in 1854.[37]
Religious interests[edit]
Aberdeen's biographer Muriel Chamberlain summarises, "Religion never came easy to him". In his Scots landowning capacity "North of the border, he considered himself ex officio a Presbyterian".[54] In England "he privately considered himself an Anglican"; as early as 1840 he told Gladstone he preferred what Aberdeen called "the sister church [of England]" and when in London worshipped at St James's Piccadilly.[55] He was ultimately buried in the Anglican parish church at Stanmore, Middlesex.
He was a member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1818 to 1828 and exercised his existing rights to present ministers to parishes on his Scottish estates through a time when the right of churches to veto the appointment or 'call' of a minister became so contentious as to lead in 1843 to the schism known as "the Disruption" when a third of ministers broke away to form the Free Church of Scotland. In the House of Lords, in 1840 and 1843, he raised two Compromise Bills to allow presbyteries but not congregations the right of veto. The first failed to pass (and was voted against by the General Assembly) but the latter, raised post-schism, became law for Scotland and remained in force until patronage of Scots livings was abolished in 1874.[56]
It was under his prime ministership that the revival of the Convocations of Canterbury and York began, though they did not obtain their potential power until 1859.
He is said in the last few months of his life, after the Crimean War, to have declined to contribute to building a church on his Scotland estates because of a sense of guilt in having "shed much blood", citing biblically King David's being forbidden to build the Temple in Jerusalem.[57]