William Phillips
Photograph of Phillips in 1922
2nd Assistant Secretary of State
In office January 24, 1917 – March 25, 1920
President	Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	John E. Osborne
Succeeded by	Fred Morris Dearing
Under Secretary of State
In office April 26, 1922 – April 11, 1924
President	Warren G. Harding
Preceded by	Henry P. Fletcher
Succeeded by	Joseph C. Grew
United States Ambassador to Belgium
In office February 29, 1924 – March 1, 1927
President	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Henry P. Fletcher
Succeeded by	Hugh S. Gibson
United States Ambassador to Canada
In office February 17, 1927 – December 14, 1929
President	Herbert Hoover
Succeeded by	Hanford MacNider
Under Secretary of State
In office March 6, 1933 – August 23, 1936
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	William R. Castle, Jr.
Succeeded by	Sumner Welles
United States Ambassador to Italy
In office August 4, 1936 – October 6, 1941
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	Breckinridge Long
Succeeded by	George Wadsworth
Personal details
Born	(1878-05-30)May 30, 1878 Beverly, Massachusetts
Died	February 23, 1968(1968-02-23) (aged 89)
Spouse(s)	Caroline Astor Drayton (m. 1910; her death 1965)
Children	5, including Christopher
Parents	John Charles Phillips Anna Tucker
Alma mater	Harvard College Harvard Law School

William Phillips (May 30, 1878 – February 23, 1968) was a career United States diplomat who served twice as an Under Secretary of State.^[1]

Early life[edit]

Phillips was born on May 30, 1878 in Beverly, Massachusetts. His parents were John Charles Phillips, Jr. (1838–1885), who married Anna Tucker in London, England on October 23, 1874. His older brother was John Charles Phillips (1876–1938), a prominent zoologist, ornithologist and environmentalist. His sister, Martha Phillips, was married to Andrew James Peters (1872–1938), a U.S. Congressman and former Mayor of Boston.^[2]

Phillips was a member of the Boston Brahmin Phillips family and his ancestors included John Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston and his great-grandfather, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist and his grand-uncle, and Samuel Phillips, Jr., and John Phillips, founders of the Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy. He was a descendant of the Rev. George Phillips of Watertown, the progenitor of the New England Phillips family in America.^[3][4]

He graduated from Harvard College in 1900 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1903.^[1]

Career[edit]

His first political job was working as a private secretary in London to Joseph Hodges Choate, the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Choate was a friend of Phillips' family and also from Massachusetts.

Phillips subsequently went to work for the United States Minister to China in Beijing After his return from China, he became a member of President Theodore Roosevelt's Tennis Cabinet and thanks to his previous diplomatic experience and new friendship with TR was assigned to set up the State Department's Division of Far Eastern Affairs and was made its first chief. In 1909, he returned to work in London for Ambassador Whitelaw Reid.^[5]

In 1914, he was appointed as Assistant Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson and remained in that position until 1920, when he was made the Minister Plenipotentiary to Netherlands and Luxembourg (in residence in the Netherlands).^[1]

From 1922 to 1924, he served as Under Secretary of State. In 1924, he was appointed as Ambassador to Belgium, where he remained until 1927, when he became the first Minister to Canada, until 1929.^[1]

He served as Under Secretary of State again from 1933 to 1936.^[1]

Photograph by Harris & Ewing of American ambassadors after holding a conference with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 6, 1938. From left to right: William C. Bullitt, Sumner Welles, Hugh R. Wilson, and Phillips.

In 1936, he was appointed as the Ambassador to Italy (which was then led by Benito Mussolini), in the immediate aftermath of that country's invasion of Ethiopia. He resigned on October 6, 1941. The following year, he was made chief of the United States Office of Strategic Services in London.^[1]

In October 1942, Phillips was appointed as a personal representative of Franklin D. Roosevelt, serving in India.^[6] (The United States would not have an official Mission there until the country's Independence in 1947.) Phillips was said to be extremely unpopular with the British due to his pro-independence views. In 1943, he was made a Special Advisor on European political matters to then- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the rank of ambassador.^[1]

Phillips retired officially in 1944 but returned briefly to diplomatic life in 1945 when he was made a special assistant to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. In 1946, he served on the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, opposing the British plan for partitioning the country. In 1947, he was unsuccessful in mediating a border dispute between Siam and French Indo-China.^[1]

In 1953, his memoir, Ventures in Diplomacy, was published by the Beacon Press.^[7]

Personal life[edit]

In 1910, Phillips married Caroline Astor Drayton (1880–1965),^[8] the daughter of Charlotte Augusta Astor (1858–1920) and J. Coleman Drayton (1852–1934)^[9][10] and a granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor Jr. (1829–1892) and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn (1830–1908).^[11] Through her father, she was a great-granddaughter of U.S. Representative William Drayton (1776–1846).^[9] Together, they were the parents of:

• Beatrice Schermerhorn Phillips (1914–2003), who married Rear Adm. Elliott Bowman Strauss (1903-2003),^[12] in 1951.^[13]
  


• William Phillips, Jr. (1916–1991), who married Barbara Holbrook (1915–1997), in 1941.^[14][15]
  


• Drayton Phillips (1917–1985), who married Evelyn Gardiner in 1940.^[16][17]
  


• 
  Christopher Hallowell Phillips (1920–2008), served as United States Ambassador to Brunei from 1989 to 1991.^[3]
  


• Anne Caroline Phillips (1922–2016),^[18] who married John Winslow Bryant (1914–1999), in 1942.^[19][20]
  

Phillips died on February 23, 1968, at the age of 89.^[1]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Phillips (diplomat).

"William Phillips (1878-1968)". State Department. Retrieved 8 March 2013.