Samuel Witham Stockton (February 4, 1751 – June 27, 1795) was an American lawyer, diplomat and public servant who served as Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1794 to 1795.
In 1775 he went to London to continue his legal studies and was still abroad when the Revolutionary War broke out.
[1] Remaining in Europe, he served as secretary to William Lee in 1777 when the Continental Congress appointed Lee commissioner at the Courts of Vienna and Berlin in an unsuccessful attempt to win the support of Austria and Prussia in the war.
In 1778 Stockton was instrumental in negotiating a secret treaty between the United States and the Dutch Republic that, when discovered by the British, sparked the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.
He unsuccessfully ran for secretary of the House of Representatives when the 1st United States Congress was organized in 1789.