...Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions Relating Thereto. 

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873.

8vo.; blue cloth stamped in gilt, with black-ruled cover borders.

First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed to “U.S. Grant With respects of C. Cushing 31 March 1873,” on the front free endpaper.

Caleb Cushing (1800-1879) had a long and distinguished public career before he negotiated the Treaty of Washington in 1871. After serving eight years in the House of Representatives (1835-1843), he was posted by President John Tyler to China, where he negotiated a treaty opening five ports to U.S. trade. He served as a colonel in the Mexican War, and five years later was named Attorney General in the Pierce administration. He was an excellent choice to negotiate the end of one of the most vexing diplomatic and legal problems between the United States and Great Britain: the Alabama claims. Before the U.S.S. Kearsarge sank it, the Alabama and several other British-built Confederate vessels inflicted tens of millions of dollars of damage along American ports. After the war, indignant politicians like Charles Sumner wanted the British to pay billions, or else, cede Canada to the United States. Grant, however, wanted the matter resolved and out of the way, and he instructed his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, to get it done before the 1876 election.

Cushing used a contact in the Canadian government, Sir John Rose, to make an overture to the British. The negotiators hammered out a treaty by May 1871, and its 43 articles covered not only the Alabama claims but American-Canadian disputes over boundaries, navigational rights, and the salmon fisheries in the northwest. The Civil War claims were to be submitted to an arbitration panel in Switzerland that contained Swiss, Italian, and Brazilian members, along with Britons and Americans.

Grant was pleased with the process, as well as the result: Cushing argued before the Geneva board and the arbitrators awarded the Americans $15 million. Grant celebrated the fact that “two great nations, speaking one language and having one lineage,” had avoided a “bloody and costly conflict. An example has been set which, if successful in its final issue, may be followed by other civilized nations.” Cushing presented this volume to Grant three weeks after the second inaugural.