Secretaries of State: Hamilton Fish
For many years, the presidency of Ulysses Grant was ranked as one of the worst, due mainly to the large number of scandals that were allowed to occur right under the president's nose, often perpetrated by his so-called friends. In recent years however, Grant's presidency has been reassessed more favorably, including by such eminent biographers as H. W. Brands, Ronald Whyte and Ron Chernow. A recent evaluation of Grant's presidency by Charles Calhoun (called The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant continues in that trend.
The man considered to be the "Pillar of the Grant Administration" was Grant's Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. This former Governor of and US Senator from New York was widely acknowledged to be Grant's best cabinet selection, renowned for his fairness and sound judgement in a cabinet in need of such qualities. Hamilton Fish was born on August 3, 1808 at what is now part of Greenwich Village in New York City. His parents named him after their friend Alexander Hamilton. His father Nicholas Fish was a Federalist politician and served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. Colonel Fish was active in the Yorktown Campaign that resulted in the surrender of Lord Cornwallis.
Fish graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1827 with high honors. At Columbia, Fish became fluent in French, which was the language of diplomacy at the time. After graduation, Fish studied law for three years in the law office of Peter A. Jay, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1830. Fish aligned himself to the Whig Party and served as commissioner of deeds for the city and county of New York from 1832 through 1833. He was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for New York State Assembly in 1834. On December 15, 1836 Hamilton Fish married Julia Kean. The couple had three sons and five daughters.
After his defeat as a Representative in the New York State Assembly, Fish was reluctant to run for office. But in 1842 he ran for and was elected to the US House of Representatives, serving in the 28th Congress from New York's 6th District between 1843 and 1845. He lost his re-election bid in 1845. He ran as the Whig candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1846, but was defeated by Democrat Addison Gardiner. Gardiner was elected in May 1847 a judge of the New York Court of Appeals and vacated the office of lieutenant governor. In November 1847 Fish was elected to fill the vacancy.
In November 1848, Fish was elected Governor of New York, and served from January 1, 1849, to December 31, 1850. At 40 years of age, Fish was one of the youngest governors to be elected in New York history. Fish called for and was able to bring about free public education facilities throughout New York state. He also got legislation passed for the building of an asylum and school for the intellectually disabled. In his annual messages Fish spoke out against the extension of slavery from land acquired from the Mexican American War. President Zachary Taylor, also a Whig, was going to nominate Fish to the Treasury Department in a cabinet shakeup., but Taylor died in office before he could nominate Fish. Despite his national popularity Fish was not renominated for Governor.
Fish had the support of prominent New York Whigs William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed, and in January 1851 they nominated him as a candidate for U.S. Senator. A deadlock ensued over his nomination because some New York Whigs were upset about Fish not publicly supporting the Compromise of 1850. Despite this, on March 19, 1851, Fish was elected a U.S. Senator from New York and he took his seat on December 1, serving alongside future Secretary of State William H. Seward.
In the United States Senate, Fish was a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations until the end of his term on March 4, 1857. He befriended President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of State William L. Marcy and Attorney General Caleb Cushing. For the latter part of his term he became a Republican who was part of a moderately anti-slavery faction. He did not support Senator Charles Sumner and the Radical Republicans, but he was strongly against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the end of his term, he traveled with his family to Europe and remained there until shortly before the opening of the American Civil War. When he returned he actively campaigned for the election of Abraham Lincoln. However, while he was in France, Fish studied foreign policy and befriended many French diplomats.
In 1861 and 1862 Fish participated on the Union Defense Committee of the State of New York to raise and equip troops. In 1862 Fish was appointed by President Lincoln on a commission to visit the Union Army prisoners being held in the Confederate States of America capital in Richmond, Virginia. But the Confederate government however, refused to allow the commission to enter the city. Fish's committee began a system of prisoner exchange. After the war ended Fish went back to private practice as a lawyer in New York.
Hamilton Fish was appointed Secretary of State by President Ulysses S. Grant. He served from March 17, 1869 and March 12, 1877 and was President Grant's longest-serving Cabinet officer. During his time in the position he had to contend with many foreign policy issues including the Cuban insurrection, the Alabama Claims, and the Franco-Prussian War. When Fish assumed office he immediately began a series of reforms in the Department of State. He cataloged and organized 7.00 volumes of State Department documents and created the Bureau of Indexes and Archives. He implemented civil service reform by having State Department applicants be required to pass an entry examination before being appointed as a consultant. This policy did not apply to those directly appointed by President Grant. Fish replaces systems that had been in place since the time of John Quincy Adams. Countries were listed in alphabetical order rather than by region and diplomatic ministers were not kept informed of current world events that took place in other parts of the world. Fish changed all that.
By 1869, Cuban nationals were in open rebellion against Spain, due to the unpopularity of Spanish rule. American sentiment favored the Cuban rebels. Fish disagreed with Grant's position on acknowledging the legitimacy of the Cuban rebels cause. At the time Fish was trying to settle claims against Great Britain over British support of the Confederates and he felt that if the US was to support the Cuban rebels, it would weaken their case with Britain. In February 1870, Senator John Sherman of Ohio authored a Senate resolution that would have recognized the Cuban belligerents. Fish counseled Sherman that Cuban recognition would ultimately lead to war with Spain. Fish, worked out an agreement with President Grant to send a special message to Congress that urged not to acknowledge the Cuban rebels. After much debate, Congress decided not to recognize Cuban belligerency.
After President Grant assumed office on March 4, 1869 one of his immediate foreign policy interests was the annexation of the Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic, at that time referred to as Santo Domingo. Grant believed the annexation of Santo Domingo would increase the United States' mineral resources and help alleviate the effects of racism against African Americans in the South. Fish once again disagreed with his President. The divided island nation was led by President Buenaventura Báez. Under his rule there was considerable civil strife on the island and Báez had imprisoned an American citizen, Davis Hatch, for speaking out against the Báez government. In April 1869 Fish gave Grant's private secretary Orville Babcock "special agent" status to go on a fact-finding mission to the island. In September 1869, Babcock made a preliminary treaty that would annex Santo Domingo to the United States and give it the opportunity to apply for statehood. In October 1869, Fish drew up a formal treaty that included a $1,500,000 payment of the Dominican national debt and the lease of Samaná Bay to the United States for $150,000 yearly payment. Fish agreed to support the Santo Domingo annexation if President Grant sent Congress a non-belligerency statement not to get involved with the Cuban rebellion against Spain.
Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was against the treaty, believing that Santo Domingo needed to remain independent. Sumner believed that the people of Santo Domingo did not share Anglo-American values. On January 10, 1870 Grant submitted the Santo Domingo treaty to the United States Senate.The Senate finally rejected the treaty on June 30, 1870. Eighteen Senators led by Charles Sumner defeated the treaty.[41] Pres. Grant, angered at Sumner's refusal to support the treaty, fired Sumner's friend J. Lothrop Motley, Grant's ambassador to England. Sumner was stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1871 by Grant's allies in the Senate.
Both Grant and Fish were interested in establishing an inter-oceanic canal through Panama. Secretary Fish organized a treaty signing on January 26, 1870 in Bogota between the United States and Colombia that established a Panama route for the inter-oceanic canal. The Colombian Senate, however, amended the treaty to the extent that much that the strategic value of the inter-oceanic canal construction was lost. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
During the previous administration of President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State Seward attempted to resolve the Alabama Claims with Great Britain. The Alabama Claims arose out of the Civil War, when Confederate raiding ships built in British ports (most notably the C.S.S. Alabama) had sunk a significant number of Union merchant ships. The claims remained unresolved when Grant became president. Charles Sumner had demanded Britain cede Canada to the United States as payment for the Alabama Claims. Fish was determined to improve relations with Britain. When Sumner was removed from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, renewed negotiations with Britain were able to proceed. On January 9, 1871, Fish met with British representative Sir John Rose in Washington. An agreement was reached to establish a Joint Commission to settle the Alabama Claims to be held in Washington under the direction of Hamilton Fish. On February 14, 1871 both High Commissioners representing Britain, led by the Earl of Ripon, George Robinson, and the United States, led by Fish, met in Washington D.C. and negotiations over settlement went remarkably well. Also present was Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. After 37 meetings, on May 8, 1871, the Treaty of Washington was signed at the State Department. The Senate ratified the treaty on May 24, 1871. On August 25, 1872, the settlement for the Alabama claims was made by an international arbitration committee meeting in Geneva and the United States was awarded $15,500,000 in gold for damage done by the Confederate warships. Under the treaty settlement over disputed Atlantic fisheries and the San Juan Boundary (concerning the Oregon boundary line) was made. Many consider this to be the beginning of the "special relationship" that has persisted between Great Britain and the United States ever since.
On April 11, 1871 a peace conference, presided over by Hamilton Fish, was held in Washington D.C. between Spain and the South American republics of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It resulted in an armistice between the countries. These countries had been in a state of war since 1866, and in 1871 the United States served as mediator under the direction of Hamilton Fish. The signed armistice treaty consisted of seven articles. Hostilities were to cease for a minimum of three years and the countries would allow commercial trade with neutral countries.
In 1871, Korea was known as the "Hermit Kingdom", a country determined to remain isolated from other nations, including the United States. In 1866, U.S. relations with Korea were troubled when Christian missionaries there were beheaded by the Korean regent, and the crew of the General Sherman, a U.S. trading ship, were massacred. Secretary William H. Seward, under President Andrew Johnson, demanded redress and U.S. Naval warships were to be sent to the region, but when Seward's term ended in 1869, he was unable to organize a naval expedition. When Fish took office he organized the Korean naval expedition. He ordered Frederick F. Low, minister to China, to take the Asiatic Fleet to Seoul to seek retribution for the assaulted sailors and to open up a commercial treaty with the King of Korea. On May 8, 1871, Low and Rear Admiral John Rodgers, commander of the Asiatic Squadron, voyaged to Korea with five warships, eighty-five guns, and 1,230 sailors and marines. In June, the American fleet was fired upon by the Korean forts on the Han River leading to Seoul. The American fleet fired back, damaging the forts. On June 10, a U.S. military expedition was launched with the objective was to destroy the Korean forts on Kanghoa Island. 546 sailors and 105 marines landed on the island and captured and destroyed the Korean forts. All of the Korean forts taken were destroyed and leveled on June 11. Three hundred fifty Korean Tiger Hunters were killed. American casualties were limited to one American officer and two American sailors. The Asiatic Squadron remained on the Han River for three weeks, but the Koreans would not open negotiations for a commercial treaty.
As the Cuban rebellion continued, Americans were divided on whether to militarily aid the rebel Cubans. In 1873 a privately owned ship, the Virginius, was used to run guns, ammunition, and vital supplies to the Cuban rebels. The captain of the Virginius was Joseph Fry, former officer of the Confederate and Federal Navies. On October 31, 1873, the Virginius was run down in neutral waters by the Spanish warship, the Tornado, off of Morant Bay, Jamaica. After being hit, the Virginius took on water and was forced to surrender to the Spanish authorities. The 103 crew members consisted of Cuban rebel recruits and 52 American and British citizens. The Spanish tore down and trampled the American flag, and brought the prisoners to Santiago. A total of 53 Virginius crew members were executed by the Spanish authorities.
When news reached the United States of the executions, Fish considered the proper response. He learned that the registration was falsified under American ownership, but still believed that the executions of Americans called for a response. Fish met with Spanish minister, Admiral José Polo de Bernabé in Washington D.C. and the two reached a settlement. Spain relinquished the severely damaged Virginius to the U.S. Navy. The survivors were released, of which 13 were Americans. The Spanish Captain who ordered the executions was censured, and Spain paid $80,000 reparations to American families whose family members were executed.
Fish also negotiated the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 with the Kingdom of Hawaii under the reign of King Kalākaua. Hawaiian sugar was made duty-free, while the importation of manufactured goods and clothing was allowed into the island kingdom.
Fish also brought about the settlement of the Liberian-Grebo war in 1876. He dispatched the USS Alaska, under President Grant's authority, to Liberia. U.S. envoy James Milton Turner, the first African American ambassador, had requested a warship to protect American property in Liberia. Bolstered by U.S. naval presence, Turner negotiated an agreement for the incorporation of Grebo people into Liberian society and the ousting of foreign traders from Liberia.
Grant chose not to run for re-election in 1876. At Republican convention Grant sent a letter to Republican leaders asking them to nominate Fish for the Presidential ticket. The letter was never read at the convention and Fish was never nominated. President Grant believed that Fish was a good compromise choice between the rival factions of James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling. Fish was ready to retire to private life and did not want to run for President.
After briefly serving under President Rutherford Hayes, Fish retired from public office and returned to private life practicing law and managing his real estate in New York City. On September 7, Fish died at the age of 85.
The man considered to be the "Pillar of the Grant Administration" was Grant's Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. This former Governor of and US Senator from New York was widely acknowledged to be Grant's best cabinet selection, renowned for his fairness and sound judgement in a cabinet in need of such qualities. Hamilton Fish was born on August 3, 1808 at what is now part of Greenwich Village in New York City. His parents named him after their friend Alexander Hamilton. His father Nicholas Fish was a Federalist politician and served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. Colonel Fish was active in the Yorktown Campaign that resulted in the surrender of Lord Cornwallis.
Fish graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1827 with high honors. At Columbia, Fish became fluent in French, which was the language of diplomacy at the time. After graduation, Fish studied law for three years in the law office of Peter A. Jay, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1830. Fish aligned himself to the Whig Party and served as commissioner of deeds for the city and county of New York from 1832 through 1833. He was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for New York State Assembly in 1834. On December 15, 1836 Hamilton Fish married Julia Kean. The couple had three sons and five daughters.
After his defeat as a Representative in the New York State Assembly, Fish was reluctant to run for office. But in 1842 he ran for and was elected to the US House of Representatives, serving in the 28th Congress from New York's 6th District between 1843 and 1845. He lost his re-election bid in 1845. He ran as the Whig candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1846, but was defeated by Democrat Addison Gardiner. Gardiner was elected in May 1847 a judge of the New York Court of Appeals and vacated the office of lieutenant governor. In November 1847 Fish was elected to fill the vacancy.
In November 1848, Fish was elected Governor of New York, and served from January 1, 1849, to December 31, 1850. At 40 years of age, Fish was one of the youngest governors to be elected in New York history. Fish called for and was able to bring about free public education facilities throughout New York state. He also got legislation passed for the building of an asylum and school for the intellectually disabled. In his annual messages Fish spoke out against the extension of slavery from land acquired from the Mexican American War. President Zachary Taylor, also a Whig, was going to nominate Fish to the Treasury Department in a cabinet shakeup., but Taylor died in office before he could nominate Fish. Despite his national popularity Fish was not renominated for Governor.
Fish had the support of prominent New York Whigs William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed, and in January 1851 they nominated him as a candidate for U.S. Senator. A deadlock ensued over his nomination because some New York Whigs were upset about Fish not publicly supporting the Compromise of 1850. Despite this, on March 19, 1851, Fish was elected a U.S. Senator from New York and he took his seat on December 1, serving alongside future Secretary of State William H. Seward.
In the United States Senate, Fish was a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations until the end of his term on March 4, 1857. He befriended President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of State William L. Marcy and Attorney General Caleb Cushing. For the latter part of his term he became a Republican who was part of a moderately anti-slavery faction. He did not support Senator Charles Sumner and the Radical Republicans, but he was strongly against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the end of his term, he traveled with his family to Europe and remained there until shortly before the opening of the American Civil War. When he returned he actively campaigned for the election of Abraham Lincoln. However, while he was in France, Fish studied foreign policy and befriended many French diplomats.
In 1861 and 1862 Fish participated on the Union Defense Committee of the State of New York to raise and equip troops. In 1862 Fish was appointed by President Lincoln on a commission to visit the Union Army prisoners being held in the Confederate States of America capital in Richmond, Virginia. But the Confederate government however, refused to allow the commission to enter the city. Fish's committee began a system of prisoner exchange. After the war ended Fish went back to private practice as a lawyer in New York.
Hamilton Fish was appointed Secretary of State by President Ulysses S. Grant. He served from March 17, 1869 and March 12, 1877 and was President Grant's longest-serving Cabinet officer. During his time in the position he had to contend with many foreign policy issues including the Cuban insurrection, the Alabama Claims, and the Franco-Prussian War. When Fish assumed office he immediately began a series of reforms in the Department of State. He cataloged and organized 7.00 volumes of State Department documents and created the Bureau of Indexes and Archives. He implemented civil service reform by having State Department applicants be required to pass an entry examination before being appointed as a consultant. This policy did not apply to those directly appointed by President Grant. Fish replaces systems that had been in place since the time of John Quincy Adams. Countries were listed in alphabetical order rather than by region and diplomatic ministers were not kept informed of current world events that took place in other parts of the world. Fish changed all that.
By 1869, Cuban nationals were in open rebellion against Spain, due to the unpopularity of Spanish rule. American sentiment favored the Cuban rebels. Fish disagreed with Grant's position on acknowledging the legitimacy of the Cuban rebels cause. At the time Fish was trying to settle claims against Great Britain over British support of the Confederates and he felt that if the US was to support the Cuban rebels, it would weaken their case with Britain. In February 1870, Senator John Sherman of Ohio authored a Senate resolution that would have recognized the Cuban belligerents. Fish counseled Sherman that Cuban recognition would ultimately lead to war with Spain. Fish, worked out an agreement with President Grant to send a special message to Congress that urged not to acknowledge the Cuban rebels. After much debate, Congress decided not to recognize Cuban belligerency.
After President Grant assumed office on March 4, 1869 one of his immediate foreign policy interests was the annexation of the Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic, at that time referred to as Santo Domingo. Grant believed the annexation of Santo Domingo would increase the United States' mineral resources and help alleviate the effects of racism against African Americans in the South. Fish once again disagreed with his President. The divided island nation was led by President Buenaventura Báez. Under his rule there was considerable civil strife on the island and Báez had imprisoned an American citizen, Davis Hatch, for speaking out against the Báez government. In April 1869 Fish gave Grant's private secretary Orville Babcock "special agent" status to go on a fact-finding mission to the island. In September 1869, Babcock made a preliminary treaty that would annex Santo Domingo to the United States and give it the opportunity to apply for statehood. In October 1869, Fish drew up a formal treaty that included a $1,500,000 payment of the Dominican national debt and the lease of Samaná Bay to the United States for $150,000 yearly payment. Fish agreed to support the Santo Domingo annexation if President Grant sent Congress a non-belligerency statement not to get involved with the Cuban rebellion against Spain.
Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was against the treaty, believing that Santo Domingo needed to remain independent. Sumner believed that the people of Santo Domingo did not share Anglo-American values. On January 10, 1870 Grant submitted the Santo Domingo treaty to the United States Senate.The Senate finally rejected the treaty on June 30, 1870. Eighteen Senators led by Charles Sumner defeated the treaty.[41] Pres. Grant, angered at Sumner's refusal to support the treaty, fired Sumner's friend J. Lothrop Motley, Grant's ambassador to England. Sumner was stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1871 by Grant's allies in the Senate.
Both Grant and Fish were interested in establishing an inter-oceanic canal through Panama. Secretary Fish organized a treaty signing on January 26, 1870 in Bogota between the United States and Colombia that established a Panama route for the inter-oceanic canal. The Colombian Senate, however, amended the treaty to the extent that much that the strategic value of the inter-oceanic canal construction was lost. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
During the previous administration of President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State Seward attempted to resolve the Alabama Claims with Great Britain. The Alabama Claims arose out of the Civil War, when Confederate raiding ships built in British ports (most notably the C.S.S. Alabama) had sunk a significant number of Union merchant ships. The claims remained unresolved when Grant became president. Charles Sumner had demanded Britain cede Canada to the United States as payment for the Alabama Claims. Fish was determined to improve relations with Britain. When Sumner was removed from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, renewed negotiations with Britain were able to proceed. On January 9, 1871, Fish met with British representative Sir John Rose in Washington. An agreement was reached to establish a Joint Commission to settle the Alabama Claims to be held in Washington under the direction of Hamilton Fish. On February 14, 1871 both High Commissioners representing Britain, led by the Earl of Ripon, George Robinson, and the United States, led by Fish, met in Washington D.C. and negotiations over settlement went remarkably well. Also present was Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. After 37 meetings, on May 8, 1871, the Treaty of Washington was signed at the State Department. The Senate ratified the treaty on May 24, 1871. On August 25, 1872, the settlement for the Alabama claims was made by an international arbitration committee meeting in Geneva and the United States was awarded $15,500,000 in gold for damage done by the Confederate warships. Under the treaty settlement over disputed Atlantic fisheries and the San Juan Boundary (concerning the Oregon boundary line) was made. Many consider this to be the beginning of the "special relationship" that has persisted between Great Britain and the United States ever since.
On April 11, 1871 a peace conference, presided over by Hamilton Fish, was held in Washington D.C. between Spain and the South American republics of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It resulted in an armistice between the countries. These countries had been in a state of war since 1866, and in 1871 the United States served as mediator under the direction of Hamilton Fish. The signed armistice treaty consisted of seven articles. Hostilities were to cease for a minimum of three years and the countries would allow commercial trade with neutral countries.
In 1871, Korea was known as the "Hermit Kingdom", a country determined to remain isolated from other nations, including the United States. In 1866, U.S. relations with Korea were troubled when Christian missionaries there were beheaded by the Korean regent, and the crew of the General Sherman, a U.S. trading ship, were massacred. Secretary William H. Seward, under President Andrew Johnson, demanded redress and U.S. Naval warships were to be sent to the region, but when Seward's term ended in 1869, he was unable to organize a naval expedition. When Fish took office he organized the Korean naval expedition. He ordered Frederick F. Low, minister to China, to take the Asiatic Fleet to Seoul to seek retribution for the assaulted sailors and to open up a commercial treaty with the King of Korea. On May 8, 1871, Low and Rear Admiral John Rodgers, commander of the Asiatic Squadron, voyaged to Korea with five warships, eighty-five guns, and 1,230 sailors and marines. In June, the American fleet was fired upon by the Korean forts on the Han River leading to Seoul. The American fleet fired back, damaging the forts. On June 10, a U.S. military expedition was launched with the objective was to destroy the Korean forts on Kanghoa Island. 546 sailors and 105 marines landed on the island and captured and destroyed the Korean forts. All of the Korean forts taken were destroyed and leveled on June 11. Three hundred fifty Korean Tiger Hunters were killed. American casualties were limited to one American officer and two American sailors. The Asiatic Squadron remained on the Han River for three weeks, but the Koreans would not open negotiations for a commercial treaty.
As the Cuban rebellion continued, Americans were divided on whether to militarily aid the rebel Cubans. In 1873 a privately owned ship, the Virginius, was used to run guns, ammunition, and vital supplies to the Cuban rebels. The captain of the Virginius was Joseph Fry, former officer of the Confederate and Federal Navies. On October 31, 1873, the Virginius was run down in neutral waters by the Spanish warship, the Tornado, off of Morant Bay, Jamaica. After being hit, the Virginius took on water and was forced to surrender to the Spanish authorities. The 103 crew members consisted of Cuban rebel recruits and 52 American and British citizens. The Spanish tore down and trampled the American flag, and brought the prisoners to Santiago. A total of 53 Virginius crew members were executed by the Spanish authorities.
When news reached the United States of the executions, Fish considered the proper response. He learned that the registration was falsified under American ownership, but still believed that the executions of Americans called for a response. Fish met with Spanish minister, Admiral José Polo de Bernabé in Washington D.C. and the two reached a settlement. Spain relinquished the severely damaged Virginius to the U.S. Navy. The survivors were released, of which 13 were Americans. The Spanish Captain who ordered the executions was censured, and Spain paid $80,000 reparations to American families whose family members were executed.
Fish also negotiated the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 with the Kingdom of Hawaii under the reign of King Kalākaua. Hawaiian sugar was made duty-free, while the importation of manufactured goods and clothing was allowed into the island kingdom.
Fish also brought about the settlement of the Liberian-Grebo war in 1876. He dispatched the USS Alaska, under President Grant's authority, to Liberia. U.S. envoy James Milton Turner, the first African American ambassador, had requested a warship to protect American property in Liberia. Bolstered by U.S. naval presence, Turner negotiated an agreement for the incorporation of Grebo people into Liberian society and the ousting of foreign traders from Liberia.
Grant chose not to run for re-election in 1876. At Republican convention Grant sent a letter to Republican leaders asking them to nominate Fish for the Presidential ticket. The letter was never read at the convention and Fish was never nominated. President Grant believed that Fish was a good compromise choice between the rival factions of James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling. Fish was ready to retire to private life and did not want to run for President.
After briefly serving under President Rutherford Hayes, Fish retired from public office and returned to private life practicing law and managing his real estate in New York City. On September 7, Fish died at the age of 85.