Grant, Ulysses S., as Eighteenth President

Partially lithographed document signed ("U. S. Grant"), 1 page (10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.; 271 x 208 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, accomplished in a clerical hand, Washington, 4 September 1869, being an order to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to affix the Seal of the United States, docketed on integral blank; lightly soiled, early repairs to fold separations.

Philip D. and Elsie O. Sang, by bequest to — a descendant of the Sangs, sold to — an undesignated consignor (Sotheby's, 12 December 2001, lot 372)

Partially lithographed document signed ("U. S. Grant"), 1 page (10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.; 271 x 208 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, accomplished in a clerical hand, Washington, 4 September 1869, being an order to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to affix the Seal of the United States, docketed on integral blank; lightly soiled, early repairs to fold separations.
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Prelude to the Panama Canal; one of the earliest Presidential documents concerned with establishing a "path between the seas": "I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to my full power to Stephen A. Hurlbut to conclude and sign with the government of Colombia a Convention on the subject of a ship canal between the Atlantic & Pacific oceans, dated this day and signed by me. ..."

President Grant had a personal interest in constructing a transisthmian canal: as a young lieutenant in 1852 he had travelled with his regiment to California. The journey required crossing the Isthmus of Panama by mule; cholera broke out, and one out of every three men riding with Grant died before the regiment reached the Pacific (Personal Memoirs 1:195–98).

The 1846 Bidlack-Mallarino Treaty provided that the United States would guarantee the neutrality of the Isthmus of Panama and the sovereignty of Colombia (then New Granada) in exchange for the assurance of free transit across the Isthmus via any means that might be constructed. Although the Panama Railroad was completed in 1855, both commerce and increased westward immigration underscored the need for a canal transit.

Strongly supported by his Secretary of State, Grant informed Congress of his intentions in his first State of the Union Address, 6 December 1869: "The subject of an interoceanic canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Isthmus of Darien is one in which commerce is greatly interested. Instructions have been given to our minister to the Republic of the United States of Colombia to endeavor to obtain authority for a survey by this Government, in order to determine the practicability of such an undertaking, and a charter for the right of way to build, by private enterprise, such a work, if the survey proves it to be practicable."

The U.S. minister to Colombia at the time was the notorious Stephen Hurlbut, a creditable field commander for the Union Army who also "seems to have exercised every opportunity to line his own pockets," according to Ezra J. Warner's Generals in Blue. Hurlbut dodged a court-martial and served as the first commander of chief of the Grand Army of the Republic prior to his posting to Bogotá. He was subsequently the minister to Peru and a United States congressman from Illinois—all the while dogged by allegations of dishonesty and drunkenness.

While Hurlbut's negotiations evidently came to naught, Grant's interest in building a transisthmian canal never wavered. The following year he established the Interoceanic Canal Commission, which made the first systematic survey of the Isthmus of Panama for potential canal routes. Grant's Republican successors in the White House continued his efforts, and work on the enormous engineering project finally began in 1904, during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.