May 16th Rare Autograph Auction
TLS on Benjamin Harrisons's personal stationary. letter is dated March 20, 1899,to Reverend Charles F Goss, Cincinnati, Ohio. In full: "My dear sir, I telegraph to you yesterday and answer to your special delivery letter which came to me Sunday morning. I am just now completing my preparations for the argument in the British Venezuelan arbitration case in Paris, and is absolutely impossible for me to turn aside, even for a day to make addresses, very truly yours Benjamin Harrison"
The Paris Arbitral Award is an arbitral award issued on 3 October 1899 by an arbitral tribunal convened in Paris, created two years earlier as established in the Arbitral Treaty of Washington D. C. on 2 February 1897, in which the United States (representing Venezuela) on the one hand and the United Kingdom (as owner of the colony of British Guiana, currently Guyana) on the other, had agreed to submit to international arbitration the dispute over the border to the west of the British colony and the east of independent Venezuela, as a mechanism for an amicable solution to the territorial differendum.
Venezuela's senior counsel was former US President Benjamin Harrison, assisted by Severo Mallet-Prevost, Benjamin F. Tracy, James R. Soley, and José María Rojas. The country had been represented by James J. Storrow until his unexpected death on 15 April 1897.
Sitting in Paris, the Tribunal of Arbitration finalized its decision on 3 October 1899. The award was unanimous but gave no reasons for the decision, merely describing the resulting boundary, which gave Britain almost 90% of the disputed territory.
With One of a Kind Collectibles LOA
Benjamin Harrison TLS about the British Venezuelan arbitration
Click above for larger image.