"Boys, aim well--aim at my heart"--was Maximilian's request to his executioners. "Oh man!" was his last cry as he fell, the victim of his own ambition, and of Louis Napoleon's perfidy. The volley which pierced his breast was the knell of the Bonaparte dynasty. Gravelotte was but little more than three years from Queretaro. * * * The acquisition of Russian America for the sum of $7,200,000 was a splendid stroke of statesmanship, and secured to the United States the control of the North Pacific coast of the continent, besides adding about 581,107 square miles to the territory of the Republic. Alaska has immense resources, and is already looking forward to a proud and prosperous future as the north star in the flag of our Union. * * * When the British Government proposed, in 1871, a joint commission to settle the Canadian fisheries dispute, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish replied that the settlement of the claims for depredations by Anglo-Confederate cruisers would be "essential to the restoration of cordial and amicable relations between the two governments." In the following February five high commissioners from each country met in Washington, and a treaty was agreed upon providing for arbitration upon the issues between the American Republic and Great Britain. These issues included the "Alabama Claims"--so-called because the Alabama was the most notorious and destructive of the Anglo-Confederate sea rovers--the question of the Northwest boundary, and the Canadian fisheries. The Tribunal of Arbitration upon the "Alabama Claims" met at Geneva, Switzerland, December 15, 1871. Charles Francis Adams, American Minister to England during the war, was member of the Tribunal for the United States, and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn acted for Great Britain. Baron Itajuba, Brazilian Minister to France; Count Sclopis, an Italian statesman, and M. Jaques Staempfii, of Switzerland, were the other members of the illustrious and memorable court. Caleb Cushing, William M. Evarts and Morrison R. Waite, counsel for the United States, presented an indictment against England which should have made British statesmen shrink from the evidence of their unsuccessful conspiracy against the life of a friendly State. The course of Great Britain during the war was reviewed in language not less forcible and convincing because it was calm, dignified and restrained. A fortress of facts was presented impregnable to British reply, and highly creditable to the forethought and skill with which the American State Department had gathered the material for its case from the very beginning of the war. So strong and unanswerable was the proof against the Alabama that the British arbitrator voted in favor of the United States on the issue of British responsibility for that vessel.