The brass-studded box that transported the Treaty of Ghent, the document that formally ended the War of 1812, has been restored and returned to The Octagon, the museum of The American Architectural Foundation, in Washington, D.C. A public viewing of the Ghent Treaty Box and a lecture on the British burning of the capital will take place at The Octagon on August 24, the 189th anniversary of that conflagration. The treaty box, which had aged badly over the past two centuries, has not been on public display since its conservation.

The box served a brief but important function in a crucial early stage of this nation’s history. Following 2-1/2 years of conflict, war with Britain concluded at the signing of a treaty December 24, 1814, in Ghent, Belgium. Because of the uncertainty of travel, American officials sent home three separate copies of the treaty across the Atlantic to ensure the safe arrival of at least one. Henry Carroll, secretary to peace commissioner Henry Clay, was the first to arrive in Washington with the treaty, carrying it in his personal brass-studded document box, now known as the Ghent Treaty Box.

Carroll, son of Charles Carroll of Belle Vue, delivered the treaty to President James Madison at the Octagon, the home of Colonel John Tayloe III that served as the temporary Executive Mansion after the British burned the White House only a few hundred yards to the west. When signed by President Madison in his office on the second floor of The Octagon on February 17, 1815, the Treaty of Ghent officially ended the War of 1812. The official document became part of the National Archives, and the Ghent Treaty Box passed down through the Carroll family, who donated it in 1940 to The Octagon.

Although the peace heralded by the Treaty of Ghent has survived well for 188 years, the box in which it arrived has not. Over time, the leather covering on the box deteriorated badly. Nearly a quarter of the leather was lost, with many missing areas patched long ago with poorly matching colored resin. The remaining leather was cracked, cupped, and peeling, and the brass trim corroded. Because the treaty box was quite fragile, the Octagon staff approached Colonial Williamsburg’s department of conservation for help.

Leroy Graves, Colonial Williamsburg’s conservator of upholstery, and Heather Porter, then a graduate intern from the Royal College of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, undertook the examination and painstaking treatment of the artifact. Because of the delicate condition of the box, much of the work has been accomplished beneath a microscope. Treatment has included flattening and stabilizing the cupped leather, carefully re-adhering it to the wood box, patching losses with matching leather, and removing an old coating that disfigured and darkened the original surface. Due to its stable but sensitive condition, the treaty box will be exhibited at The Octagon on special occasions only.

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