$10,000 to gain insider information into the Treasury. Gould and Fisk personally lobbied Grant onboard their private yacht from New York to Boston, in mid-June 1869 to influence Grant's gold policy. In July, Grant reduced the sale of Treasury gold to $2,000,000 per month and subsequent months. Fisk played a role in August in New York, having a letter from Gould, he told Grant his gold policy would destroy the nation. By September, Grant, who was naive in matters of finance, was convinced that a low gold price would help farmers, and the sale of gold for September was not increased. On September 23, when the gold price reached , Boutwell rushed to the White House and talked with Grant. The following day, September 24, known as Black Friday, Grant ordered Boutwell to sell, whereupon Boutwell wired Butterfield in New York, to sell $4,000,000 in gold. The bull market at Gould's Gold Room collapsed, the price of gold plummeted from 160 to , a bear market panic ensued, Gould and Fisk fled for their own safety, while severe economic damages lasted months. By January 1870, the economy resumed its post-war recovery. Foreign affairs Grant had limited foreign policy experience, acquired during his service in the Mexican-American war. Grant relied heavily on his talented Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Fundamentally, Grant had an expansionist impulse to protect American interests abroad and was a strong advocate of the Monroe Doctrine. Grant and Fish had a reserved but cordial friendship. There were no foreign-policy disasters and no wars to engage in. Besides Grant himself, the main players in foreign affairs were Secretary Fish and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Charles Sumner. They had to cooperate to get a treaty ratified. Sumner, who hated Grant, led the opposition to Grant's plan to annex Santo Domingo. Sumner previously had hypocritically fully supported the annexation of Alaska. In 1871, a U.S. expedition to Korea failed to open up trade and ended with an American military victory at the battle of Ganghwa-do. Grant had an idealist side to his foreign policy. Grant appointed a Jewish lawyer, Benjamin F. Peixotto, U.S. Consul in Bucharest, in response to the Romanian persecution of Jews. Grant said that respect "for human rights is the first duty for those set as rulers" over the nations. Treaty of Washington (1871) The most pressing diplomatic problem in 1869 was the settlement