This is a report commissioned by William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, on the desirability of acquiring Iceland and Greenland for the US, just as the U.S. had acquired a few Caribbean islands and Alaska.
p. 7-36 deal with Iceland, p. 37-60 to Greenland, with p. 61 to 72 giving a bibliography and various appendices. The work is a fairly dry compilation of statistics and resources, with some historical sections, mainly on American explorers. It is clearly influenced by the Peterman and Hayes view of warm currents and an open polar sea, a view not yet abandoned by polar explorers, and concludes with an abstract of Petermann’s (April 1967) paper on the arctic regions (p. 52-60).
p. 51, the author’s own conclusion is the desirability of pursuing the researches of Kane and Hayes: Let us hope, for her own honor and for the fame of American navigators, that what she has so gloriously begun will be followed up. If national glory has any meaning in the present state of civilization, it can be gained in no nobler way than by such achievements.