Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Alabama Claims were demands for damages made by the United States against Great Britain in 1869, arising from attacks on Union merchant ships during the Civil War. The raiders responsible, including the CSS Alabama, were built in British shipyards and the U.S. argued Britain had violated its neutrality by allowing them to enter Confederate service.
Great Britain paid $15,500,000 to the United States as the final award under the Treaty of Washington. The payment was made on the 8th of September 1873. Against that sum, the United States paid Britain $1,929,819 for illegal Union blockade practices and ceded fishing privileges.
The arbitration tribunal met in a reception room of the Town Hall in Geneva, Switzerland. That room has since been named the salle de l'Alabama. Pre-arbitration negotiations took place at the Maryland estate of businessman Samuel Taylor Suit in Suitland.
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts demanded that indirect damages be included, arguing British blockade runners had supplied the Confederacy with thousands of tons of gunpowder, half a million rifles, and several hundred cannons. He claimed this may have extended the Civil War by two years and cost 400,000 additional lives. Sumner originally asked for $2 billion in damages, or alternatively the cession of Canada to the United States.
The Alabama Claims established the principle of international arbitration as a means to resolve disputes between nations. The case is recognized as a precursor to the Hague Convention, the League of Nations, the World Court, and the United Nations. International jurist Gustave Moynier cited the Alabama Claims when pursuing legal arrangements to enforce international treaties in the 1870s.
Charles Francis Adams represented the United States on the five-member Geneva tribunal, with William Maxwell Evarts serving as counsel. Adams was the same diplomat who had protested the Alabama's departure from British ports to the British government during the Civil War.