{"id":552450,"date":"2026-03-29T14:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T14:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/552450\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T14:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T14:35:11","slug":"remembering-the-alaska-purchase-council-on-foreign-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/552450\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Alaska Purchase | Council on Foreign Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

When opportunity knocks, open the door. For Secretary of State William H. Seward, opportunity literally arrived with a knock on the door. On the evening of March 29, 1867, the Russian minister to the United States, Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, showed up at Seward\u2019s house in Washington, DC, as he was playing whist. The minister had a proposition: Moscow was willing to sell Russian America to the United States. Was Seward interested? He most certainly was. Rather than accepting Stoeckl\u2019s offer to meet the next day, Seward answered: \u201cWhy wait until tomorrow?\u201d Leaving the card game behind and working by candlelight, the two men negotiated through the night, finally reaching a deal at 4:00 a.m. The United States would pay $7.2 million for the second largest land acquisition<\/a> in U.S. history. <\/p>\n

The secretary of state\u2019s\u00a0decision, which\u00a0critics at the time derided as \u201cSeward\u2019s Folly,\u201d proved to be a stroke of genius. The land that opponents at the time dismissed as an empty icebox would pay for itself many times over once explorers found gold and then oil. In a\u00a0recent survey<\/a>\u202fthat the Council on Foreign Relations conducted, members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations ranked the Alaska Purchase as the twenty-sixth best decision in U.S. foreign policy history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manifest Destiny and Territorial Expansion <\/p>\n

A former governor of New York and a two-time U.S. senator, Seward had long championed America\u2019s Manifest Destiny. He envisioned the United States expanding across North America and into the Pacific, with new territories being gained by the power of attraction rather than at the point of a gun. In 1853, he forecast that one day<\/a> <\/p>\n

the borders of the federal republic \u2026 shall be extended so that it shall greet the sun when he touches the tropics, and when he sends his gleaming rays toward the polar circle, and shall include even distant islands in either ocean.<\/p>\n

and he\u00a0speculated\u00a0that Mexico City might\u00a0eventually\u00a0become the capital of the United States.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With his eyes set on the White House, Seward saw himself leading this expansion. He entered the 1860 presidential race as the favorite to win the Republican Party\u2019s nomination. He led after the first ballot but eventually lost the nomination to Abraham Lincoln. Seward swallowed his disappointment and actively campaigned for Lincoln. The victorious Lincoln rewarded Seward by naming him secretary of state. <\/p>\n

\"\"William H. Seward, photographed by Matthew Brady.Library of Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Civil War shelved, but did not end,\u00a0Seward\u2019s\u00a0ambitions\u00a0for territorial\u00a0expansion.\u00a0He stayed on as secretary of state after Andrew Johnson became president upon\u00a0Lincoln\u2019s assassination.\u00a0With\u00a0the war over,\u00a0Seward\u00a0could once again entertain thoughts of expanding America\u2019s reach.\u00a0Canada, the\u00a0Danish Virgin Islands, Greenland,\u00a0Hawaii,\u00a0Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), and\u00a0what was then known as\u00a0Russian\u00a0America\u00a0were among the apples of his eye.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Russian Offer <\/p>\n

Danish explorer Vitus Bering, who gave his name to the Bering Strait, led the 1741 Russian expedition that became the first European exploration of Alaska. Russian hunters and fur traders periodically visited the region over the next four decades. It was not until 1784, however, that Russia established its first permanent colony in Russian America<\/a>. Fifteen years later, Moscow granted the Russian American Company a monopoly over the territory. Russian exploration of the western coast of North American would reach as far south as Bodega Bay, just north of San Francisco. <\/p>\n

\"\"A painting of Novo Arkangelsk (New Archangel), the capital of Russian America, drawn by Aleksandr Olgin in July 1837.State Archive of the Russian Navy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fortunes of the Russian American Company eventually declined\u00a0in the face of competition from American and British merchants and as\u00a0the once abundant stocks of sea otters were plundered.\u00a0Faced\u00a0with\u00a0the prospect of being\u00a0saddled with a money-losing venture\u00a0that was vulnerable to being\u00a0seized by the British navy or overrun by American settlers, Moscow decide to\u00a0get something for its colony\u00a0rather than just\u00a0forfeit\u00a0control.\u00a0A sale\u00a0to\u00a0Britain\u00a0was\u00a0unthinkable.\u00a0It\u00a0was a rival European power; indeed,\u00a0the two countries fought each other\u00a0in the Crimean War. That left the United States.\u00a0Russia\u00a0first\u00a0broached the\u00a0possibility\u00a0of\u00a0a\u00a0sale during James Buchanan\u2019s presidency. The looming prospect of the American Civil War derailed the idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seward\u2019s Folly <\/p>\n

Seward saw the acquisition of Russian America less as an end than as a means. As critics of his deal repeatedly reminded him, the sparsely populated territory was a frozen wasteland. But one of the lessons he had drawn from Confederate attacks on Union shipping during the Civil War was that control of distant ports was critical to protecting U.S. commerce. He imagined that gaining control of Russian America would enable the United States to dominate the northern Pacific and protect potential trade routes to Asia. Control of the region would also pressure, if not entice, British Columbia into joining the United States and possibly paving the way to acquire more of British Canada. <\/p>\n

Stoeckl\u2019s guidance from Moscow was to get at least $5 million for the sale of Russian America. Eager to conclude a deal, Seward limited his haggling. The $7.2 million he agreed to pay for a territory larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined amounted to less than two cents per acre<\/a>. He now had to convince Capitol Hill to approve a deal that would increase the size of the United States by one-sixth. <\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cSigning the Alaska Treaty of Cessation\u201d by Emmanuel Leutze in 1867, depicting Robert S. Chew, William H. Seward, William Hunter, Mr. Bodisco, Russian Ambassador Baron de Stoeckl, Charles Sumner, and Fredrick W. Seward.Smithsonian American Art Museum and William Seward House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Senate Acts <\/p>\n

While many Americans shared Seward\u2019s vision of Manifest Destiny, many did not. Even supporters of Manifest Destiny questioned the wisdom of spending scarce government revenue to buy a land of snow and ice. \u201cSeward\u2019s Folly\u201d was one of the nicest insults that critics tossed Seward\u2019s way. Russian America was derided as a \u201csucked orange,\u201d a \u201cpolar bear\u2019s garden,\u201d and \u201cWalrussia.\u201d Claims that Seward was asking Americans to buy an icebox were not far-fetched. As historian George Herring has noted<\/a>, the territory\u2019s main export in the nineteenth century was in fact ice, which was \u201csold in large quantities to the bustling communities along the West Coast.\u201d <\/p>\n

Seward\u2019s effort to\u00a0persuade\u00a0the Republican-dominated\u00a0Congress\u00a0of\u00a0the need to\u00a0acquire\u00a0Russian America\u00a0was further handicapped by\u00a0Republicans\u2019\u00a0hatred for\u00a0Johnson, the\u00a0Democrat\u00a0who\u00a0Lincoln had chosen as his running mate in 1864.\u00a0Critics\u00a0charged\u00a0that Seward was\u00a0using\u00a0his\u00a0deal to\u00a0deflect attention from Johnson\u2019s many\u00a0domestic policy\u00a0failings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seward got a boost from Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a\u00a0leading\u00a0Republican\u00a0he\u00a0had invited to his house once Stoeckl\u00a0made his proposal.\u00a0Sumner\u00a0met briefly with the Russian minister but declined to stay\u00a0for the actual negotiations. Sumner took to the floor of the Senate on April\u00a08, 1867, to argue for Seward\u2019s deal.\u00a0During\u00a0his\u00a0three-and-a-half-hour\u00a0speech,\u00a0he\u00a0gave the territory its name, \u201cAlaska,\u201d after the\u00a0Aleut word\u202fmeaning \u201cthe mainland\u201d or \u201cgreat land.\u201d\u00a0He also argued that\u00a0the United States should\u00a0honor\u00a0Seward\u2019s\u00a0deal because Russia had been the European power most supportive of the United States\u00a0during the Civil War.\u00a0The\u00a0very day, the Senate voted\u202f37 to 2 to approve the treaty to\u00a0purchase\u00a0Alaska.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The House Delays <\/p>\n

Things did not end with the treaty\u2019s passage. Seward now had to persuade Congress to appropriate the funds to pay for the purchase. The House balked, however, at moving forward. Opponents questioned the merits of acquiring Alaska and expressed concerns about the expense. And as had happened before in U.S. history<\/a> and would happen again<\/a>, some representatives bristled that the House had not been consulted in advance about the purchase. <\/p>\n

The\u00a0appropriations request sat\u00a0for more than a year. Meanwhile,\u00a0Johnson\u2019s political problems\u00a0mounted\u2014the House\u00a0impeached him in February 1868,\u00a0and the Senate came within one vote of\u00a0removing him from office\u00a0three\u00a0months later. The House was in no mood to deliver him any victory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The deal\u2019s supporters continued to stress\u00a0that\u00a0it\u00a0was\u00a0essential to achieving America\u2019s full potential.\u00a0Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts, a former House speaker and the\u00a0chair of the House\u00a0Foreign Affairs Committee,\u00a0told his colleagues<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

That [Pacific] Ocean will be the theatre of the triumphs of civilization in the future. It is there that the institutions of the world will be fashioned and tis destinies decided. If this transfer is successful, it will no longer be an European civilization or an European destiny that controls us. It will be a higher civilization and a nobler destiny. It may be an American civilization, and American destiny of six hundred million souls.<\/p>\n

The call to fund the purchase was also helped by the fact that the U.S. flag had been raised in Sitka, Alaska, in October 1867 in anticipation that the deal would be completed. Representative Godlove Orth, Republican of Indiana, asked his colleagues: <\/p>\n

Shall the flag which waves so proudly there now be taken down? Palsied be the hand that would dare to remove it! Our flag is there, and there it will remain. Our laws and our institutions are there, guaranteeing protection to its present inhabitants, and to the thousands who shall inhabit it hereafter.<\/p>\n

Banks\u2019s and Orth\u2019s words may have moved some lawmakers. But cash may have been a stronger motive. Eager to consummate the deal, Stoeckl apparently passed money around Capitol Hill to make sure that the appropriation went through. The House voted on July 14, 1868, to fund the purchase of Alaska, and the appropriations act was enacted into law two weeks later. <\/p>\n

\"\"The U.S. government check for $7.2 million submitted by Secretary of State William H. Seward to Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl.National Archives.<\/p>\n

The Legacy of the Alaska Purchase <\/p>\n

Seward\u2019s success in concluding the Alaska Purchase did not create momentum for his other territorial ambitions. Congress had no interest in acquiring Greenland or Santo Domingo or the Danish Virgin Islands. (The United States purchased the latter, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands, in 1917.) And rather than pressuring British Canada to join the United States, fears that the United States might acquire Russian America encouraged Britain to establish of the Dominion of Canada<\/a> in July 1867. Four years later, British Columbia joined the new Canadian confederation. <\/p>\n

Despite not fulfilling\u00a0his ultimate\u00a0ambitions, Seward\u2019s Folly proved to be a strategic masterstroke. The deal pushed Russia out of North America,\u00a0vastly expanded U.S. territory, and with the discovery first of gold and then of oil,\u00a0generated enormous riches.\u00a0Sometimes great accomplishments begin\u00a0by answering the knock at the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this article. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When opportunity knocks, open the door. For Secretary of State William H. Seward, opportunity literally arrived with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-552450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}