"Seward's Folly." It's something you'll find
in any US history textbook. The belief that the United States' purchase of Alaska from Russia
was considered a huge mistake at the time, with the US paying $7.2 million, or the
equivalent of over $150 million today, for a whole lot of empty nothingness. It
seemed like a folly on a monumental scale. That is until Alaska was found to be a natural
wonderland teeming with natural resources. But if no one knew how valuable Alaska would
be, why did the United States purchase it for such a high price? And did people at the time
really think it was such a colossal blunder? Today we're looking at the real reason
why the US Bought Alaska from Russia. It's hard to imagine the United States
today without Alaska as its ultimate, often deadly frontier. At 665,384 square miles (1,723,337
sq km) in size, Alaska is by far the biggest state in the country, making
up 16% of all land area in the US. The next three biggest states combined – Texas, California, and Montana –
are still smaller than it. Its 732,000 residents also make
it the third-least populous state, with only Wyoming and Vermont having fewer people.
It's not only the westernmost state, it's also technically the easternmost, as the Aleutian
archipelago extends so far west, it actually reaches into the eastern hemisphere. And yes,
there is even a place you can see Russia from your backyard on a clear day, if you live in a very
particular area along the Bering Strait, that is. Since its colonization by Russia
in the 1740s, Alaska has been a tantalizing frontier for fortune-seekers.
Its history is marked by a series of booms and crazes as outsiders rushed in to take
advantage of the state's natural resources, and many really did strike it rich by taking
its gold, its furs, and, more recently, its oil. But it's also home to indigenous cultures
who have been adapting to this way of life for thousands of years. Indigenous groups became
experts at navigating this forbidding landscape via snowshoes, dogsleds, kayaks, and canoes
and could thrive in harsh conditions. Today, 15% of Alaska's population identifies
as indigenous, the most of any US state. Alaska faces Russia across the Bering Strait, with only 55 miles separating
the two at the narrowest point. It is largely believed that during the last ice
age, Alaska and Eurasia were connected by land, what's called the "Bering land
bridge," or sometimes "Beringia." This land bridge served as an entry point
for groups of ancient hunter-gatherers to cross over to the Americas and populate the
empty land. They would spread far and wide, with some moving south and becoming
the ancestors of American Indians. During the last ice age, so much
of Earth's water was frozen into glaciers that sea levels dropped
worldwide by as much as 300 feet, (91 meters) exposing land that now lies underwater
and connecting places that are separated today. Australia was connected to New Guinea, while Britain and Ireland were connected to
mainland Europe via an area known as "Doggerland," and parts of Indonesia were
connected to mainland Asia. This last Ice Age lasted from 125,000 to
only 14,000 years ago – which is actually a huge chunk of the total time homo sapiens
have even been on the Earth. The ice sheets reached their greatest extent – and sea
levels reached their lowest point – during a period called the Last Glacial Maximum, about
30,000 years ago. Then about 15,000 years ago, the Earth started warming up again:
glaciers began melting, sea levels rose, and the Bering land bridge went totally
underwater about 10,000 years ago. So what was Beringia like? Well, warmer and wetter
than you might think, considering this is Alaska in an ice age. It was a refuge for animals like
the Woolly Rhino and the North American Camel. Its plant and animal life were more like
Eurasia than North America because it was cut off from North America by
the massive Laurentide Ice Sheet. Scientists believe it wasn't until about
20,000 years ago that a corridor opened in the Laurentide Ice Sheet, allowing people to
migrate into the rest of the Americas. However, these numbers are constantly changing
as new archaeological remains are found. Alaska was first colonized by Russians
beginning in the 18th century. But it had been a long trip from Moscow
to Asia's Pacific coast in the first place. Russian expansion into
Asia began in earnest in the 1600s. These early Russian explorers, called
promyshlenniki, meaning "your orphan," were merchants and fur trappers who helped
Russia expand eastward across Eurasia, seeking pelts, particularly sable,
they could sell in Europe and China. As these Russians met the nomadic people of
Central Asia and Siberia, they would sometimes trade with them for furs, but often they would
simply demand tribute or take hostages, demanding furs and pelts be paid as a ransom, in a pattern
that would be repeated with the natives of Alaska. In Russia, the promyshlenniki were sometimes
identified with the Cossacks, semi-nomadic people from the Carpathian mountains.
These frontiersmen were allowed a great deal of autonomy in return for providing
military service when called upon. Indeed, there could be little oversight in such a vast
and forbidding environment. A common saying went, "God is in his heaven, and the tsar is far away." The Russian march across Eurasia was slow
and arduous. They established ostrogs, or trading posts, where trade could be
conducted, and agents could levy a 10% tax. But expansion accelerated under Tsar Peter the
Great, who was determined to bring Russia up to speed with the great European powers of the day,
finally reaching eastern Siberia in the 1690s. As much as the economic benefits of an empire,
Russia wanted the prestige of colonies that they saw in the great powers of Western Europe,
and what better place to look than to the East? Having expanded across Eurasia, it
only made sense for the Russians that they should have a go at the Americas, where
other European powers had found such success. Sailing for the Russians, a Danish captain named
Vitus Bering explored Alaska's coast in 1728, but it wasn't until 1741 that
Bering returned to make landfall. His ship, the St. Gabriel, landed off the coast
of Alaska on a small island now named for him. But he wouldn't have much time to celebrate
his new island since soon after landing, Captain Bering and much of his crew died of
scurvy and a host of other health problems. But the survivors of Bering's
expedition brought back some 800 otter pelts to Russia, which soon
became more valuable than sable. The Aleutian islands are surprisingly mild, and the seas surrounding them teemed with
life, and fortune hunters soon began to pour across the Bering Sea and into the
Aleutian Islands in search of pelts. The natives of the Aleutian
Islands, called the Aleuts, depended on the sea for food. They had
invented the kayak and were skilled hunters of otters and seals. The name Alaska is actually
thought to come from the Aleut language. But like so many indigenous people of
the Americas, the Aleuts were unprepared for European disease. It is estimated that
80% of the Aleutian population died in the first generations of Russian colonization,
from 10,000 in 1741 to only 2,000 by 1800. The Russians saw that the Aleuts were
expert hunters, and they continued the pattern established in Siberia: holding natives
hostage in return for ransoms paid in furs and pelts. The Russians demanded hunting far
beyond what the environment could sustain, which devastated these animals' populations.
When the Russians did offer goods in trade, it was liquor and firearms, in addition
to the measles and smallpox they had already given, free of charge.
A merchant named Grigory Shelikhov saw the potential for a trading company
similar to the British East India Company. In 1784, the newly-founded
Russian-American Company established its first permanent
settlement on Kodiak Island. Eventually, the Russian-American Company, or RAC, was granted a monopoly on all hunting,
trading, and mining in the area. In the 1790s, the RAC ended
the system of hostage-taking, replacing it with something
that really wasn't any better. Instead of being taken as hostages, all
Aleutian men aged 18-50 were conscripted to become hunters for the RAC, whose officials
were encouraged to marry indigenous women, spawning a significant Creole
population with a foot in both worlds. But Russian America would not be
confined to the Aleutian Islands. They established a base on the mainland in 1799, calling it the Fort of Archangel Michael, on
what we would today call Alaska's panhandle. A few years later, the fort was
attacked by warriors of the Tlingit, whose decorative arts, including totem
poles, are immediately recognizable as icons of the American northwest, and the RAC
was forced to pay a ransom for the survivors. The Tlingit held Fort Archangel
for more than a year before a fleet arrived from the Russian motherland
that bombarded the Tlingit into submission, and today this is known as the Battle of
Sitka, after the indigenous name for the area. Sitka became the capital of Russian America, with its own cathedral and bishop
of the Russian Orthodox Church. The RAC dreamed of making the Pacific into
a "Russian Lake." With so much autonomy, its leaders tried setting up outposts
in northern California and even the Sandwich Islands, better known today as Hawaii. But the Russian success in Alaska attracted
competition almost immediately. The Spanish were defensive of any other settlements
on the Pacific coast. Partly in response to Russian Alaska, the Spanish
started expanding northward, founding missions in San Diego in 1769,
Monterey in 1770, and San Francisco in 1776. The Spanish also made some expeditions
into Alaska, establishing a port at Valdez, which would become famous much later in
1989 as the namesake of the supertanker which spilled over 10 million gallons of
oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Although Russia claimed nearly
the entire modern state of Alaska, it penetrated very little into the interior. At
the time of Alaska's sale to the United States, only 1,000 Russians were living in the territory,
plus another 2,000 people identified as Creoles. Since they never reached much further inland,
the Russians had little contact with another of Alaska's native people, the Athabascans,
hunters of moose and caribou. Following the herds across Alaska's vast interior, the Athabascans
were the most migratory of Alaska's natives. But it was another group that Alaska would come
to be most strongly identified with. Originally called Eskimos, but now referred to
by their preferred name of Inuit, they are actually relative newcomers to Alaska,
settling in the area only about 1000 years ago, but today span the Arctic from
Siberia to Greenland, and in Alaska, they are divided into the Inupiat in
the north, and the Yup'ik in the South. Far from Moscow, Russian America received
a supply ship from the motherland only once every two or three years. The colony quickly
became dependent on trade with other European settlers, particularly Americans, who saw the
potential riches swimming off Alaska's shores. Merchants in Boston and New York started
sending expeditions to Alaska to acquire otter furs, which they would later take to Canton,
the great Chinese trading post of the day. Soon, the merchants were conducting a kind of triangular
trade between New England, Alaska, and China. New England merchants were
particularly interested in whaling, bringing back whale oil and baleen
for various Victorian household goods, including using the oil for lamps and weaving
the baleen into baskets and fishing lines. The hunting of whales became more efficient with
the invention of the harpoon gun in the 1860s, although it was tempered by the use of
petroleum in oil lamps starting in 1859. This use of American merchants as
an entry to the Chinese markets was crucial to the RAC because Russian
merchants were banned from Chinese ports, who saw no need to enrich their
great neighbor to the north. But while the colonists in Alaska were
relying heavily on American supplies, officials were concerned about Americans
supplying natives with firearms and ammunition, and Moscow asked the US to ban the practice, but
the Federal Government declined to intervene. Meanwhile, the US was trying to assert
its claim to the Oregon territory, which was triply disputed by the
US, Russia, and Great Britain. In April 1824, the US and Russia
hashed out their differences with a treaty that placed the southern boundary
of Russian Alaska at 54 degrees latitude and allowed both nations to trade with the
natives, alcohol, and firearms excepted. But the balance of power was rapidly
shifting towards the Americans. In 1844, the US signed its first commercial treaty with
China. They would follow suit with Japan in 1858. But, more than anything, it
was the Mexican-American War, and its resulting territorial gains,
that demonstrated America's hunger for expansion and its commitment to
fulfilling the promise of the Monroe Doctrine to let no European power
continue operating in North America. But whatever rivalry that may have been
felt between Russia and the United States, it paled in comparison to their mutual distrust
of Great Britain. Tsar Nicholas I underscored this shared apprehension in a statement
to the US minister in St. Petersburg, declaring, "Not only are our interests
alike, but our enemies are the same." 1853 saw the outbreak of the Crimean War,
in which Great Britain and France teamed up to defend the Ottoman Empire after a Russian
invasion. It was a decisive defeat for Russia and one that demonstrated that the country
still lagged behind the great powers it was trying to emulate. Particularly weak
were the Russian soldiers themselves, many of whom were malnourished
serfs in poor physical condition. In the midst of the Crimean War, Tsar Alexander
II ascended to the Russian throne in 1855. He would ultimately become a transformative figure
in the country's history, known for his extensive liberal reforms. Among his most significant
achievements was the emancipation of serfs in Russia, a monumental decree that abolished
the oppressive system of serfdom in 1861. Following its defeat in the Crimean
War, which concluded in 1856, Russia was compelled to redirect its attention toward
Europe. Its previous endeavors in North America had yielded minimal economic benefits, with
diminishing returns on investments in the region. One stark example of this decline was
the precipitous decrease in the sea otter population. It is estimated
that in the early 19th century, approximately 300,000 sea otters inhabited the
coastal waters of the North Pacific. However, by the mid-1800s, their numbers had plummeted
to a mere few thousand due to overhunting. Consequently, Russia's diminished prospects in
North America prompted a strategic realignment, emphasizing the need for engagement and
diplomacy within the European sphere. Alexander II relied heavily on his advisors,
particularly his brother, Grand Duke Konstantin. Through the press, Konstantin
criticized the Russian-American Company as economically unsound and drew
comparisons between Alaska's natives and Russia's beleaguered serfs. Alexander's advisors
started toying with the idea of selling Alaska. Faced with the potential of losing Alaska
without any recompense, the idea of selling the territory appeared increasingly attractive.
Despite the recent discovery of modest gold deposits in Alaska, Russian authorities were
not swayed to maintain their hold on the region. In fact, they were acutely aware of
the fervor that had accompanied the California gold rush in the 1840s and 1850s,
which saw the arrival of more than 300,000 prospectors from across the globe, and were
concerned that a similar influx of foreign gold seekers in Alaska could ultimately lead to the
loss of the territory without any financial gain. It seemed like an easy choice to make - sell
Alaska or lose it. But who should be the buyer? The US was the obvious choice to offer Alaska
to, however, the ongoing Civil War left the nation financially strained and reluctant to
incur additional expenses. More than anything, Russia did not want Alaska to be absorbed into
British Canada, as Britain was Russia's chief rival at the time, but then again, Britain
was basically everyone's chief rival then. Chaos in the United States stoked
Canadian movements for confederation, which would mean self-rule while remaining
under the protection of Great Britain. In 1866, a group of citizens
in British Columbia voted to request permission from the British
government to join the United States, but the movement never progressed any
further than that. That same year, the US House of Representatives introduced
an annexation bill that was never voted on. The United States' expansionist
attitude ultimately propelled the Canadian provinces toward confederation,
and in March 1867, Queen Victoria gave her assent to the creation of the Dominion
of Canada, which remained under British control but possessed a significantly
enhanced capacity for self-governance. In late 1866, a few months before the
creation of the Dominion of Canada, Tsar Alexander received a report recommending
the sale of Alaska to the United States. Alexander instructed his minister, Eduard Stoeckl,
to gauge the Americans' interest in the purchase. Stoeckl, who had served as Russia's
representative in the US since 1854, was well-connected in Washington DC and had been
an early advocate for selling Alaska to the US. When it came to negotiating, Stoeckl
had a more-than-willing partner in the US Secretary of State William Seward.
Seward, a former governor of New York, was a prominent abolitionist and supporter
of the US's territorial expansion. Seward was the model of a nineteenth-century
politician, given to long, off-the-cuff speeches, and equally comfortable on the
campaign trail as in smoky back rooms. He saw no contradiction between
his support for emancipation and his desire that the United States expand
across the continent into Indian country. Annexation of Canada seemed to always be
on Seward's mind, saying in 1853 that, "Canada, although a province of Great Britain,
is already half annexed to the United States." In 1860, Seward sought the Republican
nomination for president, and on the campaign trail he made specific
references to Alaska, saying, "I see the Russian... and I can say, 'Go on
and build up your outposts all along the coast, up even to the Arctic Ocean—they will yet
become the outposts of my own country.'" After losing the 1860 nomination,
Seward joined Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, which would later be called the "Team of Rivals,"
for the sharply divergent views of its members. During the Civil War, he warned the British
envoy against recognizing the Confederacy, threatening to declare a war on Great Britain
that would lead to an invasion of Canada. After Lincoln's assassination, Seward remained
Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, an uncomfortable arrangement
for all of Lincoln's cabinet. A former slave owner, Johnson was widely seen
as overly conciliatory towards the South, and negotiating the sale of Alaska
gave Seward something to do outside the contentious politics of Reconstruction. On March 9, 1867, Stoeckl and Seward met in
Washington. Stoeckl was under orders only to bring up the idea of selling Alaska after
Seward had broached the subject. The two men talked for a while about fishing rights until,
finally, Seward brought up the subject of the United States purchasing Alaska, at which point,
Stoeckl revealed that the tsar had authorized him to negotiate just such a sale. The next day, with
President Johnson's approval, negotiations began. Five days later, Seward and Stoeckl met again.
Seward insisted that any sale be kept secret until it was completed and opened with an
offer of $5 million. Stoeckl immediately sent the tsar a cable pledging to secure
a higher price of $6 to $6.5 million. At the next cabinet meeting, Seward presented a
draft treaty offering the Russians $7 million, evidently expecting Stoeckl to be a skilled
negotiator. With only minor objections, the cabinet unanimously approved the motion. In a subsequent meeting, Seward and Stoeckl ironed
out more specifics including the Russian-American Company's remaining assets. Stoeckl managed
to raise the sale price to $6.5 million, and after agreeing to include the RAC's
buildings in the sale, the final price was set at $7 million, payable ten
months after the treaty's signing. At the last moment, the price was raised from
$7 million to $7.2 million, an addendum that would become a point of contention when the
sale went before Congress for appropriation. The agreement also stipulated that the US
would not be burdened by prior obligations, effectively dissolving the
Russian-American Company. For $7.2 million, Seward had acquired
140 million acres for the United States, amounting to a mere two cents per acre. From the perspective of the American people,
the sale seemed to materialize overnight. There had been talk of buying Alaska before, but
nothing to suggest such a deal was imminent. In the popular imagination of American history,
the purchase of Alaska was derided in its day as "Seward's Folly," a monumental blunder
whose wisdom became apparent only decades later. But this vision of history is not borne
out when you review the newspapers of the day. The New York Times called it an "Important
Annexation," that the American people "hailed with delight." Other papers gleefully speculated
that annexation of Canada was sure to follow. The New York Herald urged Britain to
"withdraw gracefully from a continent where [its] institutions are out of place," adding
that its continued presence in North America, "can only bring trouble upon her colonies
and humiliation to her government." Seward may have paid for some of this
favorable press, a common practice at the time, and one which Seward, as a New Yorker,
was particularly well placed to cultivate. On the flipside, the Farmer's Cabinet,
which was published in Philadelphia, described Alaska as "hardly
worth accepting as a gift." Others who opposed the sale at the
time included Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune. Ironically Greeley
had coined the famous phrase, "Go west, young man." But perhaps he didn't mean that
far west. He evidently saw the purchase of Alaska as irresponsible given the US's
financial straits of the post-war years. But it appears that most Americans welcomed the
acquisition of Alaska. They saw it as a deposit for mineral resources and a destination for
restless pioneers. More than anything though, Americans welcomed the acquisition of Alaska
as a crucial step on the way toward annexing Canada. After all, they had been told it was
their destiny, and their destiny was manifest. One scholar wrote that the idea of the
purchase of Alaska being greeted as a folly is, "one of the strongest historical myths
in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the
efforts of the best historians to dispel it." Still, the myth of Seward's folly took
root because it bolstered the self-image of Alaska as a territory of renegades, misfits, and pioneers who only wanted it for the
quick riches lurking beneath the ice. While the American people may have
enthusiastically greeted news of the purchase, Congress was less enthused,
irritated they had not been consulted. Congress could not object to the Secretary of
State making agreements with foreign countries. That was his job, after all. But what they
could object to was the appropriation of funds, which they were supposed to control. Although
the $7.2 million price was relatively modest, the colony, separated from the
rest of the country by Canada, had the potential to become
financially burdensome to administer. But there was no way to go back on the deal
without serious damage to the country's credibility. Furthermore, the American
people had been told Alaska was now theirs, and Congress was reluctant to deprive
the citizens of their newfound frontier. Russia watched nervously as Congress debated
the appropriations bill. If the bill failed, the tsar considered outright gifting the
territory to the US, but worried about the terrible precedent that would set. Stoeckl, with
his ear to the ground in Washington, dissuaded Johnson and Seward from intervening, sensing
that both men were so unpopular in Congress that they could only do more harm than good.
Stoeckl complained of the difficulty of getting anything done in the US as compared to the
monarchies of Europe, saying that in the US, "It is necessary to confer with some hundreds
of individuals, to know almost all of them." Almost as soon as the sale was announced, Americans began swarming to the new
territory. Settlers staked claims, believing they would become legitimated when the
territory's transfer to US control was formalized. Russia agreed that the US would immediately set up customs stations to levy
imports from foreign nations. Some Russian citizens remained in Alaska after
the handover, but nearly all of them soon returned to Russia, disturbed by the lawlessness
that accompanied the American occupation. The official transfer of power
took place on October 18, 1867, a little after 3:00 in the afternoon, in a
ceremony attended by about three hundred people. There were no speeches, only a volley
of firearm salutes exchanged by Russian and American soldiers. During the flag lowering, the Russian flag got tangled up in
ropes, and to the horror of many, an American soldier used his bayonet to forcibly
rip the Russian flag down from its position. After the flags were exchanged, the Russian
commissioner said simply, "By authority from His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer
to the United States, the Territory of Alaska." With Alaska formally in American
hands, Congress could do little but debate the wisdom of the purchase. To refuse
appropriation would cause massive logistical problems and damage the ability of
the US to act on the world stage. Still, holdouts wondered how the US could
justify spending so much money on uncharted territory while it struggled to pay benefits
to Civil War veterans and their families. In July 1868, the House of Representatives authorized the funds to pay for
the Alaska Purchase, 113 to 43. In August, the US transferred
the money to Russia via London. The payment was technically three months
late, but no one seemed to mind. That is, until 1869 when the primary architects of the
deal, Seward and Stoeckl, were both out of office. The new Russian minister, Constantin
Catacazy sent a bill for the three months' accumulated interest to Hamilton Fish,
the new Secretary of State, totaling $155,200. It does not appear that Catacazy
had been instructed to seek this late payment. The request was ignored, and it contributed to the new Russian minister's
reputation as an abrasive fortune-seeker. After Congress approved the sale,
accusations arose of malfeasance. Banker George Riggs testified that
Stoeckl had told him to wire just a little over $7 million to London,
leaving $165,000 in the United States. The balance seems to have been distributed to
various journalists who had written articles supporting the deal. There were also reports that
Seward had bragged about the various palms he had greased to help the deal happen. Still, bribing
newspapermen for favorable coverage was a common enough practice that there was little backlash.
Now formally in American hands, Alaska was placed under the Navy's control,
led by Major General Henry Halleck. Halleck put in charge one Jefferson
C. Davis, unrelated to the president of the Confederacy, but infamous all his own.
In 1862, Davis had killed a fellow major general, William Nelson, unrelated to the country
music legend, over a perceived insult. Now, Davis was put in charge of Alaska, with
instruction to be particularly wary of the indigenous Tlingit, described
as "warlike and treacherous. " Halleck recommended that Davis have "guns
charged with grape and canister always bearing on their village, ready, at an
instant's warning, to destroy them." For six months, Davis and his family shared
the governor's house with Prince Maksutov, the outgoing head of the Russian-American Company. If Maksutov shared any insight on maintaining
peaceful relations with the natives, Davis did not heed them. Instead, Davis's tenure
was marked by bloody confrontations, kidnapping tribal leaders and holding them hostage, as
well as wholesale massacring of villages. Natives protested the sale of Alaska as
illegitimate. But without courts of law to grant them standing, Native Alaskans had little
recourse with which to register their discontent. In July 1869, William Seward
made his first visit to the territory he had worked to incorporate. He
was shocked by the state of the natives, noting with regret "that a people…so vigorous
and energetic…so docile and gentle…can neither be preserved as a distinct social community
nor be incorporated into our society." Alaska attracted an itinerant population
of fortune-seekers who were prone to vice, including drinking, gambling, and violence. The largely male population attracted
prostitutes, whose cabins became integral to the developing towns. At the same time,
a growing temperance movement took root. But like national Prohibition in the
twentieth century, Prohibition in Alaska only gave rise to smuggling and dangerously
unregulated, homemade alcohol called "hooch." In 1880, the first census of Alaska was
undertaken, an ambitious goal given its size and forbidding climate. The census showed a population
of 33,000, all but 430 of them indigenous. 1880 also saw the first of many gold strikes, by French-Canadian prospectors,
one of them named Joe Juneau. In a pattern that would be repeated,
the city of Juneau quickly ballooned as gold hunters swarmed the area. Nome
followed in 1889, and Fairbanks in 1902. The population of Alaska doubled
from 1890 to 1900, from around 30,000 to more than 60,000 thousand. In 1896, rich gold deposits
were found in Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike
River in the Canadian Yukon. Eventually more than $300 million worth of
gold would be extracted from the Klondike. In 1912, Alaska officially became a
territory with its own legislature. There, women gained the right to vote eight years
before the 19th Amendment was passed. 1915 saw the founding of Anchorage, described
as "the softest birth of any city on record," supported by federal money and a ban
on gambling, saloons, and prostitution. Alaska played an important role in World War II as a place to mobilize troops before
deployment into the Pacific Theater. But it was not until 1959 that Alaska
finally became the country's 49th state and the first new one since
Arizona, forty-seven years earlier. Alaska became an important geopolitical
location during the Cold War, given its proximity to Russia, with military
bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks. In 1971, President Richard Nixon ceded
forty-four million acres of federal land to Alaska's indigenous populations, along
with a one billion dollar grant, and today, more than half of Alaska remains federally owned. The sale has loomed in the Russian imagination as
well. During the Soviet era, some teachers taught that Alaska was an example of the hubris of the
monarchy, expanding beyond its ability to govern. Other teachers told students
that there was no sale at all, that according to a technicality of the
treaty, Alaska had merely been leased to the United States for a hundred years, similar to
Great Britain's century-long lease of Hong Kong. With relations between Russia and the US turning
worse in the 2010s, some Russian politicians landed on Alaska as a point of contention, looking
for errors in the original treaty language that would nullify the sale, or threatening to seize
Alaska in retribution for sanctions levied by the US - although even the Moscow Times has
called these overtures "generally facetious." The discovery of oil transformed Alaska
just as the discovery of gold had earlier. With the completion of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, oil money became a significant share
of the state's operating budget. 25% of oil revenues are put
in an investment account that pretty much bankrolls the state, which
has no personal income tax or sales tax. So then where did the myth that buying
Alaska was a mistake come from? The idea of "Seward's Folly" may just have been a creation
of historians in search of a good underdog story. Perhaps we should call it "Seward's
gamble" instead since it was a gamble that has paid off handsomely in gold,
oil, and other natural resources. But most importantly for the United States,
Alaska remains a symbol of the frontier, a place where the intrepid can find a
fortune… if they are tough enough to survive.
