The check, dated August 1, 1868, that was used to pay the purchase price for Alaska to Eduard de Stoeckl on behalf of the emperor of Russia. (National Archives)
Posted on 10/18/2007 4:40:53 PM PDT by Libloather
Why Did Russia Sell Us Alaska So Cheap?
By John Steele Gordon
The check, dated August 1, 1868, that was used to pay the purchase price for Alaska to Eduard de Stoeckl on behalf of the emperor of Russia. (National Archives)
A hundred and forty years ago today, sovereignty over Alaska was transferred from the Russian Empire to the United States. The transfer completed the national territory on the North American continent. It was one of the great bargains of all time.
For a price of $7.2 million, this country got 365 million acres of land and another 13 million of water, at slightly less than two cents an acre. Over the last 140 years, we have taken untold riches in gold, oil, and other minerals out of the ground and billions of dollars worth of fish out of the surrounding waters. And yet with a population of only 1.1 people per square mile, Alaska is still in a very real sense the last American frontier, a land rich in wildlife, open spaces, and incomparable natural beauty.
It also gave the United States the most diverse national territory in the world. Today the United States is the only country whose territory encompasses arctic, temperate, and tropical areas.
In 1725, a few weeks before his death, Peter the Great wanted to determine if far eastern Siberia was attached to the North American continent, so he dispatched Vitus Bering, a Danish-born sailor, to find out. In his first expedition, Bering determined that Asia and North America were separated by the strait that now bears his name, but he did not sight Alaska. Not until 1741, on Bering’s second expedition, did he make landfall there. His ship was forced to take refuge on what is now called Bering Island, and there the explorer died of scurvy at the age of 60, along with many of his crewmen. The survivors, however, made it back to Siberia with sea otter pelts, among the most valuable of furs. And it would be the fur trade that would draw the Russians to Alaska.
Russian fur traders and others, including Captain James Cook, repeatedly visited Alaskan waters, but it wasn’t until 1784 that the Russians permanently settled, on Kodiak Island. In 1799 the Russian-American Company was formed, and it established a capital at New Archangel, now Sitka. The Russian-American Company would run Russian Alaska much the way the British East India Company ran India at the time.
But while India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, Alaska was a very minor part of the Russian one. At the end of the Russian period, there were only a few hundred Russians living in Alaska, along with about 8,000 natives within reach of Russian authorities. Elsewhere there were perhaps another 50,000 Eskimos and Indians. No one really knew. Moreover, Alaska was very difficult for Russia to defend, and the tsar feared encroachment from British North America.
Russia didn’t want to spend the money necessary to secure Alaska but also didn’t want to strengthen the British by selling it to them. Russia and Britain, after all, had been at war in the Crimea from 1854 to 1856. Therefore in 1857 Tsar Alexander II instructed his minister in Washington, Eduard de Stoeckl, to feel out the American government about a sale. De Stoeckl had been posted to Washington since 1841, and he had many friends in the American government, including Sen. William Seward of New York. He had many more in Washington society. He even married an American woman, Elisa Howard, of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Negotiations began in 1859, but they broke off when the Civil War approached. In February 1867 they began again. By this time Seward was Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, and so de Stoeckl negotiated with a friend. After an all-night session, agreement was reached on the morning of March 30.
The deal didn’t necessarily look like such a steal at the time. Some objected, just as earlier some had objected to every other substantial addition to the national territory. Alaska was dubbed “Seward’s Folly” and “Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden” by opponents of the acquisition. The New York World thought it contained nothing of value except fur-bearing animals and that most of them were on the edge of extinction from over-hunting anyway. Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, dismissed Alaska as nothing more than a frozen wilderness.
But many favored the acquisition, especially Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who very conveniently was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which would have to approve the treaty and send it to the full Senate. Russia had backed the North in the Civil War, while Britain had been at best an unfriendly neutral. Sumner argued that we should help those who had helped us.
Anti-British feeling was very much part of the warp and woof of American politics at the time, for the War of 1812 was still within the living memory of many. So was the idea that we were destined one day to see the whole of the North American continent under the American flag.
Drawing a parallel with the ancient Roman senate, which barred kings from within the city’s gates, Sumner declared that “our city can be nothing less than the North American continent.” By purchasing Alaska, he argued, we would “dismiss one more monarch from this continent.” He noted that the French and Spanish kings had already departed from North America and now the tsar was going. The implication was clear that Queen Victoria would be next.
On April 9 the treaty was ratified by the Senate, 27 to 12, barely above the necessary two-thirds majority. (A subsequent ceremonial vote to make the approval unanimous was carried by a vote of 37 to 2.) The House had no constitutional say in whether to approve the treaty, but it had to approve the appropriation of money. Some thought the price was too high. However, in fiscal year 1867 the government had revenues of $491 million and expenses of $347 million. With a huge surplus that year, $7.2 million was not a problem. The House finally approved the money in July 1868, by a vote of 113 to 48. By that time, of course, Alaska was already in American hands.
On October 18, 1867, Capt. Alexis Pestchouroff turned over control to Gen. Lovell Rousseau, saying, “General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska." (A strange coincidence linked Sumner and Rousseau. In 1856 a southern congressman had attacked Sumner with a cane in a dispute over slavery, while in 1866 Rousseau had attacked a fellow member of the House of Representatives with a cane in a dispute over Reconstruction. In both cases the attacker resigned and was reelected to his seat.) Five months later Gen. Jefferson C. Davis (a Union general and no relation to the Confederate president) became the first commander of the Department of Alaska. Alaska would not become a territory until 1912. By that time the wisdom of buying Alaska had long since been clear, especially after the discovery of gold in the Klondike.
After World War II, Seward’s wisdom in buying Alaska would be even clearer. The great geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the international politics of the second half of the twentieth century. It would have been fought very differently—and would have been much harder to win—had the Soviet Union possessed a major foothold on the North American continent. In 1867 Alaska had been a remote and expensive tidbit of empire that the Russian government was only too glad to get rid of. A hundred years later, the Soviet government must have bitterly regretted its sale for a pittance.
—John Steele Gordon writes “The Business of America” for American Heritage magazine. His most recent book is An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (HarperCollins).
We bought Alaska for 7.2 million, we can’t even build a bathroom in a state park for that amount anymore.
We Americans always laughed - but those Sovs were serious!
Better hold on to yours. It maybe worth something someday...
Russia probable could look into the future and could tell there would be a crooked GOP Senator.
Maybe ... I’m grateful that the marketing people at Quaker Oats didn’t have any sway over state department in 1868! ;-D
Did you ever mention to them that their Siberia is at least as rich in mineral resources as Alaska? The only development of Siberian riches came from Stalin's convict gold-mining camps such as the infamous Kolyma, and those essentially slave-labor camps have been almost completely shut down since the late 1950s.
The Russians can't develop their own Siberia, and they aren't handicapped at all by any environmental concerns. What do they want with Alaska?
If they were that smart, they would be able to forecast the corrupt, impeached *Crintons. On the other hand, the brilliant Chicoms did see it coming - eh?
Some truth to the fact that Russia sold the trading rights / economic rights to alaska for a period of a 100 years; why the feds wanted statehood so badly in 50’s. Most Alaskans at the time were against statehood, they wanted to remain like Peurto Rico because they knew there wasn’t a strong economy that would produce enough taxes to fund state govt. Feds shipped in 30-40 thousand military people, quickly changed voting law and thru election. That’s how my 95 year old neighbor who homesteaded his place in 1942 and is a super conservative repub; tells it. Also remember during civil war, the czar sent western russian fleet into san fran harbor for a few years to help ole Lincoln out. More to everything I do think.
Ya know, none of that really matters anyway, because all Alaskans are becoming more like Americans everyday and Alaska is ethnically a part of america.
We do have lots of russkies here anyway, proximity to Siberia and economic freedom. Most are ok; they want a better life just like we do. I had several russian friends tell me some things are better here some worse. You have more opportunity but also in russia, everyone had 2 week paid vacation at govt cabin on the blk sea; they hadn’t had a vacation since coming to alaska, ha. Also they didn’t like paying 10 gran to have a baby when med care was free for everyone in russia. They use to say Russia not all bad;;; but they weren’t going back either, ha.
However, the Soviet Union is still likely to exist since USA would never have been strong enough to challenge the Communists.
However, the Soviet Union is still likely to exist since USA would never have been strong enough to challenge the Communists.
However, the Soviet Union is still likely to exist since USA would never have been strong enough to challenge the Communists.
Historical what-ifs are more complicated. For instance, Harry Turtledove, the novelist, who makes his living with historical what-ifs, in a CSA victory what-if, has the USA entering WW I on the Central Powers side, with the CSA on the Allied side. This is less implausible than it sounds, since the USA would have been sandwiched in between Canada, still very British, and the CSA, which would have been aligned with Britain as its major trading partner, had its war of independence succeeded.
A Central Power victory, or Germany not so desparate as to use Lenin to disrupt Russia’s war efforts, and there might not have been a Soviet Union at all. (And the Caliph might still sit on the throne of the Sultan in Constantinople so that the Muslims wouldn’t the all out of sorts these days.)
The Russian government badly needed money for reforming it's military after the Crimean war. That was the reason.
“several times they said that we should give them Alaska back, since it is Russian territory.” ............. Not suprising, they wanted the whole world too. Its not like they don’t have more than they need now. I’ll give them about 25 more years and see what they will have left.
If the CSA hadda won, the USA couldna afforded Alaska and the Brits woulda got it. With the alternative cotton supplies that the Brits had fixed up in the Civil War, the CSA wouldna had the money like before, so it woulda collapsed from its internal contradictions. There’da been a second Civil War, which the USA woulda won; but it woulda probably still have had segregated armed forces in both World Wars....it might even have agreed the Treaty of Versailles and volunteered to get into WW2....on behalf of the Chinese, in 1937. So, no Pearl Harbor.
And u probably woulda got Alaska as the price for financially supporting the Brits from 1915...assuming that we didn’t pick up Hawaii in the 1870s.
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