How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [127]
Idaho’s border proposal
Like Edgerton, Ashley proved unable to govern the tough, pugnacious people of Montana. He was dismissed by the president before his term expired. Together, Sidney Edgerton and James Ashley demonstrated that all that’s gold does not glitter.
ALASKA
WILLIAM H. SEWARD
Why Buy Alaska?
Seward appeared before the Committee and made a long explanation of the status of affairs in Alaska and the reasons which induced him to make the purchase.… The discussion which followed was decidedly spicy, and somewhat acrimonious.
—NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 19, 1868
On a map, Alaska looks like it ought to be part of Canada. How and from whom did the United States obtain it? Not from the Canadians, since it never belonged to them, nor to their colonial predecessors, the British. Since the Battle of Sitka in 1804, it had essentially belonged to Russia (although indigenous peoples such as the Tlingits, Aleuts, and Yupiks would have begged to differ). In 1867 the United States acquired Alaska when Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated a treaty with Russia for its purchase.
At the time, Alaska was popularly derided as “Seward’s folly” and “Seward’s icebox.” Even the New York Herald, which supported the purchase, couldn’t resist Alaska laughs. Its November 12, 1867, edition contained an abundance of what purported to be classified ads, among them:
Cash! Cash! Cash!—Cash paid for cast off territory. Best price given for old colonies, North or South. Any impoverished monarchs retiring from the colonization business may find a purchaser by addressing W.H.S., Post Office, Washington, D.C.
Aside from its coastline, Alaska was viewed by many as little more than a mammoth stretch of barren tundra and ice. It is indeed a lot of land—over twice the size of the nation’s second largest state, Texas. Virtually no public opinion was expressed leading up to the treaty’s signing, since only a select few knew that it was in the wind. The purchase of Alaska was not revealed, even to Congress, until the day the treaty was signed. At that point, it became headline news.
Typical of the initial press reports was that of the San Francisco Bulletin, whose March 30, 1867, front page story trumpeted:
Important Treaty With Russia
She Surrenders Sovereignty
to all Russian America
British Excluded From the Ocean
The President has communicated to the Senate a treaty with Russia. The latter surrenders to the United States sovereignty over all Russian America and adjacent islands, and especially includes a strip of 400 miles down the coast, excluding British America from the ocean. British diplomats are highly excited.
Britain was indeed “excited” but not, as first reported, excluded from the ocean. British Columbia, with its bustling port at Vancouver, remained between Alaska and the rest of the United States.
How could—and why would—such a huge purchase be pulled off so secretly? The answer can be summed up in two words: William Seward.
Seward had been raised in Orange County, New York, the son of a prosperous doctor. As a young lawyer, he became a protégé of Thurlow Weed, a political boss from whom he learned his way around back rooms. He was elected to the state senate in 1830 and later became New York’s governor and then senator. In 1860 he was the odds-on favorite to become the Republican nominee for president. But he lost out to a relative newcomer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln chose Seward to be his secretary of state. It was a smart choice.
Though the purchase took place after the Civil War, Seward’s reasons for purchasing Alaska were rooted in that war’s underlying element. Before, during, and after the war, Seward’s greatest political fear was that the United States might disunite.
William H. Seward (1801-1872) (photo credit 37.1)
Seward first voiced this fear in 1849 when California sought statehood. That