How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [128]
Seward’s remarks on California reflected his insight into foreign affairs, which he viewed as a multidimensional chess game. As secretary of state he demonstrated this view in the way he went about the purchase of Alaska and, prior to that, in the way he urged Lincoln to avert the Civil War. In April 1861, with Southern states seceding and war appearing inevitable, he sent Lincoln a memo entitled, “Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration.” Among those thoughts were such notions as, “I would demand explanation from Spain and France [regarding intervention in Mexico to retrieve unpaid debts].… And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, would convene Congress and declare war against them.” In a letter to governors of those states bordering the Great Lakes, Seward suggested going to war to acquire Canada. With the nation on the verge of Civil War, such actions were not the kind of recommendations one would expect from the nation’s premier diplomat.
But these were not actions, they were words, and the key to understanding Seward’s words is to ask what he was doing by saying them. In this instance, Seward was suggesting a “chess move” to create fear of an imminent war with outsiders, in the hope that it would rally enough Americans to forestall the crumbling of the Union. He had no intention of France or Spain mistakenly interpreting such saber rattling as a genuine threat.1
When it suited his purpose, Seward readily admitted that his words should not be taken at face value. Shortly before his appointment as secretary of state was made public, he told a British diplomat that he would soon be in a position that would require him to insult Great Britain. Years later it was discovered that, five weeks before Seward’s private memo to Lincoln, the British foreign secretary recorded in his diary that he’d received information indicating that the United States might create a quarrel with Britain in an effort to prevent the nation from dividing.2
Seward believed that Alaska was of vital importance to strengthening the bond securing the West Coast (whose residents relied on Alaska for imports of fish, timber, and fur) to the rest of the nation. Further securing that bond was also embedded in Seward’s other main reason for purchasing Alaska: to promote and protect American commerce with China and Japan.
Buying Alaska revealed Seward’s diplomatic skills; selling to the public the buying of Alaska required his political skills. He knew he was investing in a huge amount of territory about which most Americans knew nothing. Other than Americans on the West Coast, awareness of Alaska’s significance was limited primarily to a few intellectuals. But even these citizens did not know that diplomatic signals regarding Alaska’s potential sale to the United States were in the works, and had been for over a decade. In 1854 Russia, at war with Britain, offered the Americans a “treaty of purchase.” Being an act of diplomacy, the words did not necessarily mean what they said; the treaty was actually a fake. The Russians’ idea was to leak the treaty’s existence to avert a British attack on Alaska.3 As it turned out, Russia and the United States decided not to release the phony agreement. But Tsar Alexander II’s advisers increasingly viewed Alaska as more of a liability than an asset,