Decision One: Alaska for Sale

• Within months of the Civil War’s end, Secretary of State William Seward brought up the issue of purchasing Alaska from the Czar of Russia. The offer was $7.2 million in gold for Alaska. 

• Seward’s reason for wanting Alaska was that this would increase the U.S. territory by 50%, and open up easier trade with Asian nations.

• The case against Seward was that the land is useless, nearly uninhabitable, and hard to reach. The Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party mercilessly lambasted the proposal, referring to Alaska by such names as “Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden,” “Walrussia” and “Russian Fairy Land.”

• Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, led the opposition, writing, among other things, that most of Alaska was a “burden…not worth taking as a gift.” Some senators were equally skeptical, with one joking to his colleagues that he would support taking possession of the Alaska only if Seward “be compelled to live there.”

• What neither side knew, so neither can you, is that the land was rich in gold, silver, and oil, as well as timber (which was not in demand in 1867). They also did not know that Alaska would become a strategic military base in the age of nuclear missiles.

DECISION: Should you purchase Alaska in 1867?

Click here to find out what Seward did