On this day in 1867, after an all-night negotiating session that ended at 4 a.m., Eduard de Stoeckl, the Russian envoy in Washington, signed an agreement with Secretary of State William Seward to sell Alaska — a remote and sparsely populated territory about twice the size of Texas — to the United States for $7.2 million, or about $110 million in today’s dollars.
Authorities in St. Petersburg had approached the United States in a bid to sell the territory in 1859 while James Buchanan was president. But the Civil War put the negotiations on hold. Seward, who was secretary of state under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, favored the deal, snubbing mocking editorials that castigated the proposed sale as “Seward’s icebox” and Johnson’s “polar bear garden.”
On April 9, the Senate approved what turned out to be a real bargain by a vote of 37 to 2 thanks, in part, to support from Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Seward hosted dinner parties for wavering senators, serving fine food and wine at his home near the White House and telling his guests of the beauties of Russian America.
For its part, the Republican-led House dawdled for more than year, refusing to come up with the money. Finally, the House went along on July 14, 1868, by a vote of 113 to 48. Riggs Bank cashed the Treasury check for the Russians on Aug. 1.
Alaska’s population boomed after gold was discovered there in 1896. In 1912, the region became a territory and remained one throughout World War II, even though the Japanese briefly occupied the nonstrategic Aleutian Islands of Agattu, Attu and Kiska in 1942. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed Alaska’s entry into the Union as the 49th state on Jan. 3, 1959.
SOURCE: U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS