Meeting of Frontiers: Alaska - The Alaska Purchase

The Alaska Purchase | ��

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Key Players in the Alaska Purchase

Russia and the Sale of Alaska

By the 1850s, Russian interest in Alaska began to wane as a consequence of changing economic prospects and geopolitical concerns. The fur trade in sea otter pelts, which had been profitable in Russian America for more than a century, slumped for both ecological and commercial reasons. Russia�s contemporaneous acquisition of new lands from China lessened further the importance of Alaska. Emperor Aleksandr II (1818-1881) added the northern portion of the Amur region to the Russian Empire under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, and the Maritime region east of the Ussuri River under the Treaty of Peking in 1860. These acquisitions shifted the focus of Russia�s eastern attentions from Alaska to the area around Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, which provided better access to the Pacific Ocean and the markets of East Asia.

After weighing all its options, the tsarist government concluded that it had little choice but to sell its American colony. Great Britain had shown sustained interest in obtaining Alaska as an addition to its territory in British North America (Canada), and had potentially threatened it during the Crimean War (1853-56) after attacking the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russia in particular recognized that the long-standing economic ambition of the Hudson�s Bay Company to tap Alaskan resources made the region vulnerable to British designs. But, after losing the Crimean War to Britain, France, and Turkey in 1856, the tsar was in no mood to negotiate with Great Britain or to see Alaska absorbed by a recent enemy.

Russia thus turned to the only other potential buyer, the United States. In the mid-nineteenth century, Russia and the United States were drawn together by a common hostility toward Great Britain and a basic agreement on most foreign policy issues. Of the major European powers, Russia was the only one to support the Union in the American Civil War of 1861-65. The United States had already become aware of the possible Russian interest in selling Alaska in the mid-1850s, during the term of President Franklin Pierce. Faced with the breakup of the nation, however, the administrations of Presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln were in no position to respond positively to Russian offers. Ardent expansionists such as William H. Seward, secretary of state under both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, nonetheless retained an abiding interest in obtaining Alaska, which they saw as an integral component of Manifest Destiny and the American drive to the Pacific. In 1867, Seward reached an agreement with the Russian ambassador in Washington to purchase the territory for $7.2 million.

Treasury Warrant in the Amount of $7.2 Million for the Purchase of Alaska, 1868.
National Archives and Records Administration.

After the House of Representatives finally appropriated the money in the summer of 1868, the U.S. Treasury transferred $7.2 million in gold to Russia. The unusual price included the cost of acquiring some remaining assets of the Russian-American Company in Alaska, as well as funds set aside to bribe select American Congressmen to vote for the treaty.

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first page of the Russian copy of the treaty

Czar's Ratification of the Alaska Purchase Treaty, 1867.
National Archives and Records Administration.

The official Russian version of the Alaska Purchase treaty (Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America to the United States) was known as the tsar�s reading copy. Typical for tsarist manifestos, it began with an illuminated opening page that listed all the historical titles of the Russian emperor.

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The official American copy of the treaty

Original of Treaty with Russia for Cession of Alaska, 1867.
National Archives and Records Administration.

The American version of the Alaska Purchase treaty was much simpler in form, containing just the text in longhand and a signature page. The United States government also published a printed English text of the treaty.

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