By Gene Hays

MSgt, USMC (Ret)

President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Indigenous peoples inhabited the region that would become Alaska for centuries. The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. 

In 1784, Grigory Shelikhov established the first permanent Russian colony in Alaska on Kodiak Island. In the early 19th century, Russian settlements spread down the west coast of North America, with the southernmost fort located near Bodega Bay in California.

Russian activity in the Americas declined in the 1820s, and the British and Americans were granted trading rights in Alaska after a few minor diplomatic conflicts. In the 1860s, a bankrupt Russia decided to offer Alaska for sale to the United States, which earlier had expressed interest in such a purchase. 

On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million. Despite the bargain price of two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s icebox,” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.” 

Nevertheless, the Senate ratified purchase of the tremendous landmass, one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States. Despite a slow start in settlement by Americans from the continental United States, the discovery of gold in 1898 brought a rapid influx of people to the territory. Alaska, rich in natural resources, has been contributing to American prosperity ever since. 

Eventually, Russian officials began to worry that U.S. settlers would one day overrun Alaska, much as they had in Texas. These officials also feared losing the defenseless colony to Great Britain, a naval power that had defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and left it ravaged by debt. When, to top it off, the fur trade declined, even the czar’s own brother called Alaska a luxury that Russia could ill afford.

By the late 1850s, Russia and the United States had entered preliminary negotiations over the sale of the territory. The talks were cut short by the outbreak of the American Civil War, but not before Senator William H. Seward, an ardent expansionist who would serve as secretary of state during both the Lincoln and Johnson administrations, declared that the towns and forts of Alaska would “yet become the outposts of my own country.”

The press, meanwhile, was having a field day. Most newspapers supported the deal. But a vocal minority, associated with the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party, mercilessly lambasted it, referring to Alaska by such names as “Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden,” “Walrussia” and “Russian Fairy Land.” (Incidentally, the phrase by which it is now best known, “Seward’s Folly,” was not uttered until years later.)

Finally, in July 1868, after Johnson lost the Democratic presidential nomination, the House of Representatives voted 113-43 to hand over the money to Russia. A congressional investigation later determined that a Russian minister bribed lobbyists and journalists during this period. Private notes written by Johnson and another U.S. official suggest that the minister — with Seward’s knowledge — likewise made tens of thousands of dollars in illicit payments to members of Congress.

Gene Hays is a retired Marine, author, and historian with books available on Amazon.com