Alaska and Russian deal!?

[HerbS]

As I toured in St.Petersburg,I asked our guide[PhD in poly sci] to tell me what he knew about the Alaska deal with Russia.He responded by telling me that Russia sold Alaska to the USA for a very low price! Perhaps someone on this tremendous forum can tell us more about this[vodka involved transaction]!

[brtmchl]

I think I read once that the Russians offered a deal to the United States in the late 1850's but the threat of Civil War squashed the deal.

[Eva Elisabeth]

The price was $7,2 in 1867, this would convert to $123,170071 in 2015.

I seem to recall there was also a deal with Russia made during the CW already for a trans-Pacific cable that had never realized/been finished, the trans-Atlantic did instead. But AFAIremember it was the prelude for the Alaska purchase.

[David Lockmiller]

I remember from my high school history days that the purchase of Alaska was initially referred to as Seward’s Folly. I Googled this search term and found the following entry on the Library of Congress website discussing the “Treaty with Russia for the Purchase of Alaska.”

On March 30, 1867, the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. The Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl. Critics of the deal to purchase Alaska called it "Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox." Opposition to the purchase of Alaska subsided with the Klondike Gold Strike in 1896.

The last line of this short statement immediately reminded me of a quotation that I had come across in my readings of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I was able to find easily the original source once again of the quotation by using the Index and the last three words from the Barlett’s quotation that had come to my mind.

The quotation is by Plutarch in his work “On the Tranquility of the Mind” and reads as follows: Like the man who threw a stone at a [bad word for female dog], but hit his step-mother, on which he exclaimed, “Not so bad!”

Note: Originally, [bad word for female dog] simply meant a female dog, and it still does. But around the year 1400, it gained currency as a disparaging term for a woman.

Isn't modern software wonderful, the word that I had originally typed was replaced automatically with "*****" and thus caused the necessity for this note.

And, as you can see from my signature line, Plutarch has been a continuing source of quotations for me.

[Eva Elisabeth]

This was what I meant:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%..._Telegraph

[David Lockmiller]

(05-19-2016 05:23 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  \

I seem to recall there was also a deal with Russia made during the CW already for a trans-Pacific cable that had never realized/been finished, the trans-Atlantic did instead. But AFAIremember it was the prelude for the Alaska purchase.

Eva Elisabeth, thank you for this information. I was unaware of this alternative project to the trans-Atlantic cable. I followed the link which you provided. I have made a summary of the material as best I was able to do so, with an emphasis on the contribution to the project that was made by President Lincoln, the visonary.


The Russian–American Telegraph, also known as the Western Union Telegraph Expedition and the Collins Overland Telegraph, was a $3,000,000 (equivalent to $46.4 million in present day terms) undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865–1867, to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia.

Abandoned in 1867, the Russian–American Telegraph was considered an economic failure, but history now deems it a "successful failure" because of the many benefits the exploration brought to the regions that were traversed.

On July 1, 1864, the American president Abraham Lincoln granted the company a right of way from San Francisco to the British Columbia border and assigned the steamship Saginaw from the US Navy. The George S. Wright and the infamous Nightingale, a former slave ship, were also put into service, as well as a fleet of riverboats and schooners.

When that section of the line reached New Westminster, British Columbia in the spring of 1865, the first message it carried was of the April 15 assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The line passed Fort Fraser and reached the Skeena River, creating the settlement of Hazelton when it was learned that Cyrus West Field had successfully laid the transatlantic cable on July 27, 1866. In British Columbia, construction of the overland line was halted on February 27, 1867, as the whole project was now deemed obsolete.

The telegraph expedition, while an abject economic failure, may have precipitated the US purchase of Alaska by providing useful valuable data on the territory. The expedition was responsible for the first examination of the flora, fauna and geology of Russian America.



I hope that you found at least some humor in my previous posting.

[Jim Garrett]

The Russians insisted on being paid in gold. The gold came from Riggs National Bank, the government not wanting or not able to come up with that amount of gold.

[JMadonna]

The Russians saw Alaska as not worth keeping nor defending. Manifest Destiny was something Seward still believed in and the Russians thought that eventually the Americans would occupy the land. It was a matter of giving up something they did not think as valuable for the best price they could get.