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According to UPI, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. The sale of Alaska was the brainchild of then Secretary of State William Henry Seward who served under the presidency of Andrew Johnson. Russia sold Alaska to the United States for a number of reasons including the fact that it was a territory far from the main body of Russian territories and difficult to defend. Moreover, Moscow judged it safer to hand Alaska to America than to risk losing it to a rival such as Britain.
The terms were settled on one night, March 29, 1867, between Seward and Russian diplomat Eduard de Stoeckl. The two men negotiated over the price and finally agreed on $7.2 million, which exceeded the $5 million minimum that Russia had instructed Stoeckl to get. In fact, $7.2 million worked out to less than two cents an acre for the 586,412 square miles of land that Seward was purchasing for the United States. The sale was settled at around 4:00 am the next morning, March 30, 1867, when a treaty was signed between Seward and Stoeckl for the land sale. The Council on Foreign Relations says that the acquisition of Alaska was the second largest U.S. land purchase.
Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867. The Senate approved the treaty on April 8, 1867. It was approved by a vote of 37 to 2 after Senator Charles Sumner argued for it, while the House held up the appropriations for more than a year. Meanwhile the House had impeached Johnson in February 1868 and the trial in the Senate ended three months later with a vote of one short of removal from office.
At first the deal was unpopular and was ridiculed by critics as “Seward’s Folly.” Many Americans considered the land worthless. In a survey cited by the Council on Foreign Relations, the purchase of Alaska placed 26th among the best choices in the history of American foreign policy. The Council also links Alaska's European discovery to Vitus Bering's Russian expedition of 1741. Russia established the first permanent settlement in Alaska in 1784, and afterward gave the Russian American Company exclusive control over the territory.
A very small population resides in the territory which covers 586,412 square miles, nearly twice the size of Texas. Alaska became the 49th state of the United States on January 3, 1959, 92 years after the U.S. purchased it from Russia for $7.2 million.
