Alaska Purchase

The Alaska Purchase was the 1867 transfer of Russia's North American territory to the United States, concluded by a treaty of purchase that Secretary of State William Seward agreed on March 30, 1867 with the Russian minister in Washington, Edouard de Stoeckl, at a price of 7.2 million dollars. Russia had offered Alaska for sale in 1859, judging that the United States would offset its greatest Pacific rival, Great Britain, but the approach of the Civil War delayed the sale. Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than about four hundred, and defeat in the Crimean War had reduced Russian interest in the region. The Senate approved the treaty on April 9, President Andrew Johnson signed it on May 28, and Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867. Critics called the bargain Seward's Folly until the Yukon gold discovery of 1896 made Alaska the gateway to the Klondike, and it became a state on January 3, 1959.