Alaska was bought for 2 cents an acre, and the handover gave it two Fridays in a row
Detetive Curioso
·4 min read·History·1 views
When Russia handed Alaska to the United States on October 18, 1867, the territory skipped 11 dates and repeated a Friday. The $7.2 million check was only paid more than nine months later.
On October 18, 1867, a Russian flag came down in Sitka and the United States took possession of Alaska, a territory of nearly 600,000 square miles bought for $7.2 million. That is less than 2 cents an acre. The handover also bent the calendar: in local reckoning, Friday, October 6 was followed by another Friday, October 18.
The double Friday has a tidy explanation. Russian fur traders had reached Alaska from Siberia, so the colony kept Asian day reckoning and the Julian calendar, which in the 19th century ran 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the United States. Switching calendars pushed the date forward 12 days, while moving the territory to the American side of the date line pulled it back one. The result, as a history of the International Date Line hosted by Utrecht University explains, was 11 skipped dates and a repeated weekday.
The deal itself came together quickly. Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to the purchase with the Russian minister in Washington, Eduard de Stoeckl, on March 30, 1867. The Senate approved the treaty on April 9, and the formal transfer followed in October, according to the State Department's Office of the Historian.
Curiously, the treaty that sold a Russian colony has no official Russian text. The Library of Congress notes that the original was written in parallel columns of English and French, because French was the diplomatic language of the Russian imperial court. Tsar Alexander II signed an equivalent ratification, and the two governments exchanged copies.
Paying for Alaska took longer than raising the flag. The House of Representatives failed to appropriate the money for more than a year, slowed by political opposition and by the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson. The Treasury finally issued a warrant for $7.2 million on August 1, 1868, more than nine months after the ceremony in Sitka. That cancelled check is now one of the milestone documents of the U.S. National Archives.
The ceremony itself was brief. Russian and American troops lined up in front of the governor's house on the hill above Sitka, then called New Archangel, the Russian flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes went up to the sound of cannon fire. The warship USS Ossipee had carried the commissioners from San Francisco, and its logbook, now at the Library of Congress, describes the transfer on pages 147 and 148.
Not everyone celebrated. Critics mocked the deal as "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox", and the National Archives notes that the nicknames stuck until 1896, when the great Klondike gold strike convinced even harsh critics that the land was worth having. Alaska became the 49th state in 1959.
Today, October 18 is Alaska Day, a state holiday marked in Sitka with a parade and a reenactment of the flag raising. Some Alaska Native groups also use the date to discuss what the transfer meant for the Tlingit and other peoples who lived there long before Russia or the United States arrived.
Sources: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State: Purchase of Alaska, 1867; U.S. National Archives: Check for the Purchase of Alaska (1868); Library of Congress: Original of Treaty with Russia for Cession of Alaska; Library of Congress: Journal of the USS Ossipee; Utrecht University: A History of the International Date Line, the Alaska adjustment of 1867. Cover: Treasury warrant for $7.2 million paid for Alaska, 1868.
