Alaska. This latter scheme, denominated by contemporaries as "Seward's Folly," is even now not fully understood, though researches in the Russian archives have shed much light on previously baffling points. For example the sale did not originate from a sudden inspiration in the mind of Seward, but was the development of a more or less established policy to which the Secretary gave added impetus.

So far as can be verified, the first proposal of the Russians to sell Alaska was made to Secretary Marcy in 1854 on the eve of the Crimean war, in order to forestall British seizure of the territory. But neither Marcy nor the Senator from California favored it. They believed that Great Britain would go behind the motives in such a sale, and deny its validity. The matter dropped till 1857, when Constantine, a brother of Tsar Alexander II, called renewed attention to the slight value of Alaska to the mother country, and recommended the conversion of distant territories into cash. Again the matter dropped. The next move came from our side, and Baron Stoeckl, the Russian minister at Washington, in January, 1860, reported to his government preliminary overtures for purchase, with $5,000,000 hinted as a proper price. Prince Gorchakov, the Russian minister, was not enthusiastic, and Buchanan's term expired with nothing done.

The Civil War precluded a resumption of negotiations. Meanwhile the commercial company with a Russian charter to exploit Alaskan resources was drifting rapidly toward bankruptcy, and in 1866, the war now over, the government bethought itself once more of the United States as a potential purchaser. This time Gorchakov himself approved, and used his influence with the Emperor, and Stoeckl, who had been in Russia for some time, returned to Washington with instructions to press matters to an issue.

In an early interview with Seward, the Russian so maneuvered that Seward made the first proposal. The ice was broken. The Secretary being gained, the President re

3 Cf. Golder, Frank Alfred, "The Purchase of Alaska," Am. Hist. Rev., XXV, 411-425.

mained to be convinced. Johnson felt no eagerness for territory, but put the question to his cabinet. Here Seward had his way. Negotiations were opened in due form, though Stoeckl doubted from the first whether the treaty could ever pass the Senate. The Russians wanted $7,000,000. A show of hesitation on Seward's part might have led them to reduce the price somewhat, but he was far too eager for results to indulge in petty haggling. The sum demanded was accepted, with $200,000 for good measure to cover losses in foreign exchange. Stoeckl reached America about February 1, 1867. His treaty was signed on the night of March 29th. The first step was accomplished.

There remained a second hurdle, that of ratification by the Senate. Here much opposition developed. But the point was stressed by Seward's friends that our honor was at stake. To take the initiative in a bargain and then fail to ratify it was a scandal. The idea gained acceptance and on the Senate's final vote, April 9, 1867, thirty-seven approved, while only two opposed.

According to the traditions of American diplomacy, approval by the Senate should have closed the issue. The necessary legislation in the Lower House to provide the funds was supposedly a foregone conclusion. But it became apparent in January, 1868, that payment was to be resisted. The House was taking the position so unpleasantly assumed in Jackson's term by the French Chamber of Deputies. Its motive seems obscure, yet in the light of comments by the Russian minister, the determination is apparent to obtain some part of the seven millions as graft for men in Congress.

The first snag set up against the treaty was the so-called Perkins Claims, growing out of an ammunition contract in the Crimean War and settled once already in the sum of $200 with a pledge to drop the case. Now with $7,200,000 changing hands, an enormous lobby was enlisted to mulct the Alaskan purchase price in the sum of $800,000, ostensibly in the interest of the Perkins heirs. This unsavory wrangle alarmed not only Stoeckl for the honor of his country and his personal credit as a diplomat, but also those Americans

who favored the treaty and understood the nature of the smirch upon the nation's honor involved within the Perkins Claims and the grafting lobby which upheld them.

In communicating with his government, Stoeckl pointed out the menace to its interests and suggested two alternatives to the Tsar. Let him tell the United States they might have Alaska without paying, or else write such a note as would wound the most obtuse. The first suggestion was rejected on the ground that the United States might possibly accept it. The course adopted was a request for settlement of the Alaskan payment, with the promise of separate negotiations for the Perkins Claims.

On July 18, 1868, the Purchase bill was finally passed. The Stoeckl correspondence does not designate the individual grafters, but leaves little doubt that certain members of the Lower House sold their vote. The suspense had been unnerving to the friends of decent government, and Stoeckl pleaded with the Russian Court for immediate removal from the polluted air of Washington. "I can give you no idea,' he wrote the Foreign Secretary, "of the tribulations and annoyances I have been obliged to suffer before completing this affair. I need a rest of several months. Do not tell me to remain here on the ground that there is no place else to give me, but allow me the privilege of breathing for a while a purer air than that of Washington and then do with me what you will."

But the very graft involved in the transaction betrays the uncertainty of the objective. Congress no more than the country possessed any real understanding of Alaska or the motives for its purchase. The Russians knew their mind. They were eager enough to sell. But outside of Seward and Charles Sumner, few Americans could see any reason to buy, and Seward's own motive is not wholly clear. It may possibly, however, have been a link in his larger schemes of a more active policy in China and the East.

Dunning, William A., "Paying for Alaska, some Unfamiliar Incidents in the Process," Pol. Sci. Quar., XXVII, 385-398.

5 Golder, Frank Alfred, "The Purchase of Alaska.” Am. Hist. Rev., XXV, 424.

SEWARD AND THE ORIENT

So aggressive was, in fact, the Eastern policy of Seward that to interpret the Alaskan Purchase as perhaps correlated with it is not unreasonable. Yet this Eastern policy was by no means unified. In Japan it had one meaning; in China, quite another. Seward became convinced in 1861 that Japan meant to ignore her treaties and possibly to expel foreigners from her soil. And when in 1865 the Japanese attacked an American warship, the Wyoming, in the Straits of Shimonoseki, Seward was prepared for action. The United States participated in an allied demonstration in these same Straits, and united in the Convention of 1866, the terms of which were dictated by Great Britain and which subordinated the interests of Japan to commercial exploitation by the latter power.

In 1867 Seward extended his operations to Korea, on learning of an outrage committed in the previous summer on an American schooner, the General Sherman, when the ship was burned, and its owner, a peaceful trader, and his crew were killed. France had similar ground for complaint. The victims in her case were missionaries. In retaliation, the French chargé at Peking threatened to assume a protectorate over Korea. His government did not sustain him, though the French Admiral on the Pacific station did bombard a port. The details of these transactions were but slightly known to Seward, but assuming a joint grievance, he proposed joint action with the French against Korea a proposition which was declined at Paris owing to opposition by the Liberals to imperialistic demonstrations in the Orient. It was fortunate the matter dropped, for when the fate of the General Sherman was finally cleared up it was discovered that only the ignorance of its crew had caused disaster. The boat had grounded in a river where it had no right to be. The Koreans nevertheless sent aid. Their offers were misconstrued and their leaders rudely treated. Then only they sent down fire-rafts, burned the ship, and shot the crew. With blame at least divided, a

punitive expedition by the United States would utterly have outraged public sentiment in the Orient."

Offsetting in effect if not intention Seward's methods in Korea and Japan was the humanitarianism of the most successful diplomat America has ever sent to Eastern lands. The selection in 1862 of Anson Burlingame as minister to China was a stroke of genius. Surpassing all his brilliant predecessors from Caleb Cushing to William B. Reed, Burlingame was an idealist who advanced the cause of a happier and better realism. Long before the Civil War he championed human rights. Following the attack on Charles Sumner, he challenged Brooks, the bully, to a duel. His ardent sympathy for Hungary and Sardinia rendered him ineligible for the mission to Vienna."

In his Chinese mission, Burlingame was handicapped by the embarrassment of his government at home. Moreover dissensions among the Chinese necessitated a careful neutrality among the rival parties. The greed of foreigners watching like so many vultures for the dismemberment of China added to the problems of an honest minister. But Burlingame met them all with simplicity and candor, and a man-to-man equality with his hosts untouched by the arrogance invariably associated in the Oriental mind with Western character.

The leaven of a personality like Burlingame's working quietly upon the Chinese won the friendship of Prince Kung, the Emperor's brother and leading statesman of the Empire, and others in authority. It led to the negotiation in 1868 of a treaty which Seward drafted and which, first recognizing the integrity of the Empire, obtained religious toleration, the right of emigration, and a renewal of separate jurisdiction by American consuls.8

Burlingame's concluding service to the cause of East and West was a mission on behalf of China to assure the Euro

6 Dennett, Tyler, "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," Am. Hist. Rev., XXVIII, 45-62.

Atlantic Monthly, XXVI, 629-631, unsigned article, "Mr. Burlingame as an Orator."

8 Callahan, James Morton, American Relations in the Pacific and the Far East, p. 109.