Seward’s Folly is a myth: Please tell a friend

Jan. 3 was an anniversary of note, the day Alaska officially became a state and knocked Texas down a peg; the latter detail is not relevant but worth including for petty if accurate reasons. This year, the Smithsonian Magazine published an article commemorating the 49th state. Yet, the author went there. She wrote, “When U.S. Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, he negotiated a price of $7.2 million — about $153 million today — for almost 600,000 square miles of territory: less than two cents per acre. His big get was immediately dubbed ‘Seward’s Folly.’ ” The end there, that is the problem.

Alas, we will never be free of the Seward Folly myth, if only because people love a story about a good deal. And it is indeed a myth, as most good Alaskans should already know, despite the Anchorage restaurant of that name. The Folly should be a thing of the past, but it is not. So, here is a public reminder, the necessary periodic reminder that the Seward’s Folly narrative is false.

In the spring of 1867, after the Alaska purchase treaty passed through the House and awaited its time before an eager Senate, newspapers and magazines across the country offered their take on Alaska. The Daily Phoenix, out of Columbia, South Carolina, praised the purchase, as the fish and fur industry values alone were “vastly in excess of the sum agreed upon as the purchase money.” The (Philadelphia) Daily Evening Telegraph declared the deal “the distinguishing and crowning achievement of Mr. Seward’s foreign policy.” The (Little Rock) Daily Arkansas Gazette claimed “the sum paid ... will have been well spent.” Per the Galaxy, the first American magazine to offer an opinion on the purchase, naysayers “have been parading their ignorance of that region.” In short, the nation was overwhelmingly in favor of buying Alaska, especially at that sticker price.

From the initial wave of editorials, the New York Tribune was the only newspaper with a negative stance on the treaty, calling it a “Quixotic land-hunt.” Publisher Horace Greeley — of “Go West, young man” advice fame — despised President Andrew Johnson and believed the purchase was meant to distract Americans from domestic policy failures. A scattered few other newspapers and magazines would eventually offer opposing stances on the purchase, but they remained outnumbered. Of course, no one asked the residents of Alaska, Indigenous or immigrant, for their opinions.

While the opposition remained weak, there were pockets of relative confusion, bewilderment at the choice of territory. As the Boston Daily Advertiser editorialized, “Very little is known of the President’s object in making this treaty.” Some newspapers that offered at least lukewarm support for the treaty still ran cartoons mocking the purchase. The New York Herald supported the treaty editorially but ran fake advertisements suggesting European monarchs with worthless territory for sale should contact Secretary Seward immediately. A good joke was not to be wasted, so phrases like Seward’s Folly, Walrussia, Seward’s ice box, and Johnson’s polar bear garden proliferated.

Unfortunately, the idea of Seward’s Folly as the actual response to the Alaska purchase is due to bad historians. The first serious history of Alaska was published in 1885, written by Hubert Howe Bancroft. He wrote that the land “was believed to be almost valueless.” History textbooks picked up on the idea, copied one another, and soon every textbook in the country said the Alaska Purchase had been popularly decried as Seward’s Folly. Generation after generation swallowed the idea, thanks to books published into the 2010s.

The myth has been repeatedly and thoroughly repudiated in academic circles for close to a century. Thomas A. Bailey made the first formal denunciation in a 1934 journal article. Every few years, or couple of decades, another scholar would make another pointed rebuttal of the myth. From Virginia Hancock Reid in 1939 to Richard E. Welch Jr. in 1958 to Richard Emerson Neunherz in 1975 to Alaska’s own Stephen Haycox in 1990 to Lee A. Farrow in 2016 to Michael A. Hill in 2019, there are multitudes from which to select, longer or shorter and set within differing frameworks. This dedicated historiography is still apart from other articles and texts that denounced the myth in passing. In short, scholars have known better for a long time or should know better, including distinguished institutions like the Smithsonian.

The problem is with audiences. The value of scholarship lies in its intervention with the historical record, firmly supported by the relevant documentary record. But almost none of that value leaks into the public sphere. Journal articles are often locked behind hideously expensive paywalls, university press texts can be challenging to obtain or likewise expensive, and academic writing is not intended for a general reader.

Side note: I’ve written or co-written several academic pieces and enjoyed the opportunity to strut with some sesquipedalian flair, using words like auctoritas, opprobrium, and pusillanimity. If I started using words like that here, you’d be right to yell at me.

Regular people received their history knowledge growing up, often from people who grew up with the belief that Seward’s Folly was real. A cycle repeated. Their school textbooks misled them. Or, they picked up details from publicly accessible works, like the Smithsonian piece that inspired this column.

Alaskans were as susceptible as anyone else, and early on at that. In 1906, the (Valdez) Alaska Prospector described Alaska as “the territory which was given the sobriquet of ‘Seward’s Folly’ a generation ago.” In 1914, the Nome Daily Nugget claimed, “The great peninsula that at the time of its purchase from Russia was contemptuously called ‘Seward’s Folly.’” In 1915, the Cordova Daily Times opined, “the nation will be surprised by the wealth that will come out of the former Russian possession, so long known as Seward’s folly.” In Seward, the student newspaper was called Seward’s Folly.

After decades in the American consciousness, a myth like this can be difficult to eliminate. At the consumer level, myth is frequently inseparable from history, and understandably so. Myth can be comforting, self-aggrandizing, succinct, cute, and funny, sometimes alternatingly and sometimes all together. People choose and perpetuate myths for those reasons. History, the documented review of the past, is colder. While still entertaining when presented well, history does not care about your feelings, just the evidence. This is why historians too often earn reputations as buzzkills, a bit eager with a “well actually” response.

Myths are often fun. As in, it is more fun to imagine a group of prospectors who couldn’t spell Ptarmigan and thus the town of Chicken, no matter the lack of evidence. By their artificial construction, myths are likewise conducive to narratives. They tell a better story, in other words. The idea that Alaska was Seward’s Folly and later revealed as a bargain is indeed a better story, ready-made with twists and turns. At the least, can we all agree to yell at any non-Alaskans who makes a Seward’s Folly claim?

Key sources:

“Acquisition of Russian America.” (Columbia, SC) Daily Phoenix, April 4, 1867, 2.

Anderson, Sonja. “On This Day in 1959, Alaska—One of America’s Riskiest Investments—Became the 49th State in the Union.” Smithsonian Magazine, January 3, 2025.

Bailey, Thomas A. “Why the United States Purchased Alaska.” Pacific Historical Review 3, no. 1 (1934): 39-49.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume XXXIII, History of Alaska, 1830-1885. San Francisco: A. I. Bancroft & Company, Publishers, 1886.

Hill, Michael A. “The Myth of Seward’s Folly.” Western Historical Quarterly 50 (2019): 43-64.

“Interests of Alaskan’s Supreme in New Commission Plan.” Cordova Daily Times, January 21, 1915, 2.

“The Russian Slice.” New York Tribune, April 1, 1867, 4.

“Russo-American Purchase—the Climax of Mr. Seward’s Foreign Policy.” (Philadelphia, PA) Daily Evening Telegraph, April 3, 1867, 6.

“Telegraphic Dispatches.” (Little Rock) Daily Arkansas Gazette, April 12, 1867, 2.

Untitled article. (Valdez) Alaska Prospector, November 1, 1906, 4.

Untitled article. Nome Daily Nugget, March 17, 1914, 2.