The US agreed to buy Alaska from Russia
On this day · 30 March 1867
On March 30, 1867, Seward struck a $7.2 million deal for Alaska that critics mocked as a frozen folly.
In the small hours of March 30, 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister Edouard de Stoeckl signed a treaty in which the United States agreed to buy Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million — roughly two cents an acre.
The deal struck many Americans as absurd. Skeptics dubbed the remote, icy territory “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox,” convinced their government had bought a worthless wilderness.
At about two cents per acre, the purchase looks less foolish in hindsight.
The Senate ratified the treaty on April 9, 1867, and Alaska was formally transferred to US control that October. The bargain proved spectacular: the land later yielded gold, oil, fisheries, and enormous strategic value in the Arctic and Pacific, repaying its modest price many times over and quietly retiring the folly label.
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