Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

There were no telephones at the capitol then, and messengers were sent in every direction to summon Secretary Seward’s assistants, and open and light the building at Fourteenth and S Streets, then occupied by the State Department. Baron Stoeckl hunted up his secretaries and chancellor, and at midnight the company assembled, including Senator Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Leutze has preserved the scene in a painting owned by Hon. Frederick W. Seward, of Montrose, N. Y. Secretary Seward and his assistants, Messrs. Hunter and Chew, and M. Bodisco, Secretary of the Russian Legation, form a central group. Baron Stoeckl stands beside the large globe of the world, and the lights of the chandelier overhead fall full upon Russian America, to which Baron Stoeckl is pointing his hand. Senator Sumner and Mr. Frederick Seward occupy a sofa in a corner back of this group, holding a school atlas before them.

The signatures were affixed to the treaty at four o’clock on the morning of March 30. The illumination of the State Department at that unusual hour attracted suspicious attention, and it was known that something of import was going on. It was intended to keep the matter wholly secret until the Senate had ratified the treaty, but journalistic enterprise ran high, and a New York reporter shadowed the Secretary of State, and, hanging on to the back of his carriage as he drove home with Baron Stoeckl that night, caught an inkling of the terms of the treaty and gave them to the world.

On the same day the treaty was sent to the Senate, then convened in extra session, and, discussed in secret conclaves, was confirmed on the 10th of April, chiefly through the agency of Charles Sumner, who, although not favorable to the measure at first, arose on the tenth day and delivered a speech, which was one of the finest efforts of his life, and an epitome of all that was known and had been written up to date concerning Russian America. Every chart, every narrative of the old discoverers, every scientific work and special report, was consulted by that great scholar, and his speech “on the cession of Russian America” is still a work of authority and reference to those who would study the question.

There was great surprise when the terms of the treaty were made known. The wits went to work with their jokes on the “Esquimaux Acquisition Treaty,” and Sir Frederick Bruce, the British Minister, was so chagrined at the news, that he telegraphed to the Earl of Derby for instructions to protest against the acceptance of the treaty. It was ratified by the Senate by a vote of thirty yeas and two nays, the opposing twain being Senators Fessenden and Ferry.

While the matter was pending there were many conclaves and dinner councils at the residence of the Secretary of State. The “polar bear treaty” and the “Esquimaux senators” were common names at the capital, and of the Secretary’s dinner parties one scribe wrote: “There was roast treaty, boiled treaty, treaty in bottles, treaty in decanters, treaty garnished with appointments to office, treaty in statistics, treaty in military point of view, treaty in territorial grandeur view, treaty clad in furs, ornamented with walrus teeth, fringed with timber, and flopping with fish.” Other menus gave “icebergs on toast,” “seal flippers frappee,” and “blubber au naturel.”

It was a great puzzle for a while to know what name should he given to the new territory, as Russian America would no longer do. The wits suggested “Walrussia,” “American Siberia,” “Zero Islands,” and “Polaria,” but at Charles Sumner’s suggestion it was called “Alaska,” the name by which the natives designated to Captain Cook the great peninsula on the south coast, and which, translated, means “the great land.” The articles were exchanged and the treaty proclaimed by the President, June 20, 1867. Secretary Seward was more than delighted with the success of his efforts, and the day after the proclamation said: “The farm is sold and belongs to us.” He felt sure that he had the advantage of his enemies this time, and had gone far enough north to counteract any leaning or sentiment toward the South, that he had been accused of harboring. He proposed to make General Garfield, then fresh in his military honors, a first Governor of the Territory, and later he intended to divide the country into six territorial governments.

The President and his premier lost no time in clinching the bargain, and immediately set about to receive and occupy the Territory, without waiting for the House of Representatives to appropriate the $7,200,000 of gold coin to pay for it with. Brigadier-General Lovell H. Rousseau was furnished with a handsome silk flag and many instructions by Secretary Seward, and left New York the same August in company with Captain Alexis Pestchouroff and Captain Koskul, who acted as Commissioners on the part of Russia. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, in command of 250 men, was ordered to meet him at San Francisco, and left there at the same time as the Commissioners, on September 27. Gen. Rousseau and his colleagues were taken on board the man-of-war Ossipee, then in command of Captain Emmons, and when they reached Sitka, on the morning of October 18, 1867, found the troop ships already at anchor there. Three United States ships, the Ossipee under Captain Emmons, the Jamestown under command of Captain McDougall, and the Resaca under Captain Bradford, were flying their colors in the harbor that gay October morning, and the Russian flag fluttered from every staff and roof-top. At half past three o’clock in the afternoon the United States troops, a company of Russian soldiers, the group of officials, some citizens and Indians, assembled on the terrace in front of the castle. The ceremony of transfer was very simple, the battery of the Ossipee starting the national salute to the Russian flag, when the order was given to lower it, and the Russian water battery on the wharf returning, in alternation of shots, the national salute to the United States flag, as it was raised. The Russian flag caught in the ropes coming down, wrapped itself round and round the flagstaff, and although the border was torn off, the body clung to the staff of native pine. The Russian soldiers could not reach it until a boatswain’s chair was rigged to the halyards, and then one of them untwisting the flag, and not hearing Captain Pestchouroff’s order to bring it down, flung it off, and it fell like a canopy over the bayonets of the Russian soldiers.

The rain began then, and the beautiful Princess Maksoutoff wept when the Russian colors finally fell. The superstitious affected to find an omen in this incident, but the American flag ran up gayly, and when the bombardment of national salutes was over, Captain Pestchouroff said: “By authority of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska!” Prince Maksoutoff handed over the insignia of his office as governor, and the thing was done. There was a dinner and a ball at the castle, an illumination and fireworks that night, and the bald eagle screamed on all the hill tops. The Russian citizens began to leave straightway, and in a few months fifty ships and four hundred people had sailed away from Sitka, and the desolation of American ownership began. Only three families of the educated class and of pure Russian blood now live there, to remember and relate the tales of better days. After this formal transfer, garrisons of United States troops were established at Fort Tongass, near the southern boundary line, at Fort Wrangell, at Sitka and Kodiak, under orders of the Department of the Columbia; but the ship carrying the troops to establish a fort on Cook’s Inlet struck a rock and went to pieces when near its destination. All the lives were saved, and the project of a fort at that point was then abandoned.

Immense sums were paid by the government for the transportation of troops and freight in the few months after the occupancy, and, by the time Congress met, the United States had a firm hold on the new possession. There were exciting times at Sitka for a few months, and the first rush of enterprising and unscrupulous Americans quite astonished the departing Russians, who were unused to the tricks of the adventurers, who always hurry to a new country.

Professor George Davidson was sent with eight assistants to make a report on the general features and resources of the country, and from July to November he cruised along the coast on the revenue cutter Lincoln. He was mercilessly cross-examined by the special committee of Congress during the exciting winter that followed at Washington.