Alaska: Russia's Folly

Louis C. Kleber describes how the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Government at a price of just two cents an acre.

The US $7.2 million cheque used to pay for Alaska (worth $121 million today)On March 30th, 1867, the American Secretary of State, William H. Seward, signed a treaty with the Russian Minister, Baron Edouard de Stoeckl, to conclude what was perhaps the shrewdest purchase in history – Alaska, 586,400 square miles of land, furs, fish, timber, minerals and gold. The price was $7,200,000; just two cents an acre.

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