The treaty, however, was not yet a fact.The Senate must approve, and its approval could not be taken for granted.The temper of the majority of Americans toward expansion had changed.The experiences of the later fifties had caused many to look upon expansion as a Southern heresy.Carl Schurz a little later argued that we had already taken in all those regions the climate of which would allow healthy self-government and that we should annex no tropics.Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, wrote in 1873 that popular sentiment was, for the time being, against all expansion.In fact, among the people of the United States the idea was developing that expansion was contrary to their national policy, and their indisposition to expand became almost a passion.They rejected Santo Domingo and the Danish Islands and would not press any negotiations for Canada.
What saved the Alaska Treaty from a similar disapproval was not any conviction that Alaska was worth seven million dollars, although Sumner convinced those who took the trouble to read, that the financial bargain was not a bad one.The chief factor in the purchase of Alaska was almost pure sentiment.Throughout American history there has been a powerful tradition of friendliness between Russia and the United States, yet surely no two political systems have been in the past more diametrically opposed.The chief ground for friendship has doubtless been the great intervening distance which has reduced intercourse to a minimum.Some slight basis for congeniality existed in the fact that the interests of both countries favored a similar policy of freedom upon the high seas.What chiefly influenced the public mind, however, was the attitude which Russia had taken during the Civil War.When the Grand Duke Alexis visited the United States in 1871, Oliver Wendell Holmes greeted him with the lines:
Bleak are our coasts with the blasts of December, Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember Who was our friend when the world was our foe.
This Russian friendship had presented itself dramatically to the public at a time when American relations with Great Britain were strained, for Russian fleets had in 1863 suddenly appeared in the harbors of New York and San Francisco.These visits were actually made with a sole regard for Russian interests and in anticipation of the outbreak of a general European war, which the Czar then feared.The appearance of the fleets, however, was for many years popularly supposed to signify sympathy with the Union and a willingness to defend it from attack by Great Britain and France.
Many conceived the ingenuous idea that the purchase price of Alaska was really the American half of a secret bargain of which the fleets were the Russian part.Public opinion, therefore, regarded the purchase of Alaska in the light of a favor to Russia and demanded that the favor be granted.
Thus of all the schemes of expansion in the fifty years between the Mexican and the Spanish wars, for the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was really only a rectification of boundary, this alone came to fruition.Seward could well congratulate himself on his alertness in seizing an opportunity and on his management of the delicate political aspects of the purchase.Without his promptness the golden opportunity might have passed and never recurred.Yet he could never have saved this fragment of his policy had not the American people cherished for Russia a sentimental friendship which was intensified at the moment by anger at the supposed sympathy of Great Britain for the South.
If Russia hoped by ceding Alaska to involve the United States in difficulties with her rival Great Britain, her desire was on one occasion nearly gratified.The only profit which the United States derived from this new possession was for many years drawn from the seal fishery.The same generation of Americans which allowed the extermination of the buffalo for lap robes found in the sealskin sack the hall mark of wealth and fashion.While, however, the killing of the buffalo was allowed to go on without official check, the Government in 1870 inaugurated a system to preserve the seal herds which was perhaps the earliest step in a national conservation policy.The sole right of killing was given to the Alaska Commercial Company with restrictions under which it was believed that the herds would remain undiminished.The catch was limited to one hundred thousand a year; it was to include only male seals; and it was to be limited to the breeding grounds on the Pribilof Islands.
The seals, however, did not confine themselves to American territory.During the breeding season they ranged far and wide within a hundred miles of their islands; and during a great part of the year they were to be found far out in the Pacific.The value of their skins attracted the adventurous of many lands, but particularly Canadians; and Vancouver became the greatest center for deep-sea sealing.The Americans saw the development of the industry with anger and alarm.Considering the seals as their own, they naturally resented this unlimited exploitation by outsiders when Americans themselves were so strictly limited by law.They also believed that the steady diminution of the herds was due to the reckless methods of their rivals, particularly the use of explosives which destroyed many animals to secure a few perfect skins.
