W. H. Seward's Foresight
The Sunday Inter Ocean - March 12, 1890
Transcribed and Contributed by: Frances Cooley

-- Pointers Touching the Origin and Purpose of the Alaska Purchase --
-- The Acquisition of the Territory a Proud Page in American History --
-- Maximilian's Downfall Due to the Energy Shown to the Great Secretary --

THE PURCHASE OF ALASKA

Washington, March 11. -Special Telegram-
The Secretary of the Treasury has made a lease, for the privilege of catching seals in Behring Sea for a period of twenty years from May 1 next for a sum which, will yield the government $13,000,000. This is nearly twice the amount of the purchase money paid to Russia for the cession of Alaska Territory. This transaction has recalled a remarkable conversation with General Garfield in 1872, after the defeat of Horace Greeley, in which General Garfield narrated, as nearly as he could in the language of that veteran diplomat, a conversation he had himself had with the late Secretary Seward as to the origin and purpose of the Alaska purchase. The conversation was in November, 1872 and was held about one of those genial banquet boards of Washington given inconsequence of a bet upon the defeat of Greeley.

The assemblage was an odd one. The presiding victim was the most original genius in Washington-not long since dead. The guests were government folk, newspaper people, and politicians. General Garfield was the brilliant center of the assembly, as he was always apt to be on such occasions. The discussion had taken the wide range of current politics, from a remark which had been uttered about the destiny of the Republic the transition easy to Seward. One of the company suggested that Seward had been dead years before he put in his grave. General Garfield thought differently, and delivered a eulogium upon the dead statesman. General Garfield had rare conversational powers, and in social discourse was not less eloquent and elegant than in the forum. I repeat here, from the shorthand notes made after the dinner, the conversation of General Garfield as nearly as it was possible to remember. It will be seen from this statement what Mr. Seward's theory of Alaska was. The reminiscence is not untimely now in view of the fact that public attention is called to the great value in other respects of that distant territory. General Garfield said:

"When in Europe in 1867, my attention particularly drawn to the significant fact that the pictures of Lincoln and Seward were the only portraits of American statesmen that were notably prominent and that these were everywhere seen together. I asked a Frenchman distinction why Seward was held in such high estimation, and his answer most seriously im-pressed me with the thought that, perhaps, after all the slanders of his detractors, Mr. Seward had built for the future more wisely than be knew. This gentleman said: "Mr. Seward is the American statesman who looms up the most prominently from over the water. His diplomacy in Mexico has placed the print of greatness upon his name. Halting for a moment in the midst of the turmoil of the civil war, with a single stroke of his pen he dismembered the coalition organized to place Maximilian upon the Mexican Throne, and thus placed the first mine under the throne of the third Bonaparte.

He has undertaken what the combined powers of Europe have net ventured to essay-to break the scepter of the Second Empire. The views entertained by this distinguished Frenchman seem also to have been held in Mexico, for upon the occasion of the death of Mr. Seward, the press of that country all made the most grateful mention of his services in that regard.

"The enthusiasm of this Frenchman," continued General Garfield, "had not perished from my memory later, when public duties called me to the State Department. The Alaska treaty hid just been signed. I found the Sage of Auburn alone in the thoughtful mood so common to him when meditating upon great subjects. Our conversation fell upon himself, and I found that he had been meditating the withdrawal from public life.

"He had been eight years in the second highest place in this Nation. He had almost had the Presidency within his grasp; but the displeasure of his party had fallen upon him and he was about to retire from the political arena. He told me that power was sweet to him, that he clung even then fondly to its shadow and that he relinquished his scepter with regret. His exact language is speaking of his past career, was "It Is unpleasant to yield up power."

"The conversation turned upon Alaska. The Secretary fell into the dreamlike attitude, unknown except to those who are familiar to him, and commenced to explain his theory of the Alaska purchase in forcible, prophetic, almost pathetic words, which I never shall forget. I left the room then with grander ideas of the man than I had ever entertained before. His conversation indicated that he had been following a particular coarse of study, for be remarked that, to his notion, the two greatest books of the century were Marsh's "Man and Nature," and the Duke of Argyle's Reign of Law. The application of Argyle's theory of law as applied to political development Mr. Seward had evidently studied with much care. He had been reasoning upon natural laws as they affect the nation. He had been speculating upon the elementary forces of a nation's grandeur, and upon the contrivance in combining them to make them operate in a direction desired. This theory was founded upon the possibility of tracing these forces in history, and of discovering the operation of these laws under direction which had actually determined the course of mankind and nations in definite directions. The text of his theory was the history of the world's seas. History had taught him that the grandest achievements of man had been associated with the shores of the world seas. To go hack no further than the begin-ning of the Christian era the most sacred, solemn story of the hopes of man bad been written in wanderings upon the banks of the Sea of Galilee. With the progress of Christian civilization, thus sea-born, the advancing tide of human progress was stayed by the banks of the Mediterranean. It was along the borders of this sea that the Byzantine Empire flourished and was destroyed; that Rome attained her supremacy, and fell. With the progress of time, and the advance of civilization westward, the Atlantic took the place of the Galilean Sea and the Mediterranean. It is the sea of the present but, unless the laws of the political geography are false, the contests of the future are to be around the shores of the still sea, now our own Pacific. The nation of the future is the nation that holds the key of these Western waters. The purchase of Alaska has given our Republic a foothold on both sides of that sea. It is a geographical impossibility that any other nation can occupy a position in its own territory upon both sides of the Pacific.

This is the theory of the purchase. It secures the control of the Pacific to the young republic. It assures the future of the world's dominion to Yankee civilization. This was his theory. And his outlook was grand. In his political horoscope he saw the Republic enjoying a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had finished no example; he saw our country rising to the place of empire among the world's powers; he saw how, by wise statesmanship, material prosperity and peaceful conquests grew together; how our increasing commerce made us the mistress of the seas; how Western civilization and Oriental decrepitude were stayed upon the borders of the Pacific Sea, and compelled to reader homage to Young America, who had: become the keeper of the world's keys.

These were the grand thoughts of Mr. Seaward as he was about to relinquish the mantle of his power," and, continued General Garfield, "His views have left a lasting impression upon me. He could not have died more successfully than he did. His fame was riper than when the assassin had struck him. He passed away in the lull between two elections, and received the merited eelworm of both parties. He bore success followed by failure better than any American I know. He was for nearly a decade next to the source of power, and missed the place which was the goal of his later years, retiring from public life suffering the displeasure of his party. But he quietly retired to private life, and never lost his genial spirit or his noble ways."

This is the most Graphic sketch of the philosophy of the Alaska purchase that I remember to have seen. General Garfield achieved the Presidency, to which Mr. Seward so earnestly aspired; but an assassin, whose blows fell harmlessly upon Seward, laid President Garfield low.
E. B. W.