Note from Stephen Puleo: I’ve been thrilled by the wonderful reader reactions to The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner’s Fight for a More Perfect Union, many of whom have written to let me know how much they enjoyed the book. But as with any work of history, some revealing stories had to be dropped for space and narrative reasons. And with Charles Sumner’s involvement in so many issues, the “some” becomes “many” – vignettes that shed light on this accomplished and complex man. Periodically, I’ll feature a “dropped story” in this blog space.
Dropped Story 3: A Midnight Treaty
Charles Sumner’s moral courage and authenticity on the great issues of slavery and equal rights helped him exert influence on many other matters. The U.S. acquisition of “Russian America” – the massive territory that would become known as Alaska – was one of them.
On Friday evening, March 29, 1867, the night before the “Reconstruction” Congress was scheduled to adjourn, Charles Sumner received a messenger at his home carrying a cryptic note from the secretary of state. “Can you come to my home this evening?” William Seward asked. “I have a matter of public business [which makes it] desirable that I should confer with you at once.”
Perplexed and curious, Sumner donned his coat at once and rushed to Seward’s house, where the secretary’s son, Frederick, the assistant secretary of state, said his father had already left for the State Department offices. Another man arrived at the Seward house about the same time as Sumner – Russian minister Edward de Stoeckl – and he and Frederick Seward explained to Sumner the reason for the secretary’s mysterious note and unusual evening summons.
In his bag, Stoeckl carried the rough draft of a proposed treaty ceding all of Russian America, a vast territory of 580,000 square miles, to the United States for a purchase price of $7.2 million. The cession of this area that was twice the size of the State of Texas – stretching from Sitka in the Southeast corner, to well North of the Yukon River and the Arctic Circle, to a rugged Western coastline that bordered the Bering Strait, to the Aleutian Islands whose footprints dotted the North Pacific nearly to Russian Siberia – required a formal treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
Because the Senate was constitutionally obligated to provide “advice and consent” before any treaty was ratified, the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Sumner, would have first review and be responsible for either recommending approval to the full Senate, or scuttling the deal overall without the proposal ever reaching the Senate floor.
Sumner was stunned; this was the first he’d heard of the potentially massive land acquisition that would dramatically increase the physical size of the United States. He never knew such a staggering deal was under consideration. Sumner would discover over the next several hours that Seward, who had envisioned an expansion of the Pacific Northwest for years, had been negotiating in secret with Russia for the territory since shortly after the Civil War had ended.
Because the Congressional session ended the next day and he was anxious for the Senate to act, Seward suggested the two diplomatic corps hammer out the treaty throughout the night. Seward tasked his son with finding Sumner while Stoeckl notified his staff members and sent them to the State Department.
Sumner listened until about midnight, without offering his opinion, as Frederick Seward and Stoeckl went through the treaty’s provisions and showed a map of the land the Russians were ceding. Then the two diplomats left for the State Department where the formal engrossing and signing of the treaty would take place before it was presented to the Senate (the Russian and American teams would not finish working until 4:00 a.m. Saturday).
As the three men parted ways – Sumner was heading home – Stoeckl left him with a plea and a prediction:
“You will not fail us,” the Russian minister said.
Indeed, Seward and Stoeckl needed Charles Sumner to endorse the treaty with all the enthusiasm he could muster.
At first, Sumner had mixed feelings about the proposed treaty with Russia.
He was pleased that the acquisition of Russian America would rid the North American continent of another foreign power, and with the Russians out of the picture, the U.S. could begin to “squeeze England out of the continent.”
On the other hand, he was worried that endorsing the treaty would be interpreted mistakenly as lending his support to President Andrew Johnson’s foreign policy or, worse, to the Johnson administration itself. If Sumner had such doubts, he presumed other members of the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Senate as a whole, would too.
The next morning, after Seward and Stoeckl had signed the treaty, Seward visited the Capitol and urged immediate ratification by the Senate – but Sumner blocked the move by recommending it be referred to his committee. Seward was miffed, but the astute Stoeckl contended that Sumner’s move likely saved the treaty. The secrecy of the negotiations to this point would have raised suspicions among senators. “If it has been immediately submitted to a vote, it would have been rejected,” the Russian minister said later.
Despite his own misgivings, Sumner announced his intention to support the expansion, believing it to be “a visible step in the [U.S.] occupation of the whole North American continent.” That alone was an important signal to lawmakers, but he wanted to speak further on the issue and allow his colleagues time to ponder the major accession.
On April 8, Sumner delivered a two-and-three-quarter hour speech to the full Senate, with only a single sheet of notes in front of him. It focused on the history and boundaries of Russian America, some of the natural resources in the region, and the advantages of annexation. Senators were so impressed with his memory and recall of facts that they asked him to write out his speech for publication. Sumner agreed and then moved to ratify the treaty.
By a vote of 37-2, the Senate approved it, a show of unity “designed principally to emphasize American good will toward Russia,” according to one account.
Sumner was correct when he wrote that “my course had a decisive influence” on the treaty’s final passage.
Sumner had one final and exhaustive task to complete on the matter.
To rouse enthusiasm among the American people for a treaty that had yet to generate excitement – Sumner spent the next weeks reading reports, books, journals, atlases, newspapers, and pamphlets on Russian America. These sources were written in English, French, German, and Italian – all of which he was fluent in – as well as Russian, which he had translated. It was a remarkable compendium – an “encyclopedia of facts” and the first full treatment – of history and natural resources in the new territory.
Not only did Sumner’s work, circulated widely in pamphlet form in the United States, help convince the American public of the merits of the treaty, a separate edition published in St. Petersburg convinced many Russians that the sale was in their national interests as well. The monograph helped persuade House members in the next Congressional session to appropriate the purchase price specified in the treaty.
The conclusion of Sumner’s treatise focused on what he viewed as the last remaining issue: what to call the new territory. The name “Russian America” was obviously no longer appropriate. Happily, he wrote, a potential name existed already. It first appeared in a report on the third voyage of British Captain James Cook. It was the “sole word” used by natives of Russian America when “speaking of the American continent in general, which they knew perfectly well to be a great land.”
They called it: “Alaska.”
And so, too, did the U.S. Congress.
On the afternoon of October 18, 1867, flanked by detachments of Russian and American troops, dignitaries from both countries convened in Sitka, Alaska, for the formal transfer ceremony. Speeches were delivered, the Russian flag lowered, and the American flag raised to signify and complete the formal transfer of the Territory of Alaska – as large as Sweden, Finland, and Denmark combined – to the United States. It would not have happened without Charles Sumner’s endorsement and diplomacy.
Over the next two decades, the Alaskan geographic landmarks of Sumner Creek, Sumner Island, Sumner Strait, and the Sumner Mountains were all named to acknowledge and honor Charles Sumner’s contribution to the enormous acquisition from Russia.