The Alaska Purchase was the acquisition of the Alaska territory by the United States from the Russian Empire in the year 1867 by a treaty ratified by the Senate. Russia, fearing a war with Britain that would allow the British to seize Alaska, wanted to sell. Its major role had been forcing Native Alaskans to hunt for furs for them, along with missionary work to convert them. The purchase, made at the initiative of United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, gained 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km2) of new territory. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was successively the District of Alaska and the Alaska Territory before becoming the modern state of Alaska upon being admitted to the Union as a state in 1959.
Read more about Alaska Purchase: Background, Senate Debate, American Ownership, Transfer Ceremony, Aftermath, Alaska Day
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“We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
—Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)