Our Neighbor in Alaska

Stroke of fate. The fate of you who are listening, of nation to the world, is often hung upon accident, or upon decisions that made another way would have substantially altered the course of human events.

Supposed by a stroke of fate, Eli Whitney had failed to invent the cotton gin, would slavery have disappeared in the South before the Civil War? Suppose, fate had decreed that the one bolt by which Congress failed to impeach President Johnson had been cast for his impeachment.

Yes, much depends upon a stroke of fate. And tonight we rewrite history as we present the stroke of fate that could have made Russia our neighbor in Alaska today. It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of our purchase of Alaska or Russian America as it was called up to 1867.

For had that purchase not been completed, the United States and Canada might very well today have Russia as their next door neighbor with all that implies. Our story tonight is historically true, or about two-thirds of our drama, when the stroke of fate occurs which changes history.

After that we are guided by speculation. Our story is related by the Secretary of State and the cabinets of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, William H. Sewen. I've always been a staunch believer in the manifest destiny of the United States.

It's destiny to expand its boundaries, even as far as Russian America or Alaska as it was later called. There had been negotiations for the purchase of this vast territory by the United States for some time, and it sailed to us became imminent when in February 1867 in St. Petersburg, Russia It was a meeting of the Imperial Council.