Alaska (60 page)

AS THEIR SHIP PULLED INTO SlTKA SOUND THE VORONOVS

saw running down from the castle, in a manner quite undignified for a noble chief administrator, the agitated figure of Prince Maksutov, who shouted, as soon as he saw the Voronovs: 'Go over to that English ship!' and as they veered course to pull alongside the merchant steamer, they saw 367

/faksutov jumping into a small boat, which two sailors rowed to the English vessel.

When the Voronovs climbed aboard the visiting ship, they waited at the railing for Maksutov to join them, and when he did they saw that he was ashen-faced. 'I want you to hear the news they've brought!' and he hurried them toward the captain's quarters, where they were met by a plump, jovial Scotsman who introduced himself: 'Captain MacRae, Glasgow.'

In a fevered rush Prince Maksutov presented his two guests, then blurted out: 'Tell them what you told me,' and Captain MacRae said: 'It's such a bizarre story I'd like to have young Henderson along. He heard it first and checked it out after I'd heard it from a different source.' So while Henderson was sent for, the Voronovs waited, quite in the dark as to what had been happening during their long absence. Probably England and Russia at war again, Arkady said to himself, but when Henderson appeared to stand beside his captain, the two Britons delivered quite a different story.

'It seems,' Captain MacRae began, 'and we have it on unimpeachable authority both from the Americans in San Francisco and our consul there, that Russia has sold Alaska land, company, buildings, ships, everything to the Americans.'

'Sold?' Voronov gasped. Long ago he and Praskovia had heard rumors of a possible sale, but that was when Russia had her back to the wall in the Crimea and needed money. To sell now would be insane. He and his wife had just seen the grandeur and promise of Alaska, and could not imagine losing such a treasure. His agile mind leaped from one possibility to the next. In the end he asked an almost insulting question: 'Prince Maksutov, how do we know that these two men are not saying this to put us to some disadvantage? I mean, if there's war between our nations?' As soon as he saw the prince blanch he realized how intemperate his question had been, and he turned to the two British officers and apologized.

'Not at all!' MacRae said, his round face beaming. 'This gentleman is quite right.

All we've brought you, as I warned you before, Prince, is a San Francisco rumor.

A very solid one, as I said, but only a rumor until you receive official confirmation from your own people.' He invited the Russians to stay, then ordered a steward to bring drinks for everyone, and as the Voronovs sat in stunned silence, MacRae said almost jovially: 'Henderson here gave a damned good account of himself in the Crimea.

Said you chaps were mighty handy with your heavy guns.'

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For some time they talked about the affair at Balaklava as if it had been a cricket match played in the distant past with no rancor left behind, but when that gracious interlude ended, Voronov addressed Henderson: 'Please, sir, would you share with my wife and me exactly what happened?' and the young officer told of having been in a San Francisco waterfront saloon of the better type, with officers from another British ship and a French, when an American businessman asked: 'Any of you Johnnies headed for Sitka? I suppose you know it belongs to America now?' Henderson said that since his ship was heading for Alaska, he asked to know more, and a general discussion evolved into which several Americans were brought, and two of them had knowledge of the sale.

Henderson had then run back to his ship to alert Captain MacRae, who did not believe the yarn but who did hurry to the British consul, who said that although he had no solid knowledge of the transaction, he had been forewarned in the pouch from Washington that the sale had been confirmed by the American political leaders and that the price agreed upon had been $7,200,000.

'Good God,' Voronov gasped. 'How many rubles is that?'

'A little better than two to one, maybe eleven, twelve million rubles.'

'Good God,' Voronov repeated. 'The Yukon River alone is worth that much.'

'Have you been to the Yukon?' MacRae asked, and Praskovia replied: 'Far up. It's a treasure, and I refuse to believe it's been sold.'

MacRae, feeling sympathy for the difficult problems facing these Russians so far from home, invited them to join him for tiffin, during which he did his best to relax their tensions, but when he asked them what they might do if the rumors proved true, he received two sharply different answers. Prince Maksutov said with diplomatic propriety: 'I'm an official of the government. I'd stay here to effect an orderly transfer, salute as our flag came down, then sail home.'

'You wouldn't protest the action?'

'Six times in the past three years I've advised St. Petersburg to hold on to Alaska.

If a contrary decision's been made, as you suggest, I'll have no more to say.'

'But you wouldn't continue to live here in Sitka Sound?'

'Under the Americans? Unthinkable.' Realizing the pejorative nature of that comment to a representative of a third power, he added: 'Nor under anybody else, including you British.' MacRae, appreciating the reason for the correction, said: 'I'd feel the same way.'

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But now Praskovia broke in: 'Leave this lovely place? Never!'

'You'd surrender your Russian citizenship?'

Arkady, hoping to forestall an answer his wife might later regret, interrupted: 'How can we predict what the rules will be? If America has bought Alaska, she might want to kick us all out, so your question is premature.'

'Not at all!' strong-willed Praskovia snapped. 'America needs people. So much empty space. So many of their men killed in the war. They'll be begging us to stay.' Looking at each of her listeners in turn, she added: 'And the Voronovs will be staying. We've made this our home.' After she launched this challenge, the fire went out of her, and she looked only at Prince Maksutov: 'You did a terrible thing, sir, when you sent us to Fort Nulato. You allowed us to see Alaska. And we fell in love with it.

Here we shall stay to speed its development, and I won't give a damn who owns it.'

'Bravo!' MacRae cried. 'I'll toast you both on later trips.' Trying her best to smile at this levity, she failed miserably, dropped her face into her hands, and wept.

THE TRANSFER OF ALASKA FROM RUSSIA TO THE UNITED

States formed one of those unbelievable incidents of history, because by 1867, Russia was nervously eager to get rid of it, while the United States, still recovering from the Civil War and immersed in the impending impeachment of President Johnson, refused to accept it on any terms.

At this impasse an extraordinary man monopolized center stage. He was not a Russian, a fact which would become important more than a century later, but a soi-disant baron of dubious background, half Austrian, half Italian, and a charmer who was picked up in 1841 for temporary duty representing Russia in the United States and who lingered there till 1868. In that time Edouard de Stoeckl, parading himself as a nobleman, although no one could say for sure how or when or even if he had earned his title, became such an ardent friend of America that he married an American heiress and took upon himself the task of acting as marriage broker between Russia, which he called his homeland, and the United States, his adopted residence.

He faced a most difficult task, for when the United States showed hesitancy about accepting Alaska, support for the sale withered in Russia, and later when Russia wanted to sell, half a dozen of the most influential American politicians led by Secretary of State William Seward of New York looked 370

far into the future and saw the desirability of acquiring Alaska to serve as America's arctic bastion, yet the hardheaded businessmen in the Senate, the House and the general public opposed the purchase with all the scorn they could summon. 'Seward's Icebox'

and 'Seward's Folly' were two of the gentler jibes. Some critics accused Seward of being in the pay of the Russians; others accused De Stoeckl of buying votes in the House. One sharp satirist claimed that Alaska contained nothing but polar bears and Eskimos, and many protested that America should not accept this useless, frozen domain even if Russia wanted to give it away. ” Many pointed out that Alaska had no wealth of any kind, not even reindeer, which proliferated in other northern areas, and experts affirmed that an arctic area like this could not possibly have any minerals or other deposits of value. On and on went the abuse of this unknown and somewhat terrifying land, and the castigations would have been comical had they not influenced American thinking and behavior and condemned. Alaska to decades of neglect.

But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target, and with Seward's unflinching support and admirable statesmanship, the sale squeaked by with a favorable margin of one vote. By such a narrow margin did the United States come close to losing one of her potentially valuable acquisitions, but of course, had one viewed Alaska from the vantage point of frozen Fort Nulato in 1867, with the thermometer at minus-fifty-seven and about to be attacked by hostile Athapascans, the purchase at more than $7,000,000 would have seemed a poor bargain.

Now the comedy intensified, became burlesque, for although the U.S. Senate had bought the place, the U.S. House refused to appropriate the money to pay for it, and for many tense months the sale hung in the balance. When a favorable vote was finally taken, it was almost negated by the discovery that Baron de Stoeckl had disposed of $125,000 in cash for which he refused to give an accounting. Widely suspected of having bribed congressmen to vote for land that was obviously worthless, the baron waited until the sale was completed, then quietly slipped out of the country, his life's ambition having been achieved.

One congressman with a keen sense of history, economics and geopolitics said of the whole affair: 'If we were so eager to show Russia our appreciation for the help she gave us during the Civil War, why didn't we give her the seven million and tell her to keep her damned colony? It'll never be of any use to us.'

So the sale was completed and the scene of the comedy 371

moved to San Francisco, where a fiery Northern general named Jefferson C Davisno relative of the president of the Confederacy was informed that Alaska was now American property and that he, Davis, was in command of the icebergs, the polar bears and the Indians A short-tempered man who during the Civil War had gunned down a Northern general to whom he had taken a dislike the other general died and Davis was forgiven on the grounds that he, Davis, did have a short temper he had spent the postwar years chasing Indians on the Plains, and accepted his job in Alaska under the impression that his duty there would be to continue chasing Indians On 18 September 1867 the steamer John L Stevens sailed from San Francisco bearing the two hundred and fifty soldiers who were to govern Alaska for the ensuing decades One who left that day wrote a dismal account As we marched in battle gear to our waiting ship, no maidens stood on the corners to throw roses at us and no enthusiastic crowds gathered to cheer us on our way The public was so disgusted with our purchase of Alaska that they showed only contempt as we passed One man shouted directly at me 'Give it back to Russia1'

When the Stevens

reached Sitka a holy mess developed The Russians follow a calendar which is eleven days behind ours, so everything was confused Also, in Alaska they keep the Moscow day, which is one ahead of ours You figure that out At any rate, when we arrived the Russian commander said 'You're here early This is still Russia and no foreign troops can land till the American commissioners arrive,' and we poor soldiers have had to stay in our stinking ship's quarters ten days looking at a volcano off our port side, which I can see as I write I don't like volcanoes and I certainly don't like Alaska

Finally, the ship bearing the American commissioners came into the sound, and now the troops were permitted, belatedly, to land, they were a grumbling unhappy lot, but soon they were engaged in the formality of transfer, which to everyone's surprise took place that very afternoon

It was not a well-managed affair Prince Maksutov, who could have handled it beautifully, was prevented from doing so by the presence of a stuffy minor official sent from Russia to represent the tsar, while Arkady Voronov, who knew more 372

about the Russian holdings than anyone else, was not allowed to participate at all.

There was, however, a certain formality that pleased the few people who climbed the eighty steps to Baranov's Castle, where the Russian flag streamed from a ninety-foot pole made from a Sitka spruce. There were cannon salutes from the bay and a proper ceremony for the lowering of one flag and the raising of another, but a painfully silly mishap marred the ritual, as explained by Praskovia Voronova in a letter home: Although we had already signified our intention of becoming American citizens, Arkady, as you would expect, wanted the farewell Russian performance carried out with proper dignity, as would befit the honor of a great empire. He rehearsed our Russian soldiers with great care in the lowering of our flag and I helped mend torn uniforms and supervised the polishing of shoes. I must say that our troops looked pipe-clay neat when Arkady and I were finished.

Alas, it came to naught. For when one of our most reliable men pulled the halyards to lower our glorious flag, a sudden gust of wind whipped it about the flagpole, fastening it so tightly that nothing could be done to dislodge it. The poor man with the rope looked woefully at Arkady, who indicated with his hands that he should give it a good tug. He obeyed, but succeeded only in ripping off the bunting which decorated the flag and tightening the flag even more securely to the pole. It was obvious that no amount of pulling was going to loosen that flag, and I almost broke into cheers, thinking it to be an omen that the sale would not take effect.

At this point Arkady left me, swearing under his breath, and I heard him tell two of his men: 'Get that damned thing down. Now!' They had no idea of how this could be done, and I am humiliated to confess that it was an American sailor who called out: 'Rig up a bosun's chair!' I couldn't see how this was done, but pretty soon a man was clambering up the pole like a monkey on a rope, and he broke our flag loose, tearing it further in his haste.