Two Cents an Acre | The Alaska Purchase of 1867

On a single spring afternoon in 1867, a U.S. Secretary of State signs a treaty buying over half a million square miles of wilderness for roughly the price of a used carriage — and the entire country laughs at him. Today, we're unpacking the deal so outrageously lopsided it was called 'Seward's Folly' for decades, and tracing the extraordinary arc from national punchline to perhaps the most consequential two cents ever spent.

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