Poetry and Alaska: William Henry Seward's Alaskan Purchase and Bret Harte's "An Arctic Vision"

• Published in: Arctic 1997-12, Vol.50 (4), p.334-348
• Main Author: Higginson, Ian N.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American literature; American poetry; Business structures; Coasts; Confederation; Criticism and interpretation; Harte, Bret; Harte, Bret (1836-1902); History; Ice; Poetic meter; Poetry; Seward, William Henry; Seward, William Henry (1801-72); Telegraph; Territories; Treaties
• ISSN: 0004-0843; 1923-1245
• DOI: 10.14430/arctic1115

(Received 19 December 1996; accepted in revised form 12 August 1997) ABSTRACT. On 30 March 1867, William Henry Seward, American Secretary of State (1861-69), provoked controversy both at home and abroad by signing the treaty that ceded Russian America to the United States. On the East Coast of America, reactions to the newly renamed Alaska were coloured by a personal antipathy towards Seward and the administration that he served. The British considered the cession unfriendly towards their ongoing foreign policy of Canadian confederation in British North America. Geographically, Alaska, now under United States control, lay menacingly adjacent to the west and north of British Columbia. This potentially vulnerable British colony, which had not then entered the Canadian Confederation, quickly became the focus of conflicting territorial ambitions. For Britain, British Columbia would supply Canada with a much-needed Pacific coastline, while for Seward, it would link Alaska and Washington Territory to form a continuous Pacific coastline for the United States. For ten fraught days, Seward fought to ratify the Alaska treaty. On the West Coast, where the economic benefits of Alaska's purchase were more immediate, Seward won the approval of the popular press. Among his less likely supporters was the American writer and journalist, (Francis) Bret Harte. Harte, author of such stories of mining life as "The Luck of Roaring Camp," and conventionally thought to be a writer of western literature, turned his attention northward with a poem entitled "An Arctic Vision." /// Конспект: В тридцатое тарта 1867, Вилиам Генри Сюард, Американский Секретарь Государства (1861-1869), подписал договор, который передал США права суверенитета русской Америкы. Получалась полемика. На востоке США, население не любило Сюарда и его правительство и поэтому не хорошо относилось к договору И к так называемой "Аляске". Британцы не любили договор из-за своей федеральной политики в Северной Америке. С точки зрении географии, Аляска, которая была под контролем США, была к западу и к северу от Британской Колумбии. Эта Британская колония, которая еще не вступила в Канадскую конфедерацию, скоро стала кругом разлличных территориальных интересов. Для Великобритании, Британская Колумбия была бы важным связем между Канадой и Тихим Океаном, а для Сюарда она соединила бы Аляску и провинцию "Вашингтона" чтобы создать непрерывную береговую линию дЛЯ США. За десять дней, Сюард пробовал утвердить договор об Аляс