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Folks, in light of this story, it's worth talking about the history, including the time the U.S. sought to buy Greenland at almost the same time as Alaska. Here's a bit of a thread ...
As he was working with the Russian government on the Alaska Purchase, Secretary of State William Seward negotiated with the Danish government on other territorial purchases. These included the islands of St. Thomas and St. John as well as Greenland.
Seward was a devout believer in the ideas of Manifest Destiny and American Empire. He believed that by acquiring outposts on the periphery of North America, the United States would be able to better exert influence over the entire continent.
That's why he pursued Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland and islands in the Caribbean. Denmark was a prime target for negotiations; it had just lost the Second Schleswig War and needed financial help to recover.
On Oct. 24, 1867, the Danish Rigsdag ratified a treaty for the purchase of St. Thomas and St. John for $7.5 million U.S. dollars, more than the Alaska Purchase. Though Seward convinced the Danes, he couldn't convince the U.S. Senate, especially after a hurricane hit the islands.
At the same time, Seward was being encouraged by noted American expansionist Robert J. Walker to consider buying Iceland and Greenland as well. Walker was a pro-slavery Northerner who became Secretary of the Treasury under President Polk.
In summer 1867, Walker wrote Seward about "the propriety of obtaining from the same power (Denmark) Greenland, and probably Iceland also." Seward had the Office of Coast Survey write a report about the possibility, which promoted the possibility in glowing detail.
Unfortunately for Seward, word of his interest (and a draft copy of the report) was leaked to the U.S. House of Representatives, where members were locked in a brutal political battle with President Andrew Johnson.
The notion of buying Greenland was soundly ridiculed, and given the conflict between Johnson and Congress, never got much traction.
That's not the end of the story, however. After World War II, Secretary of State James Byrnes offered the Danish government $100 million in gold for Greenland, in part to help Denmark recover from the war.
The United States was interested in Greenland for use as a Cold War staging point for bombers and weather stations, and the end of WWII meant wartime agreements were about to expire. Denmark, on the other hand, was largely uninterested in such a deal.
Politically, however, it would be difficult to directly refuse. The problem was rectified in 1951 when Denmark and the United States signed a Greenland defense agreement that lasted until 2004.
The 1868 report makes fascinating reading: archive.org/details/arepor…
