It still remained to define the bargain, but in the end it became clear that those who had cried “Seward’s folly” really had no vision of the bigger picture. And in fact those cries against the purchase of Alaska were not nearly as unanimous as historical shorthand frequently suggests. The truth of the matter is that most of the shrill opposition in the press came from one source, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. It was Greeley’s acerbic pen that championed the monikers of “Seward’s Icebox,” “Icebergia,” and “Walrussia,” and belittled the value of any of Alaska’s resources, going so far as
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