Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

Bartlett agreed to the first three amendments, and with Speaker Sam Rayburn’s belated blessing, the Alaska Statehood Bill passed the House on May 26, 1958, by a vote of 210 to 166. By now, President Eisenhower was also giving the matter his unqualified endorsement. Over in the Senate, majority leader Lyndon Johnson grudgingly decided that he, too, would go along with Mr. Sam. After some last-minute maneuverings that saw the bill’s Senate floor manager, Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, adopt the House version wholesale, the Senate approved Alaska statehood on June 30 by a vote of 64 to 20, with mostly southerners and a few New Englanders, including Connecticut’s Prescott Bush, opposed. A week later, the president signed the bill into law.