So Seward’s purchase of Alaska was not universally ridiculed. Nor was it a whimsical or isolated event—far from it. Rather, it was but one piece of Seward’s global strategy that took the doctrine of Manifest Destiny to its fullest and extended it from the continental United States to embrace the Pacific rim. Many of Seward’s visions did not come to pass for decades—or, in the case of the Panama Canal, half a century. But the foundation for the United States as the world power that emerged from the Spanish-American War was laid by Seward thirty-some years before, and the purchase of Alaska was
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