10/19/2026
A Kentucky general who had once beaten a congressman with a cane came ashore in a Russian town with half a day to accept Alaska for the United States.
The warship Ossipee reached Sitka at about eleven on the morning of October 18, 1867, and the handover was set for half past three.
Lovell H. Rousseau was forty-nine, a lawyer turned Union general, and the House had censured him for that assault.
The price had been settled back in March: $7.2 million, about two cents an acre.
The day was clear.
Some 250 American soldiers formed beside the flagstaff in front of the Governor's House on Castle Hill, with a company of Russian troops opposite them and the Tsar's commissioner, Captain Alexei Pestchouroff, at the general's side.
Governor Dmitri Maksutov looked on with his wife, who reportedly wept.
At the signal the Russian flag started down, and the guns of the Ossipee opened the salute.
Then the flag caught in the ropes.
The soldier hauling it tore off its border, the men who climbed the pole tired halfway, and a boatswain's chair finally lifted another soldier up to free it.
He let it drop, and it fell onto the Russian bayonets below.
As the Stars and Stripes rose, the Russian shore battery led the answering salute.
Pestchouroff addressed the general by name and said, "I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska."
Rousseau accepted it in a few words.
Afterward the officers shared a glass of ch*****ne in Maksutov's quarters.
