Russia Sold Alaska for $7.2 Million. Where Did the Money Go?

On August 1, 1868, the Treasury office on Wall Street issued a check for $7.2 million, payable to Edouard de Stoeckl, Russia's minister in Washington. The land it paid for had already changed flags on October 18, 1867, in the harbor at Sitka. That cancelled check still survives at the National Archives, and Russia's own Finance Ministry ledger records where almost every ruble of the price was sent. So where did the money for Alaska really go, and who ended up carrying the bill? This film follows one check and one ledger through every person who stood between them: a treaty signed before dawn, a price an American senator floated years earlier, a newspaper that mocked the territory as a sucked orange, a House of Representatives that kept a foreign government waiting fifteen months, and a sunken ship that appears in legend but never in the shipping register. Built from photographs, letters, newspapers and documents of the period, including the cancelled 1868 Treasury check and warrant held at the National Archives. 📌 Chapters 0:00 Intro 2:12 Four in the Morning 5:48 Two Cents an Acre 9:45 The Unwilling Eagle 12:46 Sold on Credit 15:50 The People Inside the Price 19:49 A Ship Called Orkney 22:38 The Ledger Closes 25:38 Still Paying Out Which moment in the story of the Alaska check stayed with you the most? Tell us in the comments. — Archive footage and photographs: Coverr, Pexels, Storyblocks, Wellcome Collection, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed stock: Pixabay (illustrative; it does not show the people named). Some scenes are illustrative AI-generated reconstructions; they are not archive images. Creative Commons attributions: CC BY 2.0: Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel, Jorge Láscar from Melbourne, Australia, Photograph by Bruce Tuten from Savannah, Georgia, United States. derivative work, on the above photo, Political Graveyard from Ann Arbor, MI CC BY 3.0: Argos ' Dad CC BY 4.0: Carl Adolph Hårdh, duma.gov.ru, Marie-Lan Nguyen, State Duma, unknown author, Wellcome Collection, Управление пресс-службы и информации Президента Российской Федерации CC BY-SA 2.0: Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. CC BY-SA 3.0: A.Savin, angelius1979, David Samuel, User:Hellodavey1902, Gage Skidmore, Judicieux, Ordinarie, shakko, Stepan Shchukin CC BY-SA 4.0: Gillfoto, Jrozwado, Photo by Joe Mabel, Ulumarifah Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Music: Original music composed for INTEREST DUE (Suno). #AlaskaPurchase #EconomicHistory #HistoryDocumentary