20-Jul-2010 | By William Moloney, Contributing Editor
Anchorage: In every state of our great union there is to be found beauty of remarkable kind. In Alaska, however the scale, the scope, the vastness of the place is unlike any other state. Its 586,000 square miles are one fifth the size of the “Lower Forty-Eight”, larger than all but thirteen countries elsewhere in the world. Whether watching icebergs glide silently by in the Icy Straits, or herds of whales sporting in Resurrection Bay, or circling the awesome Mount McKinley in a light plane, fellow travelers repeat endless variations of “We’ve never seen anything like this, anywhere”.
Alaska’s climate is as extreme as its beauty, harsher overall than any country on earth. Concerning the diversions of the brutal winters a young Alaska born woman plaintively notes “a lot of knitting, reading and drinking”. Ninety-eight percent of the visitors to Alaska come in the summer when there is up to twenty-three hours of sunlight; in contrast year round residents endure up to twenty-three hours of darkness in winter when in some places temperatures reach minus 50 degree Fahrenheit, minus 100 degree wind chill. Having a daughter who labors professionally in Antarctica for six months of each year, I am very attuned to the singularity of such conditions and how humans adapt to them.
When Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward initiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars he was mocked and reviled by his countrymen for his profligacy – the then as now dilatory U.S. Senate took six months debating the wisdom of the expenditure. Yet at two cents an acre “Seward’s Icebox” was an even better deal than the twenty-four dollars the Dutch paid the Indians for Manhattan.
That Senate debate provides an instructive window not just on what Americans were thinking in 1867 but how we think of ourselves generally.
Some Senators justified voting for the Alaska Purchase because they felt it would hasten the inevitable day when Great Britain’s last North American colony-Canada_ would become part of the United States.
That such considerations were not farfetched is shown by the letters of the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, and the questions raised in Parliament by future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Both these eminent Victorians expressed deep concern over what Ulysses Grant would do with the 300,000 strong Union army he commanded now that the Confederacy had been totally defeated. Both were very aware that Britain’s previous wars with the Americans- Revolutionary and War of 1812- had included failed invasions of Canada, and also that American public opinion was very hostile to Britain because of its sympathy and covert support for the Confederacy.
If Grant’s immense army- until then only the Grand Armee Napoleon took to Russia in 1812 was larger- moved north Britain’s defeat was inevitable. Accordingly Britain accelerated granting Dominion status to Canada- finalized in 1867- in considerable part because the United States would be less likely to invade a semi-independent Canada than one that was an outright British colony.
In the end cooler heads prevailed. Grant’s soldiers were more interested in going home than going to Canada. The U.S. Army demobilized in 1865 faster than it did in 1945. Grant’s boss Andrew Johnson was less interested in fighting Britain than fighting the Radical Republicans who wanted to impeach him.
What links all of these things is the light they throw on a phenomena we call “American Exceptionalism”. In his 2004 book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identityhistorian Samuel Huntington correctly asserts that debate over American Exceptionalism is the longest running and most important national conversation in our entire history. Today having a President who makes abundantly clear that he does not believe in American Exceptionalism, any more than in his words “The Brits believe in British Exceptionalism or the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism” this “Who Are We?” debate has reached a new intensity.
It is difficult to bring closure to these random reflections. My Alaskan journey evokes a collage of highly varied impressions- memorable dining at a rustic but excellent restaurant in Seward named “Cheap Beer and Lousy Food”, sipping the highly recommended “Moose Drool Brown Ale” in Talkeetna, and attending Sunday worship services in Anchorage on the Fourth of July and enthusiastically joining the congregation in robustly and movingly singing all verses of “America the Beautiful”.
In my role as pseudo-journalist I asked every resident I could the same question: “How long have you been in Alaska, and if not born and bred, where did you come from and why?”
Most were quite responsive, and while it is difficult to generalize, a very clear pattern emerged: They came to Alaska because it was a special place, an extraordinary environment that made them feel special- chosen people because they chose Alaska. Most were seeking something -albeit vaguely defined. Some frankly admitted wanting to escape a more humdrum life elsewhere. Like American immigrants of previous centuries they are a hardy and self-selected group willing to take risks-often against the advice of friends and family- in hope of finding something better in this Last Frontier than what they had left behind.
If Americans are an exceptional people, then America is an exceptional nation and vise versa. Perhaps as our President suggests you can find other nations that essentially duplicate the American experience, but I doubt it. Come to Alaska and your sense of this will be sharpened as mine was.
It will be very interesting to see where the national conversation on American Exceptionalism goes from here.
William Moloney's columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, U.S.A. Today, Washington Post,
Washington Times, Human Events and other publications. He lives in Colorado.
