Sublime

Hawai‘i, well-known for its mixing of Native, Asian, and European strains, seemed particularly threatening. “We do not want those people to help govern the country,” a Massachusetts newspaper put it baldly. “When future issues arise in the United States Senate, we do not want a situation where vital decisions may depend upon two half-breed

De Victoria, il continue par un labyrinthe d’îles boisées, par des chenaux protégés des violences du Pacifique. Ils passent au large de petites villes industrieuses et pleines d’espoir, tout est neuf, la région est américaine depuis une douzaine d’années, rachetée à la Russie qui ne savait pas quoi en faire, à peine peuplée, mais vaste et

Alaska, which Andrew Johnson’s administration sought to purchase from Russia in 1867, encountered the same resistance. “We do not want … Exquimaux fellow citizens,” griped The Nation. The deal went through only because, in the end, there weren’t that many “Exquimaux,” and there was quite a lot of Alaska.

Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands stretched out toward Japan, reducing the Pacific Ocean “to the width of a ferry boat channel,” as one journalist put it. When Alaska had been annexed, in 1867, this had been a promising feature: the islands were stepping-stones to Asia. Now, however, it seemed more likely that the foot traffic would go in the other

To accept Hawaiian and Alaskan statehood, mainland politicians would have to reconcile themselves to the prospect of states not firmly under white control.

Alaska sent to the Senate Ernest Gruening, who had made a decades-long career of opposing racism and imperialism. In 1964 Gruening achieved national fame as one of only two congressmen—out of 506 voting—to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that led to the direct U.S. entry into the Vietnam War.