U.S. Secretary of State in the context of Cricova (winery)

The Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2 million in 1867 (equivalent to $132 million in 2024). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.

During the first half of the 19th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Steckel agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.

Adam M. Garfinkle (born June 1, 1951) is an American historian and political scientist and the founding editor of The American Interest, a bimonthly public policy magazine. He was previously editor of The National Interest. He has been a university teacher and a staff member at high levels of the U.S. government. He was a speechwriter to more than one U.S. Secretary of State.Garfinkle was a speechwriter for both of President George W. Bush's Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He was editor of The National Interest and left to edit The American Interest in 2005. Francis Fukuyama, Eliot Cohen, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Josef Joffe, and Ruth Wedgwood were among the magazine's founding leadership.

James Francis Byrnes (US: /ˈbɜːrnz/ BURNZ; May 2, 1882 – April 9, 1972) was an American judge and politician from South Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. Congress and on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in the executive branch, most prominently as the 49th U.S. Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman. Byrnes was also the 104th governor of South Carolina.

Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Byrnes pursued a legal career with the help of his cousin, Governor Miles Benjamin McSweeney. Byrnes won election to the U.S. House of Representatives and served from 1911 to 1925. He became a close ally of President Woodrow Wilson and a protégé of Senator Benjamin Tillman. He sought election to the U.S. Senate in 1924 but narrowly lost a runoff election to Coleman Livingston Blease, who had the backing of the Ku Klux Klan, a white-supremacist domestic-terrorist organization. Byrnes then moved his law practice to Spartanburg, South Carolina and prepared for a political comeback. He narrowly defeated Blease in the 1930 Democratic primary and joined the Senate in 1931.