In 1865, with the end of the Civil War in sight, Seward was no longer worried that territorial expansion would lead to the spread of slavery. So he pursued new lands more vigorously. In 1867, just as he was wrapping up the purchase of Alaska from Russia, he began discussing with Denmark the possibility of buying the Danish West Indies. The Danes had settled the sugar-growing islands as a commercial investment, and they were open to selling the islands for a profit.
While Seward and Denmark were negotiating the purchase, one of Seward’s political allies, Robert Walker of Mississippi, suggested expanding the deal. America should buy not only the Caribbean islands but Denmark’s northern possessions of Greenland and Iceland as well, Walker proposed. Like Seward, Walker was an ambitious expansionist. A leader of the Texas annexation movement, he also advocated taking all of Mexico, buying Cuba, and annexing the Yucatán when he was Democrat James Polk’s Treasury secretary. After the Civil War, his ambitions turned northward. He supported Seward’s campaign to buy Alaska and advocated for the annexation of Nova Scotia. Walker’s idea of buying Greenland and Iceland intrigued Seward, and he commissioned a State Department report about the islands’ potential as part of the U.S.
Medieval Scandinavian travelers had settled in Greenland 1,000 years ago, joining Native Greenlanders who had arrived thousands of years earlier. The European colonies died out, leaving the island in the hands of the Inuit again until European explorers returned in the 16th century and settlers arrived in 1721. In the 18th century, European and American ships hunted whales around Greenland and traded with the Inuit for furs and tusks. So Americans had long been aware of Greenland’s economic potential. Denmark re-established its claim to Greenland in the late 1700s, but kept the island isolated.
The task of writing Seward’s report fell to a young Harvard-educated mining engineer from Massachusetts, Benjamin Mills Peirce. Walker wrote the report’s introduction, in which he proposed that it would be “ready for use whenever the question [of annexation] might be considered hereafter by the government.” It was printed by the Government Printing Office in 1868, and copies were distributed to members of Congress and other influential people around Washington.