The U.S. Bought 3 Virgin Islands from Denmark. The Deal Took 50 Years

On August 4, 1916, Denmark and the United States signed a treaty whereby the Danish West Indies, including the Virgin Islands, were to be ceded to the US in 1917 for $25 million. An excerpt from the article:

"The first negotiations between the U.S. and Denmark began in 1865, the year the Civil War ended. Secretary of State William Henry Seward actually negotiated a treaty with Denmark to cede the islands to the U.S. in 1867, but the Senate rejected it. This was probably partly due to an anti-expansionist sentiment that set in after the Civil War, and partly due to the fact that the Senate was angry at Seward over his support of President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial, notes the U.S. State Department.

Negotiations started up again in the 1890s but fizzled with the onset of the Spanish-American War in 1898. In the aftermath of that war, the U.S. gained the territory of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the territories of Guam and the Philippines in the Western Pacific (Puerto Rico and Guam are still U.S. territories; the Philippines won independence after World War II).

The U.S. was a larger imperial power now, with a greater interest in expanding. It had also set its sights on building the Panama Canal, and this made it even more interested in purchasing St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix in order to secure the future canal’s route. Again, another secretary of state (this time John Hay) negotiated a treaty with Denmark. The Senate ratified the treaty in 1902, but this time, the Danish parliament rejected it.

Danish West Indies
A portrait of the locals of St. Croix in 1916. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
In 1915, the fear of German takeover motivated the U.S. to make another try for the islands. Especially after the sinking of the Lusitania, President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing feared that Germany might annex Denmark and launch more attacks from the Danish West Indies. Danish leaders resisted ceding the islands and their majority-black inhabitants to the racially-segregated United States.

Angry at this, Lansing insinuated that if Denmark didn’t sell the U.S. the islands, it just might go and seize them to prevent Germany for getting to them. It was a bullying tactic, and it worked.

Eager to prevent a U.S. military attack (Denmark was currently a neutral party in World War I), Denmark negotiated a treaty with the U.S. that President Wilson signed on January 16, 1917. On March 31, 1917, Denmark formally transferred governance over the islands to the U.S., and the U.S. reciprocated by paying Denmark $25 million in gold coin.

What this meant for people living on St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix—now the U.S. Virgin Islands—was unclear. In 1920, the acting secretary of state specified that Virgin Islanders had “American nationality” but not the “political status of citizens.” This changed in 1932 when Virgin Islanders won American citizenship, but voting was a separate battle.

The U.S. Virgin Islands didn’t win the right to vote for their own governor until 1970. Today, American citizens in the U.S. Virgin Islands—as well as those in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands—still cannot elect voting members to Congress or vote for the president of the United States."