by Konstantin George
Printed in the Executive Intelligence
Review, 1992, first published in The Campaigner, 1978.
This article is based upon a longer
report that appeared in The Campaigner magazine in July 1978.
The crowning period of humanist
U.S.-Russian collaboration was during the Lincoln administration,
when a wartime alliance between the United States and Russia was
negotiated by U.S. Ambassador to Russia Cassius Clay (1861-1862 and
1863-1869). This is a chapter of American history which is no longer
known today by Americans: It was Russia's military weight and threats
of reprisals against Britain and France, that prevented any
British-led intervention against the Union.
America and Russia shared the
conception of transforming this wartime pact into a permanent
alliance based on developing Russia into a technologically
progressive nation of 100 million, combined with an industrialized
United States with a population approaching 100 million by the end of
the nineteenth century. This combination was seen as an unbeatable
axis for implementing a worldwide ``Grand Design,'' an ordering of
sovereign nations committed to economic and technological
progress--the ``American System'' of political economy, against the
British Empire's ``free trade'' policy of keeping the colonial world
in perpetual backwardness and misery. Ambassador Clay specifically
considered his own mission to be the forging of an alliance among the
United States, Russia, and the Mexico of President Benito Juárez,
committed to the spread of republicanism around the globe.
Two opposing alliances
The American Civil War was a global
political war that came--several times--within a hair's breadth of
global shooting war. The global battle lines were drawn between two
international alliances: the Union and the Russian Empire, arrayed
against the Confederacy in alliance with England and France--the
Russell-Palmerston alliance with their tool, ``Petit'' Louis Napoleon
(III).
The Union's survival and ultimate
victory was achieved in part thanks to the influential ``American''
faction in Russia, to whose outlook Alexander II tended. This faction
stuck to its guns, despite all British threats, to ensure the
survival and development of the United States for the common interest
of Russia and America.
At several of the most critical
junctures of the Civil War, the Lord Russell-Petit Napoleon axis was
on the verge of declaring war on the Union. Each time, they were
forced to weigh the consequences of a fully mobilized Russia's
declaration of war on England and France. Russia's huge land armies
were ready to roll over the Ottoman Empire and India, thus ending
British political domination of an area extending in a great arc from
the Balkans through the Middle East to London's subcontinental
``jewel'' of India.
Had Russia not lined up with the
Union, a wavering London-dominated Bismarckian Germany, with no
anti-British continental powers nearby, would have been able to swing
nationalist elements in the German leadership into joining Britain
and France as a junior partner. The fact that Russia allied with the
Union and mobilized to fight if necessary, guaranteed that if a
global war erupted, German national interests, which could not
tolerate the elimination of the United States and Russia and a Europe
under the complete domination of England and Petit Napoleon, would
lawfully assert their control over German policy and move against
London.
In short, the ``concert of powers''
rigged game that had characterized European affairs since the
Congress of Vienna would be over. The means of British political
control over the continent would have exploded in the faces of
Russell and Palmerston.
The cornerstone of Britain's
operational policy, from no later than 1860 on, was to dismember both
the United States and Russia. This was the prelude to enacting a
``new world order,'' devoid of sovereign nation states, an order
centered on a British-controlled Grand Confederacy, labeled by
British policymakers ``The United States of Europe.''
A history of collaboration
What was achieved during the Civil War
by the two ``superpowers'' was the consummation of a
quarter-century-long bitter struggle by factions in the United States
and Russian against the London-orchestrated political machines in
their respective nations. From 1844 to 1860, British agents of
influence repeatedly sabotaged earlier potentialities for the
alliance to develop. It was a quarter-century punctuated with missed
opportunities and tough lessons learned, as a result of which the
strategic perceptions and capacities for action of the foremost of
the U.S. Whigs and their Russian counterparts were shaped and
increasingly perfected.
The foundation of U.S.-Russian
collaboration was laid in the 1763-1815 period. It was the product of
the political influence exerted within Russia by the networks
organized by Benjamin Franklin in the Russian Academy of Science
(whose leading members were followers of the tradition of
technological progress established by the collaboration of Gottfried
Leibniz and Peter the Great) and through the American Philosophical
Society.
In the period from 1776 to 1815,
Russia twice played a crucial role in safeguarding the existence of
America. During the Revolutionary War, the acceptance of Epinus'
draft of a Treaty of Armed Neutrality by Russian Premier Count Panin
was not only key in thwarting Britain's plans for building an
anti-American coalition in Europe, but also marked a signal triumph
by the Russian friends of Benjamin Franklin, in wresting political
hegemony away from the pro-British Prince Potemkin. In the War or
1812, Russia, under Czar Alexander I, submitted a near-ultimatum to
England to hastily conclude an honorable peace with the United States
and abandon all English claims of territorial aggrandizement. The
American negotiators were the first to confirm that only the
application of Russian pressure produced the sudden volte-face in
Britain's attitude that achieved the Treaty of Ghent.
One may also note that directly prior
to the War of 1812, through the negotiating efforts of John Quincy
Adams (at the time United States Minister to Russia), exponential
growth rates in U.S.-Russian trade were achieved. By 1911, the United
States had by far and away become Russia's largest trading partner.
The event that completed the molding
and toughening of the commitment to entente of the Russian and
American factions was the 1853-56 Crimean War. Russia's humiliation,
and the acute realization that British policy was orienting toward
actual dismemberment of the Russian Empire, together with the accrued
lessons of the missed opportunities of the 1844-46 period, burned in
the requisite lessons. The fundamental point that could no longer be
ignored was that Russia would have no security as a nation, let alone
prosperity, unless it committed itself to the abolition of serfdom
and a policy of industrialization to fortify itself against the
British monarchy.
To most Americans today, the image of
the Crimean War connotes a war waged by ``civilized'' England and
France against ``semi-barbarous'' Russia, with the clearest image
being the romantic drivel of Tennyson's ``Charge of the Light
Brigade.'' In 1854, most of the American population was avowedly
pro-Russian in its attitude toward that conflict. The Whig press, led
by the New York Herald, was openly advocating a U.S.-Russian
alliance, in response to Russia's repeated requests for assistance.
The United States Minister to St.
Petersburg, T.H. Seymour, in a line of argument that illustrates the
Whig thinking at the time, repeatedly warned the foolish President
Franklin Pierce and his Anglophile Secretary of State William Marcy,
what Britain was up to. He wrote to Marcy, in a letter dated April
13, 1854: ``the danger is that the Western powers of Europe ... after
they have humbled the Czar, will domineer the rest of Europe, and
thus have the leisure to turn their attention to American affairs.''
Under the rotten Pierce and Buchanan
administrations, alliance was out of the question, but the process
that was to define the Grand Design was developed in the years 1855
to 1861.
On the eve of the Civil War
During those years, the Russian
``American faction'' led by the new czar, Alexander II, Foreign
Minister Alexander Gorchakov, and a group in the Russian Navy
Ministry under the Grand Duke Constantine (which included the
minister of war, Count Dmitri Miliutin, and the minister of finance,
Mikhail Reutern), battled the feudal provincial nobility, which
formed the social backbone of the ``British faction'' within Russia.
Gorchakov, the central figure in determining the American faction's
policy moves, was not overly concerned, during this period, that the
United States government, under the wretch Buchanan, would ignore and
reject Russia's offers of cooperation. His goal was much more
sophisticated: to gain the acceptance of the American Whig grouping
of the entente foreign policy perspective. This goal was achieved.
Thus, from 1855 on, Russia renewed as
a standing offer the donation of Alaska to the United States, under
the anti-British Empire conditions enunciated first in 1845. This
standing offer was followed up with numerous substantial project
offers to American capitalists.
Most notable were the Russian
government's Siberian-Far East and Near East development packages. In
1858, Russia proposed an agreement with the United States for
cooperation in developing trade with China. In conjunction with this
offer, Russia unilaterally opened the entire Amur River basin region
(the maritime Provinces of Siberia) to free trade with the United
States. The series of development proposals had begun as early as
June 18, 1855, when Russia offered to extend its facilities to the
United States in negotiating a commercial treaty with Persia, a step
that would have begun the process of ending British hegemony in the
region. During the 1858-60 period, United States ambassador to Russia
Francis Pickens wrote on numerous occasions urging U.S.-Russian joint
trade and economic expansion to effect a strategic shift against
England.
On Jan. 12, 1859, Pickens wrote:
``Russia can hold a more certain
control over Europe by her influence in the East, and she wishes the
U.S. to tap the China trade from the East in order to keep England
out.''
On April 17, 1860, after talks with
officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Pickens conveyed an urgent
warning to Washington that a full U.S.-British rupture was close,
concluding with this advice:
``It is thus imperative that we keep
an able Minister here ... to produce through Russia a strong
organization of the Baltic States against the power of England.''
This letter is of extraordinary
historical significance, as it testifies directly that the relevant
factions in the United States and Russia were
convinced--correctly--that danger of a British-inspired conflict
against the United States was rapidly increasing. Pickens's policy,
reflecting the views of Alexander II and Gorchakov, was geared to
imminent or actual war conditions, conditions of acute danger to the
survival of the American republic. The Russian government had arrived
at precisely such an evaluation in the spring of 1860, and, under
Gorchakov's direct personal supervision, dispatched a top-level
covert intelligence mission to the United States, headed by Col.
Charles DeArnaud. That team was to play a decisive role in stymieing
the Confederacy's 1861 blitzkrieg strategy.
With the advent of the Lincoln
administration, the U.S.-British rupture came to a head. All the
Russian economic development proposals of the preceding five years
were ripe for implementation. American Whigs, led by Lincoln, Clay,
Admiral Farragut, and others, were preparing to launch a policy to
develop Russia industrially and militarily.
In the Western Hemisphere, the end of
British control over Ibero-America and Canada was considered
imminent. The deputy foreign minister of Colombia expressed this
sentiment:
``The United States Civil War is a
step in the direction of the United States' mission, to regenerate
the whole continent, and ... the United States and Russia, the two
great Northern powers, `Colossi of two continents,' if they could
identify their interests, would be the surest bulwark of the
independence of the world.''
Canada was all but ready to be annexed
by the United States in 1861. By 1860, the United States government
was receiving a tidal wave of petitions from western Canada urging
annexation to the United States. Similar agitation was widespread in
Lower Canada (Quebec). The Nor Wester, a newspaper in the Red River
settlement that serviced the western region, wrote in an editorial,
``England's policies leave us no choice but to break.''
This, then, was the strategic
conjuncture in 1860, when Britain utilized the last portion of the
traitor Buchanan's term in office to launch its project for Southern
secession.
Ambassador Clay and Lincoln's policy
Return to Top
President Lincoln's top priority in
foreign policy following Fort Sumter was forging a strategic alliance
with Russia. Lincoln was aware that under the political hegemony of
Foreign Minister Gorchakov, Russia was modernizing. The freeing of
the serfs had occurred in the spring of 1861, and a vast program of
railroad building was under way. Lincoln was also aware that both
Gorchakov and the czar were pro-American and anti-British.
In May 1861, in choosing his personal
envoy to St. Petersburg, Lincoln went outside all normal channels,
and selected the nephew of American Whig statesman Henry Clay,
Cassius Marcellus Clay, as his ambassador to Russia.
Clay viewed his primary task as
developing and consolidating the Russian elite into an unbeatable
political machine, such that it would acquire the talent and muscle
necessary to see through Russia's full-scale industrialization. Clay
brought with him many copies of one of the primary treatises of the
``American System'' of political economy, Henry Carey's book The
Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial,
hand-delivering them to Alexander II, Gorchakov, Navy Minister Prince
Dolgoruky, Grand Duke Constantine, and a host of other high officials
and industrialists. Clay toured the major cities, delivering speeches
to thunderous applause from captains of industry, regional and
national government officials, and merchants, expounding on the need
for Russia to industrialize. His speeches were reprinted throughout
the Russian press, and the name Henry Carey became a household word
in Russia.
In his memoirs, Clay described the
effect of his industrialization drive in Russia:
``A large class of manufacturers was
aggregated about Moscow.... England was our worst enemy in the world
and I sought out how I might most injure her. Russia with her immense
lands and resources, and great population, was a fine field for
British manufactures, and she had made the most of it. I procured the
works of H.C. Carey of Philadelphia, and presented them to the
Foreign Office, to the Emperor himself. So, it began to be understood
that I was the friend of home industry--the `Russian System.' I
encouraged the introduction of American arms, sewing machines, and
all that, as far as I could; the mining of petroleum, and its
manufacture; and got the United States to form a treaty preventing
the violation of trademarks in the commerce of the two nations. So,
when I was invited to Moscow, it was intimated that a tariff speech
would be quite acceptable. A dinner was given me by the corporate
powers of Moscow....
They got up a magnificent dinner; and
with the American and Russian flags over my head, I made a regular
tariff speech. It was translated into Russian as I spoke, and
received immense applause. It was also put in Russian newspapers and
into pamphlet form, circulated in the thousands all over the Empire.
This touched England in the tenderest spot; and whilst Sir A.
Buchanan and lady [the British ambassador, who was present] was too
well bred to speak of it, one of the attachés was less discreet and
shouted how much I threatened British trade. The dinner was
photographed at the time.
``I found that the argument which I
had made for years in the South, in favor of free labor and
manufactures, as cofactors, was well understood in Russia; and since
emancipation and education have taken a new projectile force,
railroads and manufactures have the same propulsion as is now
exhibited in the `Solid South.'|''
Clay's speech concluded with the
Russian industrialists toasting the ``great American economist Henry
Carey.''
Clay also went to work paving the way
for the military alliance that would dismantle the British Empire,
and in conjunction with this, negotiated with Russia the construction
of a Washington-St. Petersburg cable, via the Pacific through San
Francisco and Vladivostok. Here is how he motivated the cable
project:
``If we have to battle England on the
sea, and should Russia be our ally, we shall have means of much
earlier intelligence than she.... I think ourselves fortunate in
having this great power as our sincere friend. We should keep up this
friendly feeling, which will finally give us an immense market for
our commerce, and give us a most powerful ally in common danger. We
will and must take a common interest in the affairs of Europe.''
After the war, Clay summarized his
mission as follows: ``I did more than any man to overthrow slavery. I
carried Russia with us and thus prevented what would have been a
strong alliance of France, England, and Spain against us, and thus
saved the nation.''
The entente concept of Clay and
Lincoln was developed in full, in a Clay dispatch to Lincoln from St.
Petersburg, dated July 25, 1861: ``I saw at a glance where the
feeling of England was. They hoped for our ruin. They are jealous of
our power. They care neither for the North nor the South. They hate
both. The London Times ... in concluding its comments on your message
[Lincoln's July 5, 1861 message to Congress] says: `And when we
prefer a frank recognition of Southern independence by the North to
the policy avowed in the President's message, it is solely because we
foresee as bystanders that this is the issue in which after infinite
loss and humiliation the contest must result.' And that is the tone
of England everywhere.... If England would not favor us whilst
following the lead of the anti-slavery policy--she will never be our
friend. She will now, if disaster comes upon our arms, join our
enemies. Be on your guard....
``All the Russian journals are for us.
In Russia we have a friend. The time is coming when she will be a
powerful one for us. The emancipation [of the serfs] move is the
beginning of a new era and new strength. She has immense lands,
fertile and undeveloped in the Amoor country, with iron and other
minerals. Here is where she must make the centre of her power against
England. Joined with our Navy on the Pacific coast we will one day
drive her [England] from the Indies: The source of her power: and
losing which she will fall.''
The communication concluded with
advice to Lincoln to: ``extend the blockade to every possible point
of entry, so that if England does intervene--she will be the
aggressor before all the world. Don't trust her in anything.''
From the Russian court
In this earliest phase of the
developing entente, the Russians were pro-American, though cautious.
The caution was a lawful expression of a legitimate Russian concern:
The Russians demanded to know if Lincoln would stand firm and fight
the conflict through to preserve the Union. This was precisely the
line of questioning of the czar's first meeting with Clay in July
1861, culminating with the question of what the Union would do should
England intervene. Clay advised Lincoln: ``I told the Emperor we did
not care what England did, that her interference would tend to unite
us the more.''
After this U.S. reassurance, Russia
stood firmly behind its U.S. alliance. The policy was elaborated in a
lengthy personal communication from Russian Foreign Minister
Gorchakov to President Lincoln, dated July 10, 1861: ``From the
beginning of the conflict which divides the United States of America,
you have been desired to make known to the federal government the
deep interest with which our August Master [Czar Alexander II] has
been observing the development of a crisis which puts in question the
prosperity and even the existence of the Union.
``The Emperor profoundly regrets that
the hope of a peaceful solution is not realized and that American
citizens, already in arms against each other, are ready to let loose
upon their country the most formidable of the scourges of political
society--civil war.
``For the more than eighty years that
it has existed the American Union owes its independence, its towering
rise, and its progress, to the concord of its members, consecrated,
under the auspices of its illustrious founders, by institutions which
have been able to reconcile union with liberty. This union has been
fruitful. It has exhibited to the world the spectacle of a prosperity
without example in the annals of history....
``The struggle which unhappily has
just arisen can neither be indefinitely prolonged, nor lead to the
total destruction of one of the parties. Sooner or later it will be
necessary to come to some settlement, which may enable the divergent
interests now actually in conflict to coexist.
``The American nation would then give
proof of high political wisdom in seeking in common such a settlement
before a useless effusion of blood, a barren squandering of strength
and of public riches, and acts of violence and reciprocal reprisals
shall have come to deepen an abyss between the two parties, to end in
their mutual exhaustion, and in the ruin, perhaps irreparable, of
their commercial and political power.
``Our August Master cannot resign
himself to such deplorable anticipations ... as a sovereign animated
by the most friendly sentiments toward the American Union. This union
is not simply in our eyes an element essential to the universal
political equilibrium. It constitutes, besides, a nation to which our
August Master and all Russia have pledged the most friendly interest;
for the two countries, placed at the two extremities of the world,
both in the ascending period of their development appear called to a
natural community of interests and of sympathies, of which they have
given mutual proofs to each other....
``In every event the American nation
may count on the part of our August Master during the serious crisis
which it is passing through at present."
Lincoln was deeply moved on receipt of
this Russian policy statement, telling the Russian ambassador:
``Please inform the Emperor of our gratitude and assure His Majesty
that the whole nation appreciates this new manifestation of
friendship. Of all the communications we have received from the
European governments, this is the most loyal.''
Lincoln then requested permission,
which was granted, to give the widest possible publicity to the
Russian message. This was crucial. The U.S.-Russian alliance was no
secret pact. Quite the contrary, by mutual agreement between the two
nations, the arrangement was given as much publicity as possible, as
were the reasons behind it and its absolute necessity to the Union.
Only later was the historic entente sold by Anglophile historians as
a Russian move for ``balance'' on the European continent. Sabotage
efforts by a `fifth column'
Clay's success in consolidating the
Union-Russian alliance produced more than a mild panic in London, and
the British fifth column in the U.S. government began to lobby
Lincoln for Clay's recall and replacement. The removal of Simon
Cameron as secretary of war, on the grounds of rank incompetence, was
to become the object of a ``double judo'' by the British agents of
influence.
In the spring of 1862, Lincoln was
persuaded by William Seward and his allies to replace Cameron with
the traitor Edwin Stanton as secretary of war, while Cameron was
shunted off to become the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, replacing
Clay. Clay was bitter over the move, and begged Lincoln to allow his
nephew, who had accompanied him as his assistant, to succeed him.
Despite these protests, Clay was recalled, leaving St. Petersburg in
June 1862, the same month in which Cameron arrived.
Clay fought these dirty maneuvers
tooth and nail, pointing out to Lincoln that the purpose of
appointing Cameron to St. Petersburg was to ensure no effective
American presence and communication with the Russian government
during the most critical phase of the Civil War. Clay wrote to
Lincoln in June 1862:
``I had made arrangements to stay here
and made the necessary expenditures accordingly. I have several
thousands of roubles of property here, which is usually turned over
to successors--but Mr. Cameron cannot buy: He says he will positively
ask leave to retire from this post at the end of the next quarter,
the 1st of September next. He proposes to come home on your leave of
absence, and then remain.''
This letter makes clear how
transparent the traitors' maneuver was: Get Clay out, put in Cameron
as a rump, three-month ambassador in name only, and then leave the
U.S.-Russian entente severed during precisely the phase of Civil War
in which the danger of overt British military intervention was
greatest.
Two things were to deny the
British-agent conspirators the fruit of these evil schemes. Clay,
though losing the recall battle, was to return in short stead to St.
Petersburg, as we shall see; and Gorchakov and the American faction
in Russia did not budge from their policies. The Russians, too, had
their British faction surrounding the czar, but the czar and
Gorchakov, like Lincoln, never wavered.
Clay fought back. Denied for the time
being the ambassadorship, he used the period of his return to the
United States to organize nationwide public support for the entente
with Russia, and for immediate emancipation of the slaves in the
United States.
Upon arriving in Washington, Clay gave
Lincoln a blunt strategic briefing on the European situation: ``All
over Europe governments are ready to intervene in America's affairs
and recognize the independence of the Confederate States.'' Clay
argued that ``only a forthright proclamation of emancipation'' and
alliance with Russia ``will block these European autocracies.''
In a speech in the American capital,
Clay began his public speaking tour for the consummation of the
U.S.-Russian entente:
``I think that I can say without
implications of profanity or want of deference, that since the days
of Christ himself such a happy and glorious privilege has not been
reserved to any other man to do that amount of good; and no man has
ever more gallantly or nobly done it than Alexander II, the Czar of
Russia. I refer to the emancipation of 23,000,000 serfs. Here then
fellow citizens, was the place to look for an ally. Trust him; for
your trust will not be misplaced. Stand by him, and he will, as he
has often declared to me he will, stand by you. Not only Alexander,
but his whole family are with you, men, women and children.''
Clay's policy of utilizing the
strategic options available to the Union to forestall English-French
armed intervention, was readily accepted by Lincoln in both areas:
movement towards emancipation, and securing the Russian alliance.
Lincoln immediately commissioned Clay to sound out public opinion in
his native border state of Kentucky on emancipation, before applying
the policy nationally.
It was now dawning on Stanton, Seward,
and the fifth column that their coup in removing Clay from the
ambassadorship was backfiring. Clay, in the United States, with
constant personal access to Lincoln, was a far more dangerous
adversary than Clay in St. Petersburg.
Seward advised Lincoln that Clay's
speaking activities were ``dangerous,'' that his ``unrestrained
agitation for emancipation will drive Kentucky into joining the
secessionist States.'' Lincoln accepted this ``advice'' to mend shaky
domestic political fences, and, as Cameron's resignation as
ambassador to Russia had just occurred, promptly reappointed Clay to
his ambassadorship. Clay wrote an immediate acceptance letter to
Lincoln:
``I avail myself of your kind promise
to send me back to my former mission to the Court of St. Petersburg
and where I flatter myself that I can better serve my country than in
the field under General Halleck who cannot repress his hatred of
liberal men into the ordinary courtesies of life.''
Russia saves the Union
During Clay's absence from St.
Petersburg from June 1862 until the spring of 1863, there was no
wavering of Russia's support for the Union. Cameron arrived in St.
Petersburg in June 1862 with instructions from Lincoln to secure an
interview with the czar, to ``learn the Russian monarch's attitude in
the event England and France force their unwelcome intervention.''
After the interview, Cameron was able to report to Lincoln: ``The
Czar's spokesmen have assured me that in case of trouble with the
other European powers, the friendship of Russia for the United States
would be shown in a decisive manner which no other nation will be
able to mistake.''
Cameron wrote the following on the
Russian political situation to Secretary of State Seward in July
1862: ``The Russians are evincing the most candid friendship for the
North.... They are showing a constant desire to interpret everything
to our advantage. There is no capital in Europe where the loyal
American meets with such universal sympathy as at St. Petersburg,
none where the suppression of our unnatural rebellion will be hailed
with more genuine satisfaction.''
Already by the Civil War's summer 1862
campaigns, every knowledgeable leading political figure in Europe and
the United States was drawing the conclusion that foreign
intervention in the American Civil War in support of the Confederacy
would be taken as a casus belli by Russia.
The autumn of 1862 was extremely
critical for the Union. England and France were on the verge of
military intervention on the side of the Confederacy. On the Union
side, everyone was girding for an Anglo-French invasion, an invasion
which could include British allies Spain and Austria as well.
Anglo-French pressure on Russia to abandon its pro-Union stance was
stepped up to fever pitch. The Union's salvation depended on Russia.
Lincoln, in this darkest hour of his
administration, sent an urgent personal letter to Russian Foreign
Minister Gorchakov for delivery to the czar. Lincoln believed
correctly that France had already decided to intervene and was only
awaiting a go-ahead from England. Lincoln was under no illusions that
if the Union was to be saved, it would be saved by Russia. And Russia
came through.
We quote here in full Foreign Minister
Gorchakov's reply to the President, drafted in the name of Czar
Alexander II. It is one of the most critical documents in American
and world history:
``You know that the government of
United States has few friends among the Powers. England rejoices over
what is happening to you; she longs and prays for your overthrow.
France is less actively hostile; her interests would be less affected
by the result; but she is not unwilling to see it. She is not your
friend. Your situation is getting worse and worse. The chances of
preserving the Union are growing more desperate. Can nothing be done
to stop this dreadful war? The hope of reunion is growing less and
less, and I wish to impress upon your government that the separation,
which I fear must come, will be considered by Russia as one of the
greatest misfortunes. Russia alone, has stood by you from the first,
and will continue to stand by you. We are very, very anxious that
some means should be adopted--that any course should be
pursued--which will prevent the division which now seems inevitable.
One separation will be followed by another; you will break into
fragments (emphasis in original).''
Bayard Taylor, secretary of the
legation to St. Petersburg, acting under Lincoln's instructions, gave
the U.S. reply:
``We feel that the Northern and
Southern States cannot peacefully exist side by side as separate
republics. There is nothing the American people desire so much as
peace, but peace on the basis of separation is equivalent to
continual war. We have only just called the whole strength of the
nation into action. We believe the struggle now commencing will be
final, and we cannot without disgrace and ruin, accept the only terms
tried and failed.''
Gorchakov reiterated Russia's stance,
giving Taylor the following message to convey to Lincoln. ``You know
the sentiments of Russia. We desire above all things the maintenance
of the American Union as one indivisible nation. We cannot take any
part, more than we have done. We have no hostility to the Southern
people. Russia has declared her position and will maintain it. There
will be proposals of intervention [by Britain]. We believe that
intervention could do no good at present. Proposals will be made to
Russia to join some plan of interference. She will refuse any
intervention of the kind. Russia will occupy the same ground as at
the beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon it, she will not
change. But we entreat you to settle the difficulty. I cannot express
to you how profound an anxiety we feel--how serious are our fears
(emphasis in original).''
How many Americans today know that
Russia intervened, at this October 1862 darkest hour of the American
Republic, to save it? But every American citizen knew it then, and
the entire proceedings were ordered published and distributed
throughout the nation by a joint resolution of Congress.
France was promoting an ``armistice''
plan that would have effectively stopped Lincoln's prosecution of the
war and rendered permanent the split in the Union. Britain's Lord
Russell favored the plan, ``with a view to the recognition of the
independence of the Confederates. I agree further that, in case of
failure, we ought to ourselves recognize the Southern States as an
independent state.''
The British cabinet was now plunged
into debate on whether to intervene, with all eyes and ears nervously
awaiting the signal from St. Petersburg of what Russia's response to
Britain's overtures would be. In the midst of the debate, Lord
Russell received a telegram from British Ambassador Napier in St.
Petersburg advising him that Russia had rejected Napoleon's proposal
of joint intervention. On Nov. 13, the British cabinet reached its
decision: ``It is the cabinet's belief that there exists no ground at
the moment to hope that Lincoln's government would accept the offer
of mediation.''
We give the final word to Czar
Alexander II, who held sole power to declare war for Russia. In an
interview to the American banker Wharton Barker on Aug. 17, 1879, he
said:
``In the Autumn of 1862, the
governments of France and Great Britain proposed to Russia, in a
formal but not in an official way, the joint recognition by European
powers of the independence of the Confederate States of America. My
immediate answer was: `I will not cooperate in such action; and I
will not acquiesce. On the contrary, I shall accept the recognition
of the independence of the Confederate States by France and Great
Britain as a casus belli for Russia. And in order that the
governments of France and Great Britain may understand that this is
no idle threat; I will send a Pacific fleet to San Francisco and an
Atlantic fleet to New York.
``Sealed orders to both Admirals were
given. My fleets arrived at the American ports, there was no
recognition of the Confederate States by Great Britain and France.
The American rebellion was put down, and the great American Republic
continues.
``All this I did because of love for
my own dear Russia, rather than for love of the American Republic. I
acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious
task to perform if the American Republic, with advanced industrial
development were broken up and Great Britain should be left in
control of most branches of modern industrial development.''
The Russian Navy arrives
The second half of 1863 and early 1864
mark the second critical phase of the Civil War period, where again
the world came very close to a British-instigated eruption of global
war. The second half of 1863 witnessed even more earnest British
deliberations on intervening, this time on a now-or-never basis.
By July 1863, desperation gripped
Lords Russell and Palmerston. The South's invasion of the North had
failed at Gettysburg. The violent anti-war movement in the North,
including the bloody New York City draft riots, had also failed. As
of July 4, 1863, the Union controlled the entire length of the
Mississippi, cutting the Confederacy in two, while Lincoln's naval
blockade had become almost completely effective. In Russia, the
British-orchestrated Polish rebellion was being extinguished. The
British grand strategy of dismembering both the United States and the
Russian Empire and creating the ``United States of Europe'' as a
satrapy was crumbling into dust.
In these utterly desperate
circumstances, Britain was crazy enough to go to war, and almost did.
Throughout the summer of 1863, thinly disguised ultimatums were
repeatedly hurled at Russia by Britain and France, and the British
were deliberating on intervening against the Union.
World war almost came in the late
summer and fall of 1863. The fact that it did not was not a result of
British policy in and of itself, but because joint U.S.-Russian war
preparations and preemptive actions raised the penalty factor to a
threshold sufficient to force Britain once again to withdraw from the
brink.
It was in this context that the entire
Russian Navy arrived in the United States on Sept. 24, 1863.
Russia's policy, from 1861 on, was war
avoidance as long as Britain did not intervene militarily against the
Union. From 1861, Russia developed a war-fighting strategy in the
event Britain could not be dissuaded from intervening. One critical
strategic aspect of this contingency plan concerned the deployment of
the Russian fleet.
To avoid a repetition of the disaster
of the Crimean War, where the fleet was bottled up and attacked in
the Baltic and Black Seas, Russia's Navy was placed on constant alert
status during the United States Civil War, ready to set sail and head
for the United States to join up with the United States Navy and
provide a maximum combined naval capability that would be directed
against the vulnerable island state of Britain. The timing of the
fleet's departure from Russian ports was decided on the basis of
highly accurate Russian intelligence estimates that considered the
outbreak of world war to be imminent. These estimates cohered with
the fact that Britain's propensity to go to war in late 1863 was far
greater than even during the intervention proposal period of late
1862.
The fleet that came on Sept. 24, 1863
to U.S. waters--on both coasts simultaneously--came under arrangement
of a U.S.-Russian political-military alliance which would become
fully activated in the event of war. Cassius Clay, during his tenure
as United States ambassador to Russia, spoke openly and continuously
of a U.S.-Russian alliance. No ambassador, without being subject to
immediate recall, could do such a thing if such an alliance did not
actually exist. Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov also announced
officially, in a communication to his ambassador, Stoeckl, that the
alliance existed:
``I have given much thought to the
possibility of concluding a formal political alliance ... but that
would not change anything in the existing position of the two nations
... the alliance already exists in our mutual interests and
traditions.''
To this memo, dated Oct. 22, 1863,
Alexander II added the comment, ``très bien'' (``very good'').
How the Russian Navy was built up
The actual history of U.S.-Russian
military-technological collaboration, both before and during the
Civil War, makes a mockery of the revisionist historians' claim that
there never was a Russian-American alliance. The origins of the
modern Russian Navy itself attest to this. John Paul Jones, or
``Pavel Ivanovich Jones'' as he was called during his service in the
Russian Navy, did not arrive in Russia in 1788 by a miracle and
receive a commission as a rear admiral in Catherine the Great's Navy.
Nor was it mere chance that a document drafted by Jones in 1791,
following his Russian tenure of duty, was adopted by Russia as the
basis for reorganizing its fleet into a modern Navy.
From 1781 on, Princess Catherine
Dashkov, the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences (of the same
Dashkov family that Cassius Clay frequently cites as ``my good
friends'' in his Memoirs), was in correspondence with Benjamin
Franklin and his great-nephew and Paris secretary, Jonathan
Williams--the future superintendent of West Point. Dashkov functioned
then and later as a liaison channeling Franklin and Williams's
political, scientific, and military writings into the Russian Navy
Ministry and the Russian Academy of Sciences, where they were
promptly translated and circulated. It was through similar network
arrangements among leading figures that Alexander Hamilton's Report
on Manufactures was translated and widely circulated in Russia by
1783.
In the period of Whig resurgence,
beginning in the 1840s, the strong military ties connecting the
United States and Russia were fashioned. It was the former U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers officers who supervised the construction of
Russia's first railroad. The individuals who were to become the naval
commanders of both powers during the Civil War were already committed
in their own minds to the policy of entente between the two powers,
based on their mutual commitment to progress, no later than the
Crimean War years. In the extensive fraternization and discussion
that occurred among the Mediterranean squadron commanders (Farragut,
the Grand Duke Constantine, Lessovsky, and others), a powerful
U.S.-Russian military alliance against Great Britain came to be
viewed by the participants as a historical necessity.
After the Civil War began, the
implementation of a joint U.S.-Russian naval buildup began. Long
before the Russian fleet was en route to the United States, a vast
stream of American military aid had already begun transforming Russia
into a first-rate naval power, soon to be technologically superior to
Great Britain. The abrupt transformation of backward Russia into a
first-class naval power was the subject of many fear-ridden
commentaries in the London Times. In 1861, Russia still had no
shipbuilding facilities for ironclads. By mid-1862, Cassius Clay's
``Russian system'' had not only established new shipyards capable of
turning out ironclads (of the latest American designs, built to
American specifications), but also the necessary metalworking,
machine tool, and armaments enterprises--all with completely
indigenous materials and labor force.
By the end of the Civil War, Russia
had 13 ironclads, equipped with 15-inch guns, constructed from the
blueprints of the U.S.S. Passaic--warships that nothing in the
British Navy at the time was capable of sinking.
"God bless the Russians"
On Sept. 24, 1863, the Russian fleet
dropped anchor in New York harbor. America exploded with joy.
Harper's Weekly took special pride in pointing out the American
design of the ships and the armaments on board:
``The two largest of the squadron, the
frigates Alexander Nevsky and Peresvet, are evidently vessels of
modern build, and much about them would lead an unpracticed eye to
think they were built in this country.... The flagship's guns are of
American make, being cast in Pittsburgh.''
New York City was ``gaily bedecked
with American Russian flags,'' the fleet's officers were given a
special parade with a United States military honor guard escorting
them up Broadway past cheering crowds.
British newspapers began an angry
howl, denouncing ``Lincoln's threats of war'' against Britain and
launching a press campaign ``poking fun'' at the ``Americans, who
have been hoodwinked by the Russians.''
Harper's Weekly ran an editorial in
reply to this English psychological warfare campaign which expressed
the prevailing consensus in the United States:
``John Bull thinks that we are
absurdly bamboozled by the Russian compliments and laughs to see us
deceived by the sympathy of Muscovy.... But we are not very much
deceived. Americans understand that the sympathy of France in our
Revolution for us was not for love of us, but from hatred of England.
They know, as Washington long ago told them, that romantic friendship
between nations is not to be expected. And if they had latterly
expected it, England has utterly undeceived them.
``Americans do not suppose that Russia
is on the point of becoming a Republic, but they observe that the
English aristocracy and the French Empire hate a republic quite as
much as the the Russian monarchy hates it; and they remark that while
the French Empire imports coolies into its colonies, and winks at
slavery, and while the British government cheers a political
enterprise founded upon slavery, and by its chief organs defends the
system, Russia emancipates her serfs. There is not the least harm in
observing these little facts. Russia, John Bull will remember,
conducts herself as a friendly power. That is all. England and France
have shown themselves to be unfriendly powers. And we do not forget
it.''
The Russian fleet was to remain in
United States waters for seven months, departing in April 1864 only
after both Russia and the United States had fully satisfied
themselves that all danger of war from Europe had passed. Throughout
the stay there were continuous celebrations, festivities, and a daily
public outpouring of American gratitude. The Russian ships stationed
off New York sailed in December for Washington, and made their way up
the Potomac River, dropping anchor at the nation's capital. This
commenced another round of celebrations. With the unfortunate
exception of Lincoln, who at the time was suffering a mild case of
smallpox, the entire cabinet and Mrs. Lincoln hosted the Russian
officers at gala receptions on board the flagship. The Russians
toasted Lincoln, and Mrs. Lincoln led a toast to the czar and the
emancipation of the serfs.
A two-power, two-ocean Navy
The Russian Pacific fleet's stay in
San Francisco was also filled with celebrations, and provides further
evidence of how detailed were the plans which had been worked out for
the alliance.
During the Civil War, the United
States had only a one-ocean navy, and it patrolled the East Coast
while the Pacific Coast remained unprotected by U.S. naval forces.
Under these conditions, the Russian fleet at San Francisco filled the
wartime function of a U.S. Pacific fleet. Recall here the testimony
of American Admiral Farragut and Russian Atlantic fleet commander,
Admiral Lessovsky, corroborating the czar's reference to the
existence of sealed orders for the Russian fleet's intervention on
the side of the Union should England or her allies attack Lincoln's
government.
We now cite the testimony of Pacific
fleet commander Popov to establish the case that not only the Russian
fleet in the Atlantic, but the czar's Pacific fleet, as well, was
under such orders.
In the winter of 1863-64, rumors swept
San Francisco that an attack by the Confederate raiders Alabama and
Sumter was imminent. The California government appealed to Admiral
Popov for protection. Popov's reply, citing his orders for the
contingency of a British or a Confederate naval attack on the West
Coast, demonstrates beyond a doubt that London's continuous
denunciations of a ``secret alliance'' between Russia and the United
States during the Civil War period were based on reality:
``Should a Southern cruiser attempt an
assault ... we shall put on steam and clear for action.... The ships
of his Imperial Majesty are bound to assist the authorities of every
place where friendship is offered them, in all measures which may be
deemed necessary by the local authorities, to repel any attempt
against the security of the place.''
The United States West Coast was never
attacked.
The postwar outlook
The central determinant of world
politics through the period from 1863 to 1867 was the drive of
American Whigs and the Russian government to consolidate their
wartime alliance into a permanent entente. Throughout the 1860s,
American and Russian ``Whigs'' continuously pushed to secure this
permanent alliance, even, in the American case, under the enormous
handicaps that emerged after Lincoln's assassination.
At the height of the celebration that
engulfed the United States following the arrival of the Russian
Fleet, on Oct. 17, 1863, Harper's Weekly ran an editorial which
expressed the nation's dominant public sentiment. The editorial
called for a permanent alliance with Russia, as the international
strategic anchor to guarantee world peace and economic development
for decades to come. This document speaks eloquently for itself:
``It seems quite doubtful, under these
circumstances, whether we can possibly much longer maintain the
position of proud isolation which Washington coveted....
``The alliance of the Western Powers
[Britain and France], maintained through the Crimean War and
exemplified in the recognition of the Southern rebels by both powers
conjointly--is in fact, if not in name, a hostile combination against
the United States.
``What is our proper reply to this
hostile combination?|... Would it not be wise to meet the hostile
alliance by an alliance with Russia? France and England united can do
and dare much against Russia alone or the United States alone; but
against Russia and the United States combined what could they do?
``The analogies between the American
and Russian people have too often been described to need further
explanation here. Russia, like the United States, is a nation of the
future. Its capabilities are only just being developed. Its national
destiny is barely shaped. Its very institutions are in their cradle,
and have yet to be modeled to fit advancing civilization and the
spread of intelligence. Russia is in the agonies of a terrible
transition: the Russian serfs like the American Negroes, are
receiving their liberty; and the Russian boiars, like the Southern
slaveowners, are mutinous at the loss of their property. When this
great problem shall have been solved, and the Russian people shall
consist of 100,000,000 intelligent, educated beings, it is possible
that Russian institutions will have been welded by the force of
civilization into a similarity with ours. At that period, the United
States will probably also contain 100,000,000 educated, intelligent
people. Two such peoples, firmly bound together by an alliance as
well as by traditional sympathy and good feeling, what would be
impossible? Certainly the least of the purposes which they could
achieve would be to keep the peace of the world....
``At the present time Russia and the
United States occupy remarkably similar positions. A portion of the
subjects of the Russian Empire, residing in Poland, have attempted to
secede and set up an independent national existence, just as our
Southern slaveowners have tried to secede from the Union and set up a
slave Confederacy; and the Czar, like the government of the Union,
has undertaken to put down the insurrection by force of arms. In that
undertaking, which every government is bound to make under penalty of
national suicide, Russia, like the United States has been thwarted
and annoyed by the interference of France and England. The Czar, like
Mr. Lincoln, nevertheless, perseveres in his purpose; and being
perfectly in earnest and determined, has sent a fleet into our waters
in order that, if war should occur, British and French commerce
should not escape as cheaply as they did during the Crimean contest.
``An alliance between Russia and the
United States at the present time would probably relieve both of us
from all apprehensions of foreign interference. It is not likely it
would involve either nation in war. On the contrary, it would
probably be the best possible guarantee against war. It would be
highly popular in both countries....
``The reception given last week in
this city to Admiral Lisovski [Lessovsky] and his officers will
create more apprehension at the Tuilleries and at St. James than even
the Parrott gun or the capture of the Atlanta. If it be followed up
by diplomatic negotiations, with a view to an alliance with the Czar,
it may prove an epoch of no mean importance in history.''
The end of the entente
The fact that such a post-Civil War
epoch of peace and development, based on a formal ``superpowers''
entente, did not materialize, requires no long-winded explanation.
Lincoln's assassination by a British conspiracy cost the United
States Whigs the Executive. After Lincoln's death, the White House
and the cabinet fell under the sway of British agents of influence,
sealing the fate of the entente.
A year and a day following Lincoln's
death, on April 16, 1866, the czar narrowly escaped assassination.
This galvanized the American Whigs into action. The Republican
congressional leadership drafted a resolution, which was
overwhelmingly passed by Congress, authorizing the dispatch of a
special envoy to Russia ``to convey in person to His Imperial Majesty
America's good will and congratulations to the twenty millions of
serfs upon the providential escape from danger of the Sovereign to
whose head and heart they owe the blessings of their freedom.''
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Gustavus Vasa Fox was selected to head the mission. On Aug. 8, 1866,
Fox, accompanied by Ambassador Clay, formally presented the joint
resolution of the Congress to Alexander II, with Russian Foreign
Minister Gorchakov standing in attendance. The American delegation
went on a national tour, with entertainment, fireworks, and parades
everywhere.
The U.S. delegation's tour marked the
postwar high-water mark of the entente. After late 1866, the cabinet
of the Johnson administration, under Secretary of State Seward's
direction, successfully implemented a containment strategy against
the Whig goals. The British consolidated their position in Canada,
one step in reestablishing British imperial hegemony on a global
scale. The consolidation included the murder of Alexander II at the
hands of a British-deployed assassin in March 1881.
Humanity, then, came very close to
securing the world for global industrial development, with a United
States-Russian entente as its strategic core. The prospects for
entente and the objective capability of a United States-Russian
alliance to finish off the City of London exist today. We dare not
fail a second time.
References
Adams, Great Britain and the American
Civil War
John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John
Quincy Adams, Vol. 2.
Thomas W. Balch, The Alabama
Arbitration (Philadelphia: Allen, Lane and Scott, 1900).
Wharton Barker, ``The Secret of
Russian Friendship,'' published in the Independent, LVI, March 24,
1904.
Rev. Charles B. Boynton, The Four
Great Powers: England, France, Russia and America: Their Policy,
Resources, and Probably Future (Cincinnati, Chicago: C.F. Vent and
Co., 1866).
James Callahan, ``Russo-American
Relations During the American Civil War,'' Morgantown: West Virginia
University Studies in American History, 1908, Series I, Diplomatic
History No. 1.
Cassius Marcellus Clay, The Life of
Cassius Marcellus Clay, Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (Cincinnati:
J.F. Brennan and Co., 1886).
Charles A. DeArnaud, The Union and Its
Ally Russia (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1890).
Harper's Weekly, Oct. 17, 1863.
Lincoln Papers: No. 10880-4, Clay to
Lincoln, private, July 25, 1861.
Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones:
A Sailor's Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1959).
Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, 91:1947.
James R. Robertson, A Kentuckian at
the Court of the Tsars (Berea, Kentucky: Berea College Press, 1935).
Benjamin Platt Thomas,
``Russo-American Relations, 1815-1867,'' Johns Hopkins Studies,
series 48 (1930).
U.S. Department of State Archives,
Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, June 21, 1861.
U.S. Department of State manuscripts,
Cameron to Seward, Dispatches, Russia, 1860-1869. Washington.
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