U.S. Civil War: The US-Russian Alliance that Saved the Union

The Threat of British Intervention

The two great interlocutors of Union foreign policy were Great Britain and Russia, and the geopolitical vicissitudes of the twentieth century tended to distort perceptions of both, minimizing the importance of both British threat and Russian friendship. Crook, in his valuable bibliographical essay, traces this tendency back to the “Great Rapprochement” between Britain and the US in the early twentieth century. The standard work on US-UK relations, Crook notes, was for many years E. D. Adams’ Great Britain and the American Civil War, which plays down friction between London and Washington, and narrates events “from the meridian of London.” (Crook 381)

The Russia-American Special Relationship that Saved the Union

Adams tells his reader that he does not view his topic as part of American history; rather, he poses for himself the contorted question of “how is the American Civil War to be depicted by historians of Great Britain…?” (Adams I 2) Adams treats the autumn crisis of 1862 as the main danger point of US-UK conflict, writing that “here, and here only, Great Britain voluntarily approached the danger of becoming involved in the American conflict.” (Adams II 34) He pleads for understanding for the much-vituperated British role, recalling that “the great crisis in America was almost equally a crisis in the domestic history of Great Britain itself…,” and providing valuable materials in this regard. (Adams I 2) Adams generally relegates Russo-American diplomacy to the footnotes, mentioning the “extreme friendship” and even the “special relationship” of these two nations. In the North, he notes, Russia was viewed as a “true friend” in contrast to the “unfriendly neutrality” of Great Britain and France. (Adams II, 45n, 70n, 225) But for Adams, the main lesson is that the Anglo-American disputes of the Civil War era have “distorted” the “natural ties of friendship, based upon ties of blood and a common heritage of literature and history and law” which exist or ought to exit between the two countries. Those disputes, he suggests, can be relegated to the category of “bitter and exaggerated memories.” (Adams II 305)

Seward, 1861: A US-UK War Would “Wrap the World in Flames”

Kenneth Bourne’s Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815-1908 provides an effective antidote to such sentimental thinking in the form of a notable chapter (singled out for attention by Crook) on the British planning for war with the United States at the time of the Trent affair in December-January 1861, when Seward threatened to “wrap the world in flames” and the British lion roared in reply. [3] Two Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, were taken off the British merchant ship Trent by a US warship as they were sailing to plead the cause of intervention in London and Paris; the London press became hysterical with rage, and the anti-Union group in the cabinet saw their chance to start a transatlantic war. This study draws not only upon the British Admiralty archives in the Public Record Office, but also on the papers of Admiral Sir Alexander Milne in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Bourne depicts the British predicament as their “defenceless” position in Canada, even with the help of the 10,000 additional regular infantry which Palmerston deployed in response to the crisis. (Bourne 211) A recurrent British fear was that their soldiers would desert to the American side, urged on by “crimps.” (Bourne 217). Their Canadian vulnerability, the British thought, encouraged Seward and others to twist the tail of the British lion. The US had the only serious warships on the Great Lakes, British fortifications were weak, Canadian volunteers were scarce, and there were few decent muskets for them. The greatest problem was that the Saint Lawrence River was blocked by ice in winter, preventing re-enforcements from reaching Quebec City by water; the only roads inland went dangerously parallel to the Maine border. Some of the British staff officers had to land in Boston and take the Grand Trunk Railway to Montreal. [4] One is left with the impression that winter ice might have cooled Palmerston’s aggressivity even before Seward’s release of the captured Confederate envoys Mason and Slidell did.

The Union and Russia

The Russian-British rivalry was of course the central antagonism of European history after the Napoleonic era, and the Russian attitude towards London coincided with the traditional American resentment against the former colonial power. Benjamin Platt Thomas’s older study shows that the US-Russian convergence became decisive during the Crimean War; while Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire attacked Russia, the United States was ostentatiously friendly to the court of St. Petersburg. He depicts Russian minister to Washington Éduard de Stoeckl as a diplomat “whose sole aim was to nurture the chronic anti-British feeling in the United States.” (Thomas 111) According to Thomas, Stoeckl succeeded so well that there was even a perceptible chance that the United States might enter the Crimean War on the Russian side. The US press and public were all on the side of Russia, and hostile to the Anglo-French, to the chagrin of the erratic US President Pierce (who had been close to Admiralty agent Giuseppe Mazzini’s pro-British Young America organization) and the doughface politician James Buchanan. The latter, at that time US envoy to London, embraced the British view of the Tsar as “the Despot.” (Thomas 117) Thomas finds that “the Crimean War undoubtedly proved the wisdom of Russia’s policy of cultivating American friendship, and in fact, drew the two nations closer together.” (Thomas 120) But Thomas glosses over some of the more important US-UK frictions during this phase, which included British army recruiting in the US, and the ejection of the British ambassador as persona non grata. (Thomas 120)

Turning to the conflict of 1861-65, Thomas points out that “in the first two years of the war, when its outcome was still highly uncertain, the attitude of Russia was a potent factor in preventing Great Britain and France from adopting a policy of aggressive intervention.” (Thomas 129) He shows that the proposed British-French interference promoted by Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, in October 1862 was “deterred at this time mainly” by the Russian attitude, and cites Russell’s note to Palmerston concluding that Britain “ought not to move at present without Russia.” [5] (Thomas 132)

The critical importance of Russian help in deterring the British and Napoleon III as well is borne out by a closer analysis. As early as 1861, Russia alerted the Lincoln government to the machinations of Napoleon III, who was already scheming to promote a joint UK-France-Russia intervention in favor of the Confederacy. [6] As Henry Adams, the son and private secretary of US Ambassador to London Charles Francis Adams, sums up the strategic situation during Lee’s first invasion of Maryland, on the eve of the Battle of Antietam: These were the terms of this singular problem as they presented themselves to the student of diplomacy in 1862: Palmerston, on September 14, under the impression that the President was about to be driven from Washington and the Army of the Potomac dispersed, suggested to Russell that in such a case, intervention might be feasible. Russell instantly answered that, in any case, he wanted to intervene and should call a Cabinet for the purpose. Palmerston hesitated; Russell insisted….” [7]

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln used the Confederate repulse at Antietam to issue a warning that slavery would be abolished in areas still engaged in rebellion against the United States on January 1, 1863. The Russian Tsar Alexander II had liberated the 23 million serfs of the Russian Empire in 1861, so this underlined the nature of the US-Russian convergence as a force for human freedom. This imminent Emancipation Proclamation was also an important political factor in slowing Anglo-French meddling, but it would not have been decisive by itself. The British cabinet, as Seward had predicted, regarded emancipation as an act of desperation. The London Times accused Lincoln in lurid and racist terms of wanting to provoke a slave rebellion and a race war,

Russia Rejects the Anglo-French Intrigues for Interference

The clouds of world war gathered densely over the planet. Russell and Gladstone, now joined by Napoleon III, continued to demand aggressive meddling in US affairs. This outcome was avoided because of British and French fears of what Russia might do if the continued to launch bellicose gestures against the Union. On October 29, 1862 there occurred in St. Petersburg an extremely cordial meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Gortchakov with US chargé d’affaires Bayard Taylor, which was marked by a formal Russian pledge never to move against the US, and to oppose any attempt by other powers to do so. Taylor reported these comments by Gortchakov to the State Department: “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 and France]. 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.” [13]

The Journal de St. Petersbourg, the official gazette of the Tsarist government, denounced the Anglo-French intervention plan against the US, which had been inspired by Russell. This article helped prevent a wider war: the British cabinet, informed of the Russian attitude by telegraph, voted down Russell’s aggressive project. Russell made his last bid to swing the British cabinet in favor of a policy of interference together with Napoleon III against the Union on November 12, 1862, but he was unable to carry the day, and this turned out to be his last chance for the year.

Seward thought that if the Anglo-French were to assail the Union, they would soon find themselves at war with Russia as well. He wrote to John Bigelow early in the war: “I have a belief that the European State, whichever one it may be, that commits itself to intervention anywhere in North America, will sooner or later fetch up in the arms of a native of an oriental country not especially distinguished for amiability of manners or temper.” (Thomas 128)

Adams to Russell: Superfluous to Point Out this Means War

The summer of 1863, despite the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, was marked by another close brush with US-UK war. It was on September 5, 1863 that US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams told Lord Russell that if the Laird rams – powerful ironclad warships capable of breaking the Union blockade which were then under construction in England — were allowed to leave port, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.” [14] Lord Russell had to pause, and then backed off entirely. The Laird rams were put under surveillance by the British government on September 9, and finally seized by the British government in mid-October, 1863. (Adams II 147) They never fought for the Confederacy.

A revolt against Russian domination of Poland, incited by the British, started in 1863 and lasted into late 1864. Crook points out that it was Lord Russell who told Lord Lyons in March 1863 that the Polish issue had the potential to create a Russo-American common front and thus revolutionize world power relations, evidently to the detriment of London. (Crook 285) Such a prophecy was coherent with the then -fashionable ideas of de Tocqueville about Russia and America as the two great powers of the future.

US Navy Secretary Gideon Welles: “God Bless the Russians”

Coming on the heels of the bloody Union reverse at Chickamauga, the news of the Russian fleet unleashed an immense wave of euphoria in the North. It was this moment that inspired the later verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most popular writers in America, for the 1871 friendship visit of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis:

Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, Fettered and chill is the rivulet’s flow; Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember Who was our friend when the world was our foe. Fires of the North in eternal communion, Blend your broad flashes with evening’s bright star; God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar! [15]

There's more, but I'm not sure I can post the link here...

They made a terrible mistake then, now is their chance to make up for it.

I would like to read the whole thing if you could. Thanks for this much so far.

It's a pretty long article. Try to paste the title in google search engine and see what comes up.

Thanks

Let alone 30 million Russians died in WWII - essentially diverting German troops to save US and British soldiers lives and ultimately free western Europe.

I have been to Russia - they are a wonderful, hospitable, proud independent people.

Why am I supposed to regard them as an enemy on the basis of what is told to me by people who want to deny my rights and freedoms in my country.

Russia asked the "allies" 9 times to open a second front against Hitler. It was an illuminati call, I guess, to do it finally.