STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
ON APRIL 4, 1866, nearly a year after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Russian Czar Alexander II narrowly escaped a similar fate. Within a few weeks, the U.S. Congress adopted a joint resolution expressing its “deep regret of the attempt made upon the life of the Emperor of Russia by an enemy of emancipation.” At Congress’ request, President Andrew Johnson dispatched a special envoy—Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox—to hand-deliver the resolution to Alexander. In early August, a squadron of American naval vessels, led by the ironclad USS Miantonomoh, dropped anchor off the Baltic port of Kronstadt, where a 21-gun salute and harbor festooned with U.S. flags awaited them.
The ensuing month of ceremonies, dinners, tours, fireworks, and other festivities celebrated the unlikely friendship, never formalized, between “the great Empire of the East, and the Great Republic of the West.” In his remarks to the czar, Fox praised “the unwavering fidelity of the imperial government…throughout the recent period of convulsion.” In return, Alexander promised to “contribute all his efforts to… strengthen the bonds.”
Today such mutual regard is in stark contrast to the enmity that has characterized Russian–American relations since the end of World War II. The connection between a young and growing democracy and an entrenched autocracy also struck some 19th-century observers as unusual: An English traveler during the 1850s attributed it to “some mysterious magnetism” drawing “these two mighty nations into closer contact.” But for many Americans, Russia seemed the most trustworthy of the European nations—an especially reliable buffer against the imperial schemes of Great Britain and France.
The two nations had enjoyed a diplomatic relationship since 1809, when James Madison appointed John Quincy Adams as the first minister to Russia. And in 1832, Russia became the first nation to enjoy “most favored nation” trading status with the United States. Staunch American support during Russia’s 1853-56 Crimean War against Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire would only strengthen the so-called “mysterious magnetism.”
Although the Franklin Pierce administration (1853-57) successfully blunted efforts by Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, the Russian in Washington, D.C., to craft
