The Curious Entente Cordial

Some 15 years before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, an enterprising American adventurer, Henry Wikoff, was sailing between Yalta and Odessa and debating with Russian Prince Mikhail Vorontsov the nature of American government.

“It is a strange experiment to put a government in the hands of the masses,” Vorontsov said, opining that holding frequent elections makes for an erratic government.

Wikoff, recounting this conversation in his book, Reminiscences of an Idler, responded that the common interest of the people is reflected in democratic elections.

To this Vorontsov replied: “You have a system of slavery supported by the South and condemned by the North. These opposite views are founded on antagonistic interests, and how is a collision sooner or later to be avoided?”

The collision would not be avoided. Under Abraham Lincoln, the United States would, during the Civil War of 1861-1865, be forced to address the contradictions tabled at the founding of its democracy, a system, needless to say, that was viewed by the ruling classes of Europe as dangerous and revolutionary.

Meanwhile, Europe had its own problems. When the 1848 popular revolutions swept the continent, the United States sympathized with those fighting oppression. Lincoln, a young attorney in Springfield, Illinois sided with “the patriotic efforts” of people in Hungary, Ireland, Germany and France “who have unsuccessfully fought to establish in their several governments the supremacy of the people.” He deplored Tsar Nicholas’ military intervention in support of the Hapsburgs to quash Hungarian independence. Writing to his friend, Joshua Speed, in August 1855, Lincoln fulminated against tyranny and bigotry, stating, “When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Despite this background of mutual incomprehension and even occasional contempt, two extraordinary leaders of Russia and the United States – Tsar Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln – maintained a brief correspondence, established friendly relations and developed a working partnership; a significant, though little known entente cordial.

Both men, at roughly the same time, emancipated enslaved people in their countries: the Russian peasantry in 1861, American slaves in 1863. Both leaders were tried by domestic unrest: the American Civil War in the United States and terrorism in Russia. And both leaders were assassinated: Lincoln for having gone too far, Alexander II for not having gone far enough.

When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Russian Chargé de Affaires, Edouard de Stoeckl – who had been in Washington since 1841 as secretary of the Russian legation, and had married an American – made every effort to involve the United States in the conflict. Believing in the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Stoeckl followed and delighted in the commercial disputes between the United States and Great Britain. He urged St. Petersburg “to offer [the U.S.] special inducements in the way of lower tariffs, especially on cotton and colonial goods” and observed that the “Americans will go after anything that has enough money in it. They have the ships, they have the men, and they have the daring spirit. The blockading fleet [of British and French ships] will think twice before firing on the Stars and Stripes.”

Stoeckl’s lobbying efforts did not succeed in engaging the U.S. militarily on behalf of Russia, but they did foster sympathy for the Russian cause. Hundreds of Americans requested letters of marque from the Russian legation to fight the British and French. Three hundred riflemen from Kentucky volunteered to fight in Sevastopol in the service of the tsar. And when, after losing the war due to backwardness and the stultifying effect of its feudal system, Russia sought to raise some 106 naval ships that had been scuttled during the war to block entry of the English and French fleets into the Sevastopol harbor, it looked abroad for knowledge and experience, choosing Col. John E. Gowen from Boston. Gowen, described by the New York Herald in March 1857 as “a self-made, enterprising Yankee,” was head of the Boston Relief and Submarine Company and an expert at raising ships.

Russian Chargé de Affaires Edouard de Stoeckl tried to bring the U.S. into Russia’s Crimean War and helped engineer the visit to the U.S. by the Russian fleet.

But no expertise from abroad could help resolve the problems that faced Alexander II after the defeat in the Crimean War. Russia was isolated internationally and lagged economically. The war had pushed Russia to the brink of financial ruin. Peasant unrest against serfdom, though disorganized and spontaneous, became more frequent. The educated sector of the population was choking on censorship. The state system was in crisis and bureaucrats at all levels – from scribe to minister – were engaged in bribery and embezzlement.

Alexander II, by nature, was not a man of liberal beliefs. He had participated in both the civil and military affairs of his father, Nicholas I, without questioning his military-style police regime. Alexander II chaired the reactionary secret committees on the question of Russian peasant serfs in 1846 and 1848, but he was not a fanatic and was admired for his common sense. The growing domestic crisis galvanized the new tsar to consider reform; yet it was reform for the sole purpose of preserving the autocracy.

With this in mind, in March 1856, on the very heels of the Crimean War, Alexander II addressed the leaders of the Russian nobility:

“As you yourselves know, the existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfdom from above, than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below.”

The Russian government had long been aware that paid labor was more productive than servile work, and low agricultural productivity was contributing to Russia’s growing budget deficit. The prospect of an imminent fiscal crisis persuaded many of the top bureaucrats of the need for reform.

In fact, many of the domestic reforms enacted under Alexander II were but official recognition for what society had been agitating: the free issuance of passports for travel abroad, which increased five-fold from 1856 to 1859; the easing of censorship on the press and literature; allowing universities greater independence; engaging in commerce with foreign nations and adopting European advances in science. The size of the army was reduced and, on the occasion of the coronation in August 1856, amnesty was declared for some 9,000 political prisoners.

Alexander II’s view of autocracy, however, varied little from his father’s. In the end, the balancing act of reforming society and the state, but not the autocracy, proved to be untenable.

Two days after James Buchanan’s inauguration as the 15th president in March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, maintaining that Negro slaves were not citizens but property, no less than cattle, and that owners of slaves were entitled to protection of such property in every part of the Union. With one ruling, the Missouri Compromise and all acts that prohibited the trafficking in slaves became unconstitutional.

While national debates raged over the Dred Scott decision, in June 1858, Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator from Illinois with his memorable speech, noted for the phrase “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln’s inspiring oratory, compelling plain logic, and superior debating skill helped to catapult him to the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1860.

Stoeckl and other members of the diplomatic corps did not have a high opinion of Lincoln. They perceived him as a provincial lawyer with no experience in statesmanship. Stoeckl reported to St. Petersburg that, in his view, the more able statesmen was Senator William Henry Seward, also on the Republican ballot for nomination. Stoeckl, like many others, feared “that [with] the election of Lincoln... party passions might cause the people to lose their heads and lead them to disrupt the Union.”

Stoeckl believed that the cleaving of the United States in two and the confusion and instability that reigned was in large part the fault of the U.S. Constitution, which should be changed if the nation were to be saved:

In order to consolidate the federal pact it would be indispensable to remodel the Constitution by giving the government more extensive power to restrict universal suffrage; to hold elections less frequently, since elections create disorders and anarchy....

With the election of Lincoln in November 1860, the parade of southern states seceding from the Union began with South Carolina. Stoeckl wrote to Gorchakov:

Without any doubt the secession of South Carolina will be followed by other slave States. The dissolution of the Union from this day forward may be considered to be a fait accompli.

President Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II

On March 3, 1861 (February 19, old style), just one day before Lincoln took the oath of office as the 16th President of the United States (assuring the South he would not seek to eradicate slavery where it already existed), Tsar Alexander II used his goose-feathered plume to sign the Emancipation Reform and free 23 million Russian serfs (with a compromise to the landed gentry that there would be a two-year transition period). The manifesto was read in all the churches. It granted serfs full rights as free citizens: right to marry without permission, rights to own property and a business. The serfs who toiled in the fields would be able to buy land from their landlords, whereas household serfs were granted freedom but no land.

The U.S. minister in St. Petersburg, John Appleton, wrote to Secretary of State William Seward, expressing optimism that the freeing of the serfs would presage further reform:

Under the old system, with no constitution, no parliament, no courts of justice properly so-called, no people, a few nobles exhausting the resources of the country by luxury and extravagance, education confined to a small class,... and all powers civil and religious, centered absolutely in one man; under this system, I say, Russia could scarcely keep its place much longer in Europe as a civilized power. The first movement has now been made towards a better condition of things, and whatever may be the difficulties, I hope the reform will advance to its consummation.

The freeing of serfs in autocratic Russia emboldened antislavery leaders in the United States to emancipate the 4 million slaves held in Southern states. Horace Greeley, editor of the influential New York Tribune, pointedly contrasted Russia’s bold move with that of the adopted constitution of the Confederate States enacted exactly a week after the tsar signed his manifesto. In April, just days before the start of the Civil War, Greeley wrote:

The Manifesto of the Czar is throughout in most striking contrast to the recent Manifestoes of the leaders of the rebel slaveholders in this country. [The Confederates] with brutal coolness doom a whole race to eternal bondage .... The Russian autocrat, on the other hand, admits that man has certain rights.... The whole world and all succeeding ages will applaud the Emperor Alexander for the abolition of Slavery in Russia. But what does the world think, what will future generations think, of the attempt to make Slavery perpetual in America?

In April 1861, Fort Sumter fell and the inevitable start of the Civil War made Russia nervous. A divided and weakened United States would not be able to counterbalance Great Britain and France, which was vital if Russia was to restore its place in the European balance of power after the Crimean War. This was openly acknowledged in a letter written by Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov to Stoeckl in July:

...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 extremities of the two worlds, both in the ascending period of their development, appear called to a natural community of interests and of sympathies, of which they have already given mutual proofs to each other.

Indeed, Tsar Alexander II himself, in receiving the new U.S. envoy, Cassius Clay, told him that he hoped for “the perpetuity of the friendship between the two nations, now that in addition to all former ties we were bound together by a common sympathy in the common cause of emancipation.”

The northern abolitionists followed the developments after Alexander II’s decree and the disturbances among peasants who were impatient with the two-year delay of their freedom. The New York Tribune took note, concluding that nothing short of instantaneous and complete emancipation would suffice. “In dealing with our own problem, it concerns us to consider alike the encouragement and the warning of [Russia’s] example.”

Lincoln realized that to preserve the Union he had to enforce the democratic principles that were laid out by the founding fathers and he irrevocably concluded that “slavery must die that the Union might live.” On July 22, Lincoln secretly convened his Cabinet and told them that he had drafted an Emancipation Proclamation that would go into effect in January 1863.

In April 1861, Stoeckl warned St. Petersburg that “England will take advantage of the first opportunity to recognize the seceded States and that France will follow her.” Lincoln, in a last ditch effort to avoid war, proclaimed a blockade of seven seceded southern states, encompassing 3,500 miles of coastline and 12 southern ports. Britain declared neutrality, but recognized the Confederate States as belligerent under international law, despite the protestations of Lincoln that the conflict was a local insurrection in which no foreign power had a right to meddle. Britain’s move was seen by the Union forces as an unfriendly act and the first step toward recognition of the Confederacy.

When France followed Britain’s example and recognized the Confederacy as belligerent, Stoeckl reported to St. Petersburg that Secretary of State Seward “became greatly irritated about this,” and that Seward informed the French Minister to the U.S., Henri Mercier, “that he realized with regret that the French shared the views and the intentions of Great Britain.” Stoeckl concluded that, “As a result of these developments a rupture between the United States and England and perhaps with France seems to be inevitable.”

Mercier tried to convince his British counterpart, Richard Lyons, that joint intervention would work if Russia were included. Both European countries believed the tsar would see the benefit to all in ending the American war and began to lobby Russia to join their cause. Foreign Minister Gorchakov complained about how difficult it was to remain impartial. “I am sought after everywhere I go, even at the theater, and I have to dodge these attacks by all sorts of little tricks.”

Meanwhile, France’s Napoleon III was persistent and raised the question of Russia’s participation in a joint mediation effort with Gorchakov. While Gorchakov deplored the war’s destruction, he firmly stated that Russia supported the Union and would not ally itself with England and support the Confederacy. Moreover, such a move would be perceived as a hostile act against the Lincoln administration. “Russia and America have a special regard for each other which is never adversely affected because they have no points of conflict,” Gorchakov affirmed.

Russia, for its part, was dealing with problems in its own realm. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been restive since 1861, and by 1863 it had turned into a full-fledged uprising against the Russian Empire. At the same time that France and England were trying to persuade Russia to intervene in the U.S. Civil War, they were likewise trying to get the U.S. to join them in protesting Russia’s treatment of its Polish subjects.

A cartoon from Punch, October 24, 1863, had this poetic inscription:

Imperial son of Nicholas the Great,
We are in the same fix, I calculate,
You with your Poles, with Southern rebels I,
Who spurn my rule and my revenge defy.

Seward reassured Stoeckl after France formally asked the U.S. to support the Polish cause against Russia: “This is a request to which we can never accede, especially when our own affairs are so embarrassing.” Reading this in Stoeckl’s communiqué to Gorchakov, Alexander II wrote “Bravo!”

While France, Britain and Austria insisted that the Polish uprising was an international conflict, in accordance with the terms of the Congress of Vienna, St. Petersburg maintained it was a domestic affair and, as such, foreign intervention was illegal. Russia worried about another war against the “Crimean alliance” and was concerned about its Baltic naval fleet being trapped as it had been during the Crimean War. Admiral Nikolai Krabbe, who directed the imperial navy, urged that the vessels be put out to sea, where they could not be bottled up. Preparations were made to send the Russian fleet to the United States in utmost secrecy. Admiral Krabbe sent orders to Rear Admiral Lisovski, who was in command of the Atlantic squadron, on July 26, 1863:

Direct your course with the whole squadron to the shores of the United States of North America, not putting in to any port on the way; and upon arrival in America, you will drop anchor in New York. If it appears possible according to local conditions to remain in this port with the entire squadron, then you will there await the outcome of the negotiations on the Polish question.

If war was to break out with Britain and France, Krabbe was instructed to “[c]ommence hostile action against the commerce of the enemy. You will distribute these ships with such consideration that they occupy the most frequented lanes on which are directed the most important and most valuable tonnage.”

By July 1863, the Union forces had defeated the Confederates in Antietam and Gettysburg, but the bloody war was not abating. Reports persisted that two iron-clad rams that were being built in the shipyards of Liverpool, England for the Confederates were completed and about to be released to batter the Union blockade of the South. Soon after, Stoeckl informed the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, that an imperial fleet of six frigates, clippers and corvettes was on its way to New York.

On September 23, 1863, Gideon responded to Stoeckl:

The Department is much gratified to learn that a squadron of Russian war vessels is at present off the harbor of New York, with the intention, it is supposed, of visiting that city. The presence in our waters of a squadron belonging to His Imperial Majesty’s navy cannot but be a source of pleasure and happiness to our countrymen.

As Russia’s fleet arrived in New York Harbor, the Russian Pacific squadron of six ships under Rear Admiral Popov sailed into San Francisco Bay. The welcome the officers and crew received was warm and enthusiastic. In New York a sumptuous ball was held at the Academy of Music in honor of the officers. Admiral Lisovski reportedly protested such frivolity and extravagance during war time. Harpers Weekly reported that as soon as the Russians arrived, the dancing began and “beautiful and bejeweled ladies vied with each other for dances with the bearded and uniformed visitors.” The article observed that the Russian “heroes are not the largest of the human race – that they are small men in fact – and what is to become of small men in such a jam?” It recounted how the officers were “whirled hither and thither...their eyes a glare, their hair blown out, and all their persons expressive of the most desperate energy, doubtless in the endeavor to escape....the embrace of grand nebulous masses of muslin and crinoline.” The supper, prepared by Delmonico, was served on tables decorated with likenesses of Washington and Peter the Great, and Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II. It was indeed an extravagant feast comprised of 12,000 oysters, 12 monster salmon (30 lbs. each), 1200 game birds, 200 chickens, 1,000 lbs. of tenderloin, 100 pyramids of pastry, 1,000 large loaves and 3,500 bottles of wine.

The Russian officers ball in New York, where officers were “whirled hither and thither...their eyes a glare, their hair blown out, and all their persons expressive of the most desperate energy, doubtless in the endeavor to escape... the embrace of grand nebulous masses of muslin and crinoline.”

The visit of the Russian fleet had the intended effect. It made the British navy nervous. After seven months of merrymaking, their mission complete, the Russian fleet left the United States.

In the U.S. Presidential election of 1864, Lincoln was challenged by General George McClellan, “the peace candidate.” Once again, Stoeckl could not understand why an election would be held in the middle of a war for national survival. It was inconceivable that an orderly election could take place amid such chaos and partisan strife. He was convinced that it would be another example of America’s “rule of the mob.” When Lincoln won a second term amid a setback in the Union campaigns of an all-out drive against the Confederacy, Stoeckl wrote: “If the vote were free, the chances would certainly be in favor of General McClellan, but with the powers which the government possesses, it will find the means of controlling the election. Universal voting is as easily managed here as anywhere else.”

Lincoln’s speech to the Republican party after his victory provided a response to Stoeckl’s cynicism:

“[W]e cannot have a free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. But the election along with its incidental strife has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people’s government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility.”

With the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction begun, Lincoln in 1865 called not only for freeing slaves, but also for a measure of political equality and voting rights for them. But he did not live long enough to press for reform. Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, at Washington’s Ford Theater, and died the next day.

One year and a day later, Tsar Alexander II suffered through the first of seven attempts on his life. Under Alexander II, Russia made an earnest effort to end the arbitrary rule of the bureaucracy and police and transform the system into one that was grounded in law in all areas of society: local government and justice, education, the press, finances and military affairs. These efforts to change Russia were sabotaged by a small group of anarchistic terrorists known as the People’s Will, whose aim was simply to do away with the monarchy.

On March 1, 1881, the seventh and final assassination attempt against Alexander II succeeded. A member of People’s Will threw a bomb between himself and the tsar when Alexander was on his way to sign a decree calling for the convocation of the so-called “Loris-Melikov Constitution,” which would have given elected committees the opportunity to discuss policy questions about provincial administration. With his murder, the terrorists made certain that society would not have any role in the political process.

At the age of 36, Alexander III became tsar. Fearing an attempt on his life, he refused to live in the Winter Palace, preferring Gatchina instead, the palace of his great-grandfather, Paul I. Close to 30 miles south of St. Petersburg, the palace was a medieval fortress, surrounded by ditches and watchtowers – a graphic metaphor for how the new tsar viewed Russia’s place in the world. Alexander III gave free expression to his Slavophilism and turned away from the liberal reforms of his father. The entente cordial enjoyed during the leadership of Lincoln and Alexander II was never to be repeated.

Alexander III’s harsh policies resulted in two assassination attempts, both unsuccessful. In the first, the People’s Will planned to bomb the tsar’s carriage on the sixth anniversary of his father’s death, March 1, 1887, while he was en route to a church requiem service. The plot was foiled and the three conspirators were arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. One of them was Alexander Ulyanov, the older brother of the boy who would become Lenin. RL

This article was originally prepared in connection with a joint Russian-US exhibit that took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg a year ago, called  “The Tsar and the President: Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln, Liberator and Emancipator,” coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Alexander II’s liberation decree. The exhibit was the brainchild of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation and funded by Russian sources and the American U.S.-Russian Foundation for Economic Development and Rule of Law.

ADDITIONAL READING.

Among the several sources used to compile this article, these books offer more general histories.

Norman E. Saul, Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991).

Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1952).