Swan song

Military Images, Jul/Aug 1999 by Harlowe, Jerry

On the reverse of the carte de visite image is penciled, "Gundeck of the U.S. ship Augusta While in Halifax Harbour." It was an identification which made for me an instant purchase decision. I knew this photograph was directly linked to the Emperor of Russia, United States foreign policy, and the first ever crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an American ironclad warship, the monitor U.S.S. Miantonomoh.

Before, during, and after the American Civil War, the Russian government under Emperor Alexander II supported the Federal government's efforts to keep the Union whole under the direction of President Abraham Lincoln. The Russian support did not go unrecognized by the United States and in 1866 the government sent a joint resolution from the U.S. Congress to the Emperor, relative to his providential escape from the attempt on his life by a recently emancipated serf. The American ambassador to Russia, Cassius Clay, had already expressed the relief of the United States for the Emperor's well being. Nonetheless, "the leaders of the Republican party in Congress," wrote J.F. Loubat in Narrative of the Mission to Russia, in 1866, "believing that something more than a mere formal message of congratulations was due the nation that had given us its warmest sympathies in our hour of peril.. introduced a joint resolution relative to the recent attempted assassination of the Emperor of Russia."

The joint resolution was introduced by Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and having a foregone conclusion in the Republican Congress, the measure sailed through both houses. The final resolution read:

JOINT RESOLUTION RELATIVE TO THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.

Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the Congress of the United States of America has learned with deep regret of the attempt made upon the life of the Emperor of Russia by an enemy of emancipation. The Congress sends greeting to his Imperial Majesty, and to the Russian Nation, and congratulates the twenty million of serfs upon the providential escape from danger of the sovereign to whose head and heart they owe the blessings of their freedom.

Sec. 2. And be it further resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to forward a copy of this resolution to the Emperor of Russia.

The stage was set and the play was put in motion when Congress further resolved to send the resolution by special envoy in an American ship. For the duty and the honor of transmitting the measure, Congress selected the able Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox. And it was Fox who then quickly and firmly determined to make the special delivery via a monitor, "...a class of vessel which had never crossed the Atlantic, but in whose seaworthiness Mr. Fox had implicit confidence. The Miantonomoh, a two-turret monitor, was chosen for this service, and the Augusta and Ashuelot, two wooden men-of-war, were selected to accompany her."

As Assistant Secretary Fox was preparing for his special delivery, it should be remembered that at that time, 1866, the United States was not on the best of terms with either the British or French nations. Secretary Wells greeted the crossing of Miantonomoh knowing full well he now had a chance to introduce the British Government and its navy as well as their close neighbors, the French, to an American monitor of the Ericsson design. Direct war memories with the British and the French were still in the hearts and souls of many Americans as well as the fact that the British had made as much mischief as they could with the southern confederacy against the United States in the instant civil war. Perhaps most telling was British direct participation in the literal destruction of the American whaling fleet and the near destruction of American flag merchantmen through outrageous insurance rates caused by British built, outfitted and heavily crewed commerce raiding ships under the Southern Confederacy's flag. Based on this destruction, the United States was claiming compensation for this crime on the high seas in an international maritime law suit that was referred to as the Alabama Claims. Additionally, the U.S. had even come close to direct war with the British in 1862 in what was known as the Trent Affair, when a U.S. Navy warship illegally stopped a British mail packet on the high seas and removed two Confederate States diplomats on their way to England. However, the affair had sufficient time to cool down before British troops reached Canada. Close, but no war. As for the French, they had taken direct advantage of America's civil war by involving themselves in the affairs of Mexico and establishing their own puppet government under Maximillian. By the end of the civil war, U.S. troops were being massed near the border with Mexico to reassert our displeasure with the French and their European ways in the new world. Again, the question of the French in the new world was settled by time and by the weak knees of French foreign policy.