American history there has been a powerful tradition of
friendliness between Russia and the United States, yet surely no
two political systems have been in the past more diametrically
opposed. The chief ground for friendship has doubtless been the
great intervening distance which has reduced intercourse to a
minimum. Some slight basis for congeniality existed in the fact
that the interests of both countries favored a similar policy of
freedom upon the high seas. What chiefly influenced the public
mind, however, was the attitude which Russia had taken during the
Civil War. When the Grand Duke Alexis visited the United States
in 1871, Oliver Wendell Holmes greeted him with the lines:

Bleak are our coasts with the blasts of December,
Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember
Who was our friend when the world was our foe.

This Russian friendship had presented itself dramatically to the
public at a time when American relations with Great Britain were
strained, for Russian fleets had in 1863 suddenly appeared in the
harbors of New York and San Francisco. These visits were actually
made with a sole regard for Russian interests and in anticipation
of the outbreak of a general European war, which the Czar then
feared. The appearance of the fleets, however, was for many years
popularly supposed to signify sympathy with the Union and a
willingness to defend it from attack by Great Britain and France.
Many conceived the ingenuous idea that the purchase price of
Alaska was really the American half of a secret bargain of which
the fleets were the Russian part. Public opinion, therefore,
regarded the purchase of Alaska in the light of a favor to Russia
and demanded that the favor be granted.