It was in the latter part of 1863 that Russia offered its friendship to the United States, and sent a strong fleet of warships, together with munitions of war, to this country to be used in any way the President might see fit. Russia was not friendly to England and France, these nations having defeated her in the Crimea a few years before. As Great Britain and the Emperor of the French were continually bothering him, President Lincoln used Russia’s kindly feeling and action as a means of keeping the other two powers named in a neutral state of mind. Underneath the cartoon we here reproduce, which was labeled “Drawing Things to a Head,” and appeared in the issue of “Harper’s Weekly,” of November 28, 1863, was this DR. LINCOLN (to smart boy of the shop): “Mild applications of Russian Salve for our friends over the way, and heavy doses—and plenty of it for our Southern patient!!”
Secretary of State Seward was the “smart boy” of the shop, and “our friend over the way” were England and France. The latter bothered President Lincoln no more, but it is a fact that the Confederate privateer Alabama was manned almost entirely by British seamen; also, that when the Alabama was sunk by the Kearsarge, in the summer of 1864, the Confederate seamen were picked up by an English vessel, taken to Southhampton, and set at liberty!
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