Greenbacks and Other Crimes: Russia Aligns with the North in the Civil War because England and France Were Conspiring to Break Up the Russian Empire

We saw how the American continent had become a giant chess board in a game of global politics. The European powers had been anxious to see the United States become embroiled in a civil war and eventually break into two smaller and weaker nations. That would pave the way for their further colonization of Latin America without fear of the Americans being able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. And so it was that, within a few months after the outbreak of war between North and South, France landed troops in Mexico and, by 1864, had installed Maximilian as her puppet monarch. Negotiations were begun immediately to bring Mexico into the war on the side of the Confederacy. England moved her troops to the Canadian border in a show of strength. America was facing what appeared to be a checkmate from the powers in Europe.

It was a masterful move that possibly could have won the game had not an unexpected event tipped the scale against it. Tsar Alexander II—who, incidentally, had never allowed a central bank to be established in Russia—notified Lincoln that he stood ready to militarily align with the North. Although the Tsar had recently freed the serfs in his own country, his primary motivation for coming to the aid of the Union undoubtedly had little to do with emancipating the slaves in the South. England and France had been maneuvering to break up the Russian empire by splitting off Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Crimea, and Georgia. Napoleon III, of France, proposed to Great Britain and Austria that the three nations immediately declare war on Russia to hasten this dismemberment.

Knowing that war was being considered by his enemies, Tsar Alexander decided to play a chess game of his own. In September of 1863, he dispatched his Baltic fleet of war ships to Alexandria, Virginia, and his Asiatic fleet to San Francisco. . . .

The presence of the Russian Navy helped the Union enforce a devastating naval blockade against the Southern states which denied them access to critical supplies from Europe. It was not that these ships single-handedly kept the French and English vessels at bay. Actually there is no record of them even firing upon each other, but that is the point. The fact that neither France nor England at that time wanted to risk becoming involved in an open war with the United States and Russia led them to be extremely cautious with overt military aid to the South. Throughout the entire conflict, they found it expedient to remain officially neutral. Without the inhibiting effect of the presence of the Russian fleet, the course of the war could have been significantly different.

--G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, 3rd ed. (Westlake Village, CA: American Media, 1998), 377-378.