LEGENDS

A Brief Brush with Russian Royalty: Grand Duke Alexis in Mobile, 1872

Exactly 150 years ago this month, the city of Mobile geared up for a royal appearance — with mixed results.

text by DR. LEE A. FARROW

In late November 1871, Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, son of Tsar Alexander II, arrived in New York harbor and began a tour of the United States and Canada that would ultimately last three months. The reasons for the tour were multifold. Russia and the United States had long had friendly relations, despite their distance from one another and very different approaches to government and political practice. Only a few years earlier, in 1867, the two nations had engaged in a mutually beneficial agreement in Russia’s sale of Alaska to the United States. Now, in 1871, the two nations were seeking to further enhance and clarify their relationship in the wake of the traumatic decade of the 1860s. In a space of only 10 years, Russia had liberated its serfs, confronted an uprising in the Polish section of its empire, experienced an assassination attempt on its tsar and initiated a variety of domestic reforms. The United States had similarly suffered through a difficult period, with the Civil War, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the post-war challenges of Reconstruction. For several years, there had been talk of a possible visit from a member of the Russian Romanov family, but the choice of Alexis had a larger significance. Alexis, only 21 at the time, had fallen in love with a much older woman who was not of royal blood named Alexandra Zhukovskaya; to make matters worse, she was carrying his child. Consequently, the tsar and his wife decided that Alexis should be the member of the family to set out on a goodwill visit to the United States, proverbially killing two birds with one stone.

Between late November 1871 and mid-February 1872, Grand Duke Alexis visited nearly two dozen cities and towns in the United States and Canada and experienced some of North America’s most notable natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls and Mammoth Cave. He met President Ulysses S. Grant, Samuel Morse, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Al-

Above Grand Duke Alexis of Russia (son of Tsar Alexander II) started a goodwill tour of the United States in 1871. Alexis’ stopover created quite a stir in Mobile, as it did in every city he visited. This November 1871 edition of “Hearth and Home,” a weekly illustrated magazine based in New York City, features the grand duke on the front page.

bert Bierstadt, and many other famous businessmen, politicians, engineers and artists of the period. He visited Chicago only weeks after the Great Fire and hunted bison with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and General George Armstrong Custer. He traveled down the Mississippi and was present for the first daytime Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans and the birth of the Krewe of Rex, one of the oldest Carnival organizations. Along the way, he was wined and dined, given parades and presentations and invited to balls and city tours. The American public came out in droves to see him, in cities, at train depots, and along rail lines, and the press followed him closely and reported on his every move: what he ate, how he looked and with whom he danced. There was eager speculation that he might be in search of a bride — a thoroughly misguided notion, as it turns out — and this idea fueled many stories about his views on and interest in American women in the various cities he visited.

Alexis departed New Orleans on the evening of February 19, 1872, traveling by train to Mobile, where he would board a steamer to take him to his fleet waiting at Pensacola. Mobile city officials had proposed a reception, but the grand duke declined, pleading time constraints. Still, many in Mobile hoped for an appearance of the royal visitor, and the Mobile Register kept residents up to date on his movements, “to quiet the nerves of those who are daily on the look-out for Alexis.” One article postulated that a strict schedule was not the real reason the grand duke turned down a reception in Mobile; rather, it was a disagreement with his father. Hitting closer to home than it may have realized, the paper suggested that it was the extension of Alexis’ trip through the Far East that had left him sad and disdainful of more festivities. Indeed, throughout his North American tour, Alexis’ guard-

ian, Admiral Constantin Possiet, had been monitoring the young man’s mood and reporting to the tsar, and when it became clear that his attachment to Alexandra was still strong, the tsar had decided to keep him away from Russia longer.

The near certainty that Alexis would spend no time whatsoever in Mobile did not prevent one store from using his name in its advertising, as so many businesses had over the past months; Grover and Baking Sewing Machine Company on Dauphin Street suggested that the grand duke would be stopping by to buy raffle tickets on an elegant dressing robe embroidered by the machines in the shop, and they urged locals to do the same.

At approximately six o’clock on the morning of February 20, 1872, the grand duke’s train arrived in Mobile, greeted at the wharf by a small crowd of eager spectators and the Fire Department’s brass band performing the Russian national hymn. There was no formal reception of any kind, and Alexis stayed out of sight in his train car until the steamer, St. Elmo, arrived, at which point he “marched on board under a police guard, without casting his eye to the right or left, and not recognizing the common herd with a wink, blink or nod.” Even the rousing blare of the brass band did not seem to engage the grand duke’s attention. While Admiral Possiet acknowledged the musicians with a raise of his hat, Alexis gave no sign of hearing them at all. The steamer then took Alexis to another location, where he boarded a special train to Pensacola. Several newspapers reported a similar scene in Pensacola, where Alexis transferred to the Svetlana with no acknowledgment of the crowd that had come out to see him. Not everyone was left angered by the grand duke’s final stops, however. The Russian fleet had purchased 450 tons of Alabama coal at 12 dollars a ton for the next leg of its trip, and the grand duke gave a diamond ring to Captain John Black of the St. Elmo in appreciation for his service.

Despite the unremarkable conclusion of Alexis’ North American excursion, Admiral Possiet could report to the tsar that overall, the trip had been a success. In three months’ time, they had traveled approximately 8,500 versts (5,610 miles) by rail and 1,350 versts (891 miles) by river, without any significant problems. He also noted that the grand duke had been enthusiastically received everywhere, and that the reception in the South had been every bit as warm as it had been in the North. Possiet admitted, however, that their itinerary had been exhausting, with nonstop receptions and celebrations, and that eventually all the new places ceased to interest them and the introductions became mechanical. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the American public, the visit of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis had been a thrilling adventure and was proof that Russia and the United States would long be friends. In fact, the fabric of the Russian-American friendship was already fraying, due in large part to the missteps and breaches of protocol by Russia’s minister in the United States, the “odious and disagreeable” Constantin Catacazy. MB

Above The Grand Duke Alexis inspects submarine excavations at Hallet’s Point, Long Island, during

his trip through America. PHOTO COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Dr. Lee A. Farrow is Distinguished Research Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Auburn University at Montgomery. She is the author of “Between Clan and Crown” (2005), “Alexis in America” (2014) and “Seward’s Folly” (2016). Her newest book is “The Catacazy Affair: The Uneasy Path of Russian-American Relations” (October, 2021).