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.