Finally, with much of Europe united against it, Russia badly needed an ally, or at the very least a casual friend who would largely ignore it. The United States filled the bill and had already pushed British influence out of the Oregon country. As early as 1853, Nicholas Muraviev, governor general of eastern Siberia, urged the czar to rid himself of his North American possessions and predicted that one way or the other, sooner or later, the Americans would control all of North America. But the United States, for all of its bold talk of Manifest Destiny, was now well down the road that would
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