The United States was born in a revolution against royalty, but every once in a while Americans go gaga over some foreigner with a fancy title. It happened when Grand Duke Alexis of Russia traveled to the Great Plains to shoot buffalo and drink champagne with Buffalo Bill Cody, General George Armstrong Custer and Chief Spotted Tail and his Sioux warriors. A glorious time was had by all except the duke’s host, General Philip Sheridan, who was lucky to escape the festivities alive.
Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich Romanov was a son of Tsar Alexander II, the fool who’d sold Alaska to the U.S. for 2 cents an acre five years earlier. When Alexis arrived in New York in November 1871, he was 21, tall and brawny, with golden hair and long, flamboyant sideburns. The newspapers gleefully chronicled his adventures, which included meeting President Ulysses S. Grant, shopping at Tiffany’s jewelry store, and trips to Harvard University, Cleveland and Chicago, where he met General Sheridan, who was happy to fulfill the duke’s dream of hobnobbing with real Indians and shooting real buffalo.
