In my opinion, the biggest things that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia…
I have just seen in the Tribune that there has been a fresh rising of slaves in Missouri, naturally suppressed. But the signal has now been given. If things get serious by and by, what will then become of Manchester?
Your opinion of the significance of the slave movement in America and Russia is now confirmed. The Harper’s Ferry affair with its aftermath in Missouri bears its fruit: the free Negroes in the South are everywhere hunted out of the states, and I have just read in the first New York cotton report (W. P. Wright and Co., January 10, 1860) that the planters have hurried their cotton on to the ports in order to guard against any probable consequences arising out of the Harper’s Ferry affair.
Things in North America are also becoming exciting. Matters must be going very badly for them with the slaves if the Southerners play so risky a game. The least volunteer putsch from the North could set everything ablaze. In any case, it seems that one way or another slavery is rapidly going to come to an end, and then it will be the same with cotton production. But how this will react on England will then soon become manifest. And with such mighty movements an ass like Bonaparte believes he can permanently fish in troubled waters.
Many thanks for the letter about America. Should anything important (militarily) occur, then always write me your opinion about it. According to the picture that I have formed of General Scott—now, moreover, 76 years old—from the Mexican War (see Ripley), I expect the greatest blunders from him unless the old donkey is controlled by others. Slowness and indecision, above all. For the rest, I see by the facts reported in the Tribune that the North now speaks openly of a slave war and the destruction of slavery.
Have these Yankees then gone completely crazy to carry out the mad coup with the Confederate Commissioners? The fact that here in the Channel too a warship was waiting for the mail steamer proves that general instructions must have been issued from Washington. To take political prisoners by force on a foreign ship is the clearest casus belli there can be. The fellows must be sheer fools to land themselves in for a war with England. If war should actually break out, you can send your letters to New York via Germany or the Havre addressed to an intermediary, but you will have to take care that you don’t give any assistance to the enemies of the Queen.
War, as I have declared in the Presse from the first day, will not break out with America, and I only regret that I had not the means to exploit the asininity of the Reuter and Times–swayed Stock Exchange during this fool period.
I should be glad if you supplied me this week (by Friday morning) with an English article on the American War. You can write entirely without constraint. The Tribune will print it as the letter of a foreign officer. Nota bene: The Tribune hates McClellan, who is in league with the Democratic Party and who, so long as he was commander in chief of all the armies, prevented any action not only on the Potomac (where this was perhaps justified) but in all theaters of war, particularly in the West, by direct intervention. (He was also the soul of the extremely disgraceful intrigue against Frémont.) This Mc, moreover, out of esprit de corps and hatred of the civilians, protected all the traitors in the army, e.g., Colonel Maynard and General Stone. The arrest of the latter ensued a day or two after [Mc]Clellan had been deposed as commander-in-chief of the whole army. In the same way, the shameless Washington “representative” of the New York Herald was arrested as a spy contrary to M’Clellan’s wishes and after he had entertained the entire staff of M’C[lellan] the day before at a champagne breakfast.
I shall write to Dana once more. I miss the sending of the Tribune sadly. This is a mean trick of Greeley and McElrath. From the last numbers of the Tribune for March I have learned two things. Firstly, that McClellan had been accurately informed eight days beforehand of the Confederates’ retreat. Secondly, that the Times’s Russell availed himself of his nosing in Washington during the Trent affair to gamble on the Stock Exchange in New York…
Bonaparte’s present maneuvers in Mexico (the affair originally emanated from Pam2) are explained by the fact that Juarez only recognizes the official debt to France of £46,000. But Miramon and his gang, per medium of the Swiss banker Jecker et Co., had issued state bonds to the amount of $52,000,000 (on which about $4,000,000 have been paid). These state bonds—Jecker et Co. being only the hommes de pailles3—have fallen almost for zéro into the hands of Morny et Co. They demand recognition of them by Juarez. Hinc illae lacrimae.4
Schurz is—a brigadier general with Frémont! ! !
The blowing up of the Merrimac seems to me an evident act of cowardice on the part of the dirty dogs of Confederacy. The hounds could still risk something. It is wonderfully fine how the Times (which supported all the Coercion Bills against Ireland with so much fiery zeal) wails that “liberty” must be lost in the event of the North tyrannizing the South. The Economist is also good. In its last number it declares that the Yankees’ financial prosperity—the nondepreciation of their paper money—is incomprehensible to it (although the matter is perfectly simple). It had hitherto consoled its readers from week to week with this depreciation. Although it now admits that it does not understand what is its business and has misled its readers concerning this, it is at present solacing them with dark doubts about the “military operations,” of which it officially knows nothing.
What extraordinarily facilitated the paper operations of the Yankees (the main point being the confidence placed in their cause and therewith in their government) was without question the circumstance that in consequence of secession the West was almost denuded of paper money and therefore of a circulating medium generally. All the banks whose principal securities consisted of the bonds of slave states were bankrupted. Moreover, currency for millions, which circulated in the West in the form of direct banknotes of the Southern banks, was swept away. Then, partly in consequence of the Morrill tariff, partly in consequence of the war itself, which largely put an end to the import of luxuries, the Yankees had a balance of trade and therefore a rate of exchange favorable to themselves and against Europe the whole time. An unfavorable rate of exchange might have badly affected the patriotic confidence in their paper on the part of the philistines.
For the rest—this comical concern of John Bull for the interest on the national debt that Uncle Sam will have to pay! As if it were not a mere bagatelle in comparison with Bull’s national debt; moreover, the United States are unquestionably richer today than were the Bulls with their debt of a billion in 1815.
Has Pam not got Bonaparte into a pretty pickle in Mexico?
Anneke is with Buell’s army and from today is writing in the Augsburger. I am rather anxious about Halleck’s troops; the affair drags on so long, and yet he does not appear to receive any reinforcements, though Spence’s lies in the Times have surely no significance. Willich is a colonel (the eternal colonel!) and commands the 32nd Indiana regiment…
A certain amount of guerrilla warfare does now seem after all to be beginning, but it is certainly not of great importance, and if only a victory ensues, the reserve forces following in its wake, together with some cavalry, will soon put an end to the business. In case of a defeat, it would of course be vexatious.
Things go wrong in America, and it is after all Mr. Stanton who is chiefly to blame, for the reason that after the conquest of Tennessee he suspended recruiting out of sheer vainglory and so condemned the army to constant weakening just when it stood most in need of reinforcements for a rapid, decisive offensive. With a steady influx of recruits, even if the war were not decided by now, its success would nevertheless have been beyond doubt. With continual victories recruits would also have come freely. This step was all the sillier as the South was then enlisting all men from 18 to 35 years of age, and was therefore staking everything on a single card. It is those people who have joined up in the meantime who now give the Confederates the upper hand everywhere and secure the initiative to them. They held Halleck fast, dislodged Curtis from Arkansas, smote McClellan, and under Jackson in the Shenandoah valley gave the signal for the guerrilla raids that now reach as far as the Ohio. No one could have acted more stupidly than Stanton.
Further. When Stanton saw that he could not dislodge McClellan from the command of the Potomac army, he perpetrated the stupidity of weakening him by conferring special commands on Frémont, Banks, and McDowell and of splitting up the forces to the end of removing McClellan. The consequence of this is not only that McC[lellan] has been beaten, but also that public opinion now maintains that it is not McC[lellan] but Stanton who is to blame for the defeat. Serves Mr. Stant[on] right.
All that would be of no consequence; it might even be of service, in that the war would at last be waged in a revolutionary way. But there’s the trouble. The defeats do not stir these Yankees up; they make them slack. If, merely to obtain recruits, they have already come to the point of declaring themselves prepared to take them for nine months only, what is meant is nothing other than this: we are in a bad way, and all we want is the semblance of an army as a means of making a demonstration during the peace negotiations. Those 300,000 volunteers were the criterion, and by refusing to provide them the North declares that to it, its whole cause is au fond muck. Furthermore, what cowardice in government and Congress. They are afraid of conscription, of resolute financial steps, of attacks on slavery, of everything that is urgently necessary; they let everything loaf along as it will, and if the semblance of some measure finally gets through Congress, the honorable Lincoln so qualifies it that nothing at all is left of it any longer. This slackness, this collapse like a punctured pig’s bladder, under the pressure of defeats that have annihilated one army, the strongest and best, and actually left Washington exposed, this total absence of any elasticity in the whole mass of the people—this proves to me that it is all up. The few mass meetings, etc., do not mean anything; they don’t attain even the stir of a presidential election.
In addition, the total lack of talent. One general more stupid than the other. Not one that would be capable of the least initiative or of independent decision. For three months the initiative once more wholly with the adversary. Then, one financial measure more lunatic than the other. Helplessness and cowardice everywhere, save among the common soldiers. The politicians in like case—just as absurd and devoid of counsel. And the populace is more helpless than if it had lingered three thousand years under the Austrian scepter.
For the South, on the contrary—it’s no use shutting one’s eyes to the fact—it’s a matter of bloody earnest. That we get no cotton is already one proof. The guerrillas in the border states are a second. But that after being thus shut off from the world, an agricultural people can sustain such a war and after severe defeats and losses in resources, men, and territory can nevertheless now stand forth as the victor and threaten to carry its offensive right into the North, this is in my opinion decisive. Besides, they fight quite famously, and with the second occupation of Kentucky and Tennessee, what Union feeling still existed there outside the highlands is now surely lost.
If they get Missouri, they get the Territories too, and then the North can pack up.
As said, if the North does not proceed forthwith in revolutionary fashion, it will get an ungodly hiding and deserve it—and it looks like it.
As to America, that, says he [Lassalle], is quite interesting. The Yankees have no “ideas.” “Individual liberty” is merely a “negative idea,” etc., and more of this old, decayed, speculative rubbish.
I do not altogether share your views on the American Civil War. I do not think that all is up. The Northerners have been dominated from the first by the representatives of the border slave states, who also pushed McClellan, that old partisan of Breckinridge, to the top. The Southerners, on the other hand, acted as one man from the beginning. The North itself has turned the slaves into a military force on the side of the Southerners, instead of turning it against them. The South leaves productive labor to the slaves and could therefore put its whole fighting strength in the field without disturbance. The South had unified military leadership, the North had not. That no strategic plan existed was already obvious from all the maneuvers of the Kentucky army after the conquest of Tennessee. In my opinion all this will take another turn. In the end the North will make war seriously, adopt revolutionary methods, and throw over the domination of the border slave statesmen. A single Negro regiment would have a remarkable effect on Southern nerves.
The difficulty of getting the 300,000 men seems to me purely political. The Northwest and New England wish to, and will, force the government to give up the diplomatic method of conducting war which it has used hitherto, and they are now making terms on which the 300,000 men shall come forth. If Lincoln does not give way (which he will do, however), there will be a revolution.
As to the lack of military talent, the method which has prevailed up till now of selecting generals purely from considerations of diplomacy and party intrigue is scarcely designed to bring talent to the front. General Pope seems to me to be a man of energy, however.
With regard to the financial measures, they are clumsy, as they are bound to be in a country where up to now no taxes (for the whole state) have in fact existed; but they are not nearly so idiotic as the measures taken by Pitt and Co. The present depreciation of money is due, I think, not to economic but to purely political reasons—distrust. It will therefore change with a different policy.
The long and short of the business seems to me to be that a war of this kind must be conducted on revolutionary lines, while the Yankees have so far been trying to conduct it constitutionally.
As regards the Yankees, I am assuredly still of my previous opinion that the North will finally prevail; certainly the Civil War may go through all sorts of episodes, even armistices, perhaps, and be long drawn out. The South would and could only conclude peace on condition that it received the border slave states. In this event California would also fall to it; the Northwest would follow, and the entire Federation, with perhaps the exception of the New England states, would form a single country once more, this time under the acknowledged supremacy of the slaveholders. It would be the reconstruction of the United States on the basis demanded by the South. This, however, is impossible and will not happen.
The North can, for its part, only conclude peace if the Confederacy limits itself to the old slave states and those confined between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic. In this case the Confederacy would soon come to its blessed end. Intervening armistices, etc., on the basis of a status quo, could at most entail pauses in the prosecution of the war.
The manner in which the North wages war is only to be expected from a bourgeois republic, where fraud has so long reigned supreme. The South, an oligarchy, is better adapted thereto, particularly as it is an oligarchy where the whole of the productive labor falls on the Negroes and the four millions of “white trash” are filibusters by profession. All the same, I would wager my head that these boys come off second best, despite “Stonewall Jackson.” To be sure, it is possible that it will come to a sort of revolution in the North itself first.
Willich is a brigadier general and, as Kapp has related in Cologne, Steffen is now to take the field also.
It seems to me that you let yourself be swayed a little too much by the military aspect of things.
As for America, I believe that the Maryland campaign was decisive insofar as it showed that even in this section of the border states most sympathetic to the South, support for the Confederates is weak. But the whole struggle turns on the border states. Whoever gets them dominates the Union. At the same time, the fact that Lincoln issued the forthcoming Emancipation Act at a moment when the Confederates were pushing forward in Kentucky shows that all consideration for the loyal slaveholders in the border states has ceased. The emigration of the slave owners from Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee to the South, with their black chattels, is already enormous, and if the war is prolonged for a while, as it is certain to be, the Southerners will have lost all hold there. The South began the war for these territories. The war itself was the means of destroying its power in the border states, where apart from this the ties with the South were becoming weaker every day, because a market can no longer be found for the breeding of slaves and the internal slave trade. In my opinion, therefore, for the South it will only be a matter now of the defensive. But their sole possibility of success lay in an offensive. If the report is confirmed that Hooker is getting the active command of the Potomac army, that McClellan is being “retired” to the “theoretical” post of commander in chief, and that Halleck is taking over the chief command in the West, then the conduct of the war in Virginia may also take on a more energetic character. Moreover, the most favorable time of year for the Confederates is now past.
There is no doubt at all that morally the collapse of the Maryland campaign was of the most tremendous importance.
As to finance, the United States know from the time of the War of Independence, and we know from the Austrian experience, how far one can go with depreciated paper money. It is a fact that the Yankees never exported more corn to England than they have this year, that the present harvest is again far above the average, and that the trade balance was never more favorable for them than it has been for the last two years. As soon as the new system of taxation (a very hackneyed one, it is true, exactly in Pitt’s style) comes into operation, the paper money which up to now has only been continually emitted will also at last begin to flow back again. An extension of the paper issue on the present scale will therefore became superfluous and further depreciation will thus be checked. What had made even the present depreciation less dangerous than it was in France, and even in England, in similar circumstances has been the fact that the Yankees never prohibited two prices, a gold price and a paper price. The actual damage done resolves itself into a state debt, for which the proper equivalent has never been received, and a premium on jobbing and speculation.
When the English boast that their depreciation was never more than 11½ percent (other people believe that it amounted to more than double this during some time), they conveniently forget that they not only continued to pay their old taxes but every year paid new ones as well, so that the return flow of the banknotes was assured from the beginning, while the Yankees have actually carried on the war for a year and a half without taxes (except the greatly diminished import duties), simply by repeating the issue of paper. For a process of this kind, which has now reached the turning point, the actual depreciation is still comparatively small.
The fury with which the Southerners have received Lincoln’s Acts proves their importance. All Lincoln’s Acts appear like the mean pettifogging conditions which one lawyer puts to his opposing lawyer. But this does not alter their historic content, and indeed it amuses me when I compare them with the drapery in which the Frenchman envelops even the most unimportant point.
Of course, like other people, I see the repulsive side of the form the movement takes among the Yankees, but I find the explanation of it in the nature of “bourgeois” democracy. The events over there are a world upheaval, nevertheless, and there is nothing more disgusting in the whole business than the English attitude towards them.
As regards America I also think, of course, that the Confederates in Maryland have received an unexpected moral blow of great significance. I am also convinced that the definite possession of the border states will decide the result of the war. But I am by no means certain that the affair is going to proceed along such classic lines as you appear to believe. Despite all the screams of the Yankees, there is still no sign whatever available that the people regard this business as a real question of national existence. On the contrary, these election victories of the Democrats go to prove rather that the party which has had enough of the war is growing. If there were only some proof or some indication that the masses in the North were beginning to rise as they did in France in 1792 and 1793, then it would all be very fine. But the only revolution to be expected seems rather to be a Democratic counterrevolution and a rotten peace, including the partition of the border states. That this would not be the end of the affair by a long way—granted. But for the present moment I must say I cannot work up any enthusiasm for a people which on such a colossal issue allows itself to be continually beaten by a fourth of its own population and which after eighteen months of war has achieved nothing more than the discovery that all its generals are idiots and all its officials rascals and traitors. After all, the thing must happen differently, even in a bourgeois republic, if it is not to end in utter failure. I entirely agree with what you say about the meanness of the English way of looking at the business.
I impatiently await the steamer that is bringing news of the New York elections. If the Democrats triumph in the State of New York, then I no longer know what I am to think of the Yankees. That a people placed in a great historical dilemma, which is at the same time a matter of its own existence, can after eighteen months’ struggle become reactionary in its mass and vote for climbing down is a bit beyond my understanding. Good as it is from one aspect that even in America the bourgeois republic exposes itself in thoroughgoing fashion, so that in future it can never again be preached on its own merits, but solely as a means, and a form of transition, to the social revolution, still it is mortifying that a lousy oligarchy with only half the number of inhabitants proves itself just as strong as the unwieldy, great, helpless democracy. For the rest, if the Democrats triumph, the worthy McClellan and the West Pointers have the better of it most beautifully, and its glory will soon be at an end. The fellows are capable of concluding peace, if the South returns to the Union on condition that the President shall always be a Southerner and the Congress shall always consist of Southerners and Northerners in equal numbers. They are even capable of proclaiming Jeff Davis President of the United States forthwith and to surrender even the whole of the border states, if there is no other way to peace. Then, good-bye America.
Of Lincoln’s emancipation, likewise, one still sees no effect up to the present, save that from fear of a Negro inundation the Northwest has voted Democratic.
It seems to me that you are looking too much at only one side of the American quarrel. I have looked at a mass of Southern papers in the American coffeehouse and have seen from these that the Confederacy is in a tight corner. The English newspapers have suppressed the battle of “Corinth.” The Southern papers describe it as the most extraordinarily bad luck that has befallen them since the armed rising. The State of Georgia has declared the Confederate “Conscription Acts” to be null and void. In the person of Floyd the thief, Virginia has disputed the right of the “creatures (literally) of Jefferson Davis” further to levy troops in his state. Oldham, representative of Texas in the Congress of Richmond, has lodged a protest against the transportation of the “picked troops” of the Southwest to the East, that is, Virginia. From all these disputes two things emerge quite incontestably:
That the Confederate government has overreached itself in its violent efforts to fill the ranks of the army;
That the states are asserting their “state rights” against the separatist Confederacy, just as the latter made them its pretext against the Union.
I regard the victories of the Democrats in the North as a reaction, which was made easy for this conservative and blackleg element by the Federal government’s bad direction of the war and financial blunders. It is for the rest a species of reaction met with in every revolutionary movement, and at the time of the Convention, for instance, was so strong that it was considered counterrevolutionary to want to submit the death of the King to suffrage universel6 and under the Directory so strong that Mr. Bonaparte I had to bombard Paris.
On the other hand, the elections have no bearing on the composition of the Congress prior to December 4, 1863; they serve, therefore, merely as a spur to the Republican government, over whose head the sword hangs. And in any case the Republican House of Representatives will put the term of life allotted to it to better use, if only from hatred of the opposing party.
As to McClellan, he has in his own army Hooker and other Republicans, who will any day arrest him on the order of the government.
In addition, there is the French attempt at intervention, which will call forth a reaction against the reaction.
I do not therefore regard things as so bad. What might be much more injurious in my view is the sheep’s attitude of the workers in Lancashire. Such a thing has never been heard of in the world. All the more is this the case as the manufacturing rabble do not even pretend “to make sacrifices” themselves, but leave to the rest of England the honor of keeping their army going for them; that is, impose on the rest of England the costs of maintenance of their variable capital.
During this recent period England has disgraced herself more than any other country, the workers by their christian slave nature, the bourgeois and aristocrats by their enthusiasm for slavery in its most direct form. But the two manifestations supplement one another.
Burnside seems to have committed great tactical blunders in the battle of Fredericksburg. He was obviously nervous in the employment of such great military forces. As far, however, as the fundamental asininity is concerned: 1. In connection with the wait of 26 days, there is unquestionably direct treason at work in the war administration at Washington. Even the New York correspondent of the Times admitted that only after weeks did Burnside obtain resources which had been promised him immediately. 2. That nevertheless he then made this attack shows the moral weakness of the man. The worthy Tribune began to cast suspicion on him and threatened him with dismissal. This paper, with its enthusiasm and its ignorance, does great harm.
The Democrats and M’Clellanists naturally cried out in unison, in order to exaggerate the unfortunate position. For the “rumor” that M’Clellan, the “Monk” of the Times, had been summoned to Washington, we are indebted to Mr. Reuter.
“Politically,” the defeat was good. They ought not to have had good luck before January 1, 1863. Anything of the sort could have caused the “Proclamation” to be revoked.
The Times and Co. are utterly furious over the workers’ meetings in Manchester, Sheffield, and London. It is very good that the eyes of the Yankees are opened in this way. For the rest, Opdyke (Mayor of New York and political economist) has already said at a meeting in New York: “We know that the English working class are with us, and that the governing classes of England are against us.”
I greatly regret that Germany does not hold similar demonstrations. They cost nothing and “internationally” bring in large returns. Germany would have all the more warrant for these, as in this war she has done more for the Yankees than France in the eighteenth century. It is the old German stupidity of not making herself felt in the world theater and stressing what she actually accomplishes.
Things look rotten in Yankeeland. It is true that with the customary irony of world history the Democrats, as against the philistine, have now become the war party, and the bankrupt poetaster Ch. Mackay has again made himself thoroughly ridiculous. I also hear from private sources in New York that the preparations of the North are being continued on a hitherto unheard-of scale. But, on the other hand, the signs of moral slackening are increasing daily, and the inability to conquer is daily becoming greater. Where is the party whose victory and avènement7 would be synonymous with prosecution of the war à outrance8 and by every means? The people has been bamboozled, that is the trouble, and it is lucky that a peace is a physical impossibility, otherwise they would have made one long ago, merely to be able to live for the almighty dollar again.
A Confederate major, who participated in the engagements near Richmond on Lee’s staff, told me during the last few days that according to papers which Lee himself had shown him, the rebels had no less than 40,000 stragglers at the end of these actions! He referred specifically to the Western regiments of the Federals with great respect; for the rest, however, he is an ass. [The conclusion of this letter is missing—Ed.]
There are nice goings-on in America. Fighting Joe has made an awful fool of himself with his boasts,9 Rosecrans is asleep, and only Grant operates well. His movement against Vicksburg from southwest to northeast, cutting off the relief army, repulsing it; then rapid advance against Vicksburg; and even the impetuous, unavailing assaults are all very good. I do not believe in the possibility of assembling sufficient relief troops in time. On the other hand, we have so often seen the American generals suddenly operate well for a fortnight and then perpetrate the greatest asininities once more, that one can say nothing whatever about their future movements.
What do you say of Grant’s operations? The Times, of course, has admiration only for Lee’s strategy, concealed behind retreats. “It,” said Tussy10 this morning, “considers this very canny, I dare say.” I wish for nothing more fervently than that Butler may have success. It would be priceless, if he marched into Richmond first. It would be bad if Grant had to retreat, but I think that fellow knows what he is about. At any rate, the first Kentucky campaign, Vicksburg, and the beating that Bragg got in Tennessee are due to him.
The American news seems to me to be very good, and I was particularly delighted with today’s leader in the Times, in which it proves that Grant is being beaten continuously and will possibly be punished for his defeats—by the capture of Richmond.
As regards America, I consider the present moment, entre nous, to be very critical. If it brings Grant a great defeat or Sherman a great victory, then it’s all right. A chronic series of small checks, precisely at the present election time, would be dangerous. I am entirely of your opinion that thus far Lincoln’s reelection is pretty certain, still a hundred to one. But in the model country of the democratic swindle this election time is full of contingencies that may give the logic of events (an expression that Magnus Urquhartus11 considers to be just as senseless as “the justice of a locomotive”) a quite unexpected smack in the face. An armistice seems to be very necessary for the South, to save it from complete exhaustion. It has been the first to bring up this cry not only in its Northern organs, but directly in the Richmond organs, though now, when it has found an echo in New York, the Richmond Examiner throws it back to the Yankees with scorn. That Mr. Davis has decided to treat the Negro soldiers as “prisoners of war”—latest official instruction of his War Secretary—is very characteristic.
Lincoln has in his hands great resources with which to carry this election. (Peace proposals on his part are naturally mere humbug!) The election of an opposition candidate would probably lead to a real revolution. But all the same one cannot fail to recognize that for the coming eight weeks, in which the issue will in the first instance be decided, much depends on military accident. This is absolutely the most critical point since the beginning of the war. If this is shifted, old Lincoln can then blunder on to his heart’s content. For the rest, the old man cannot possibly “make” generals. He could already choose his ministers better. The Confederate papers, however, attack their ministers quite as much as the Yankees do those at Washington. If Lincoln gets through this time—as is very probable—it will be on a much more radical platform and under wholly changed circumstances. In conformity with his legal manner, the old man will then find more radical methods compatible with his conscience.
The worst of such an agitation is that one is much bothered as soon as one participates in it. For example, it was again a matter of an Address, this time to Lincoln,12 and again I had to compose the stuff (which was much harder than a substantial work), in order that the phraseology to which this sort of scribbling is restricted should at least be distinguished from the democratic, vulgar phraseology…
As the Address to Lincoln was to be handed to Adams, part of the Englishmen on the Committee wanted to have the deputation introduced by a member of Parliament, since it was customary. This hankering was defeated by the majority of the English and the unanimity of the Continentals, and it was declared, on the contrary, that such old English customs ought to be abolished. On the other hand, M. Le Lubez13, like a real crapaud, wanted to have the Address made out not to Lincoln, but to the American people. I have made him duly ridiculous and explained to the Englishmen that the French democratic etiquette is not worth a farthing more than the monarchical etiquette.
… Lincoln’s answer14 to us is in today’s Times.
The fact that Lincoln has replied to us so courteously and to the “Bourgeois Emancipation Society” so rudely and purely formally has made the Daily News so angry that it did not print the reply to us. When, however, it saw to its sorrow that the Times did so, it had to publish it belatedly in the stop press. Levy, too, has had to swallow the bitter pill. The difference between L[incoln]’s reply to us and to the bourgeois has made such a stir here that the “Clubs” in the West End are shaking their heads over it. You can understand how much good this does our people.
The Confederacy seems to be at an end.
Johnson’s policy disquiets me.15 Ridiculous affectation of severity against single persons, up to the present extremely vacillating and weak in substance. The reaction has already begun in America and will soon be greatly strengthened, if the hitherto prevailing slackness does not quickly cease.
I, too, like Mr. Johnson’s policy less and less. His hatred of Negroes comes out more and more violently, while as against the old lords of the South he lets all power go out of his hands. If things go on like this, in six months all the old villains of secession will be sitting in Congress at Washington. Without colored suffrage nothing whatever can be done there, and J[ohnson] leaves it to the vanquished, the ex-slaveholders, to decide upon this matter. It is too absurd. However, one must certainly reckon with things developing differently from what Messrs. the Barons imagine. The majority of them are surely totally ruined and will be glad to sell land to migrants and speculators from the North. These will come soon enough and change many things. The mean whites, I think, will gradually die out. With this stock there is nothing more to be done; what is left after two generations will merge with the migrants into a stock entirely different. The Negroes will probably become small squatters, as in Jamaica. So that finally, indeed, the oligarchy goes down, but the process could now be brought to a speedy conclusion on the spot at one time, whilst, as it is, it becomes long-drawn-out.
After the Civil War phase the United States are really only now entering the revolutionary phase, and the European wiseacres, who believe in the omnipotence of Mr. Johnson, will soon be disillusioned.
Limitation of the Working Day—A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day. It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, social intercourse, social and political action. We propose eight hours’ work as the legal limit of the working day, this limitation being generally agreed by the workmen of the United States of America, the Congress [of the IWA] will raise it to [become] the common platform of the working classes all over the world. [Adopted by the IWA and published in Der Verbote, 10 and 11, October–November 1866.]
What do you think of the workers of the United States? This eruption against the oligarchy of associated capital which has arisen since the Civil War will of course be put down, but it could quite well form the starting point for the establishment of a serious workers party in the United States. There are, moreover, favorable circumstances. The policy of the new President will turn the Negroes into allies of the workers, and the large expropriations of the land (especially fertile land) in favor of the railway, mining, etc., companies will convert the farmers of the West, who are already very disenchanted, into allies of the workers. Thus a fine mess is in the offing there, and transferring the center of the International to the United States might, post festum, turn out to have been a peculiarly opportune move.
1 This and the extracts which follow relating to the American Civil War have been taken from the complete German edition of the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Gesamtausgabe, Dritte Abteilung (“Der Briefwechsel zwischen Marx und Engels”), Band 2 (1854–1860) and Band 3 (1861–1867) [Collected Works, Third Division (“The Correspondence Between Marx and Engels”), Vols. 2 and 3], Berlin 1930. A number of the letters are contained in K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence, A Selection with Commentary and Notes, London and New York 1934.
2 Lord Palmerston, prime minister 1855–58 and 1859–65.
3 Straw men [original editor’s note].
4 Hence these tears [original editor’s note].
5 Part of this letter is included by Marx in his article “A Criticism of American Affairs,” Die Presse, August 9, 1862, 198–201.
6 Universal suff rage; that is, a general vote.
7 Advent; appearance on the scene.
8 To the finish.
9 Refers to General Hooker. Toward the close of March 1863, Hooker announced to his officers that his plans were perfect and that he would have no mercy upon Lee. At the battle of Chancellorsville (May 1863), the Confederate army, though outnumbered two to one, forced Hooker to retreat. Despite this reverse, the Union commander issued an order in which he congratulated his army for its “achievements.” (For his General Orders, No. 49, see War of the Rebellion: official Records, Army, 1 ser., xxv, pt. 1, p. 171).
10 Refers to Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx’s youngest daughter. She became the wife of the English socialist, Edward Aveling, and took an active part in the British labor movement.
11 The “Great Urquhart,” or David Urquhart, who was a British diplomat, writer and publisher of The Free Press, to which Marx contributed from 1856–7.
12 For the Address of the First International to Lincoln, see pp. 211–2.
13 Lubez was a French democrat who lived in London. He taught music and French and acted as secretary-correspondent for France in the general council of the First International. On account of intrigue and slander, Lubez was expelled from the International in 1866.
14 For Lincoln’s answer to the Address of the First International, as transmitted by Adams, the American ambassador, see pp. 213–4.
15 The elevation of Johnson to the presidency following the assassination of Lincoln was enthusiastically hailed by the leaders of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. They saw in the new president a mn after their own heart, a vigorous opponent of “the bloated slaveocracy” of the South. As such, they expected him to punish the ex-Confederate leaders, to break up their large landed estates and to guarantee Negro suff rage. Their expectations, however, were not realized, as Johnson, wedged between a falling oligarchy (slave planters) and a rising plutocracy (industrial and financial bourgeoisie), decided to fight the latter by capitulating to the former. The result was a “reactionary holiday” the beginnings of which became apparent in May 1865, when Johnson issued a proclamation providing for the reconstruction of seven Southern states along the lines laid down by Lincoln. During the summer and fall of 1865, all of these states, except Texas, complied with the President’s request, elected state officials and sent representatives to Congress. However, in December 1865, both houses declined to permit the newly elected members to take their seats. Under these circumstances, the battle was on with Stevens, the leader of the parliamentary Left, gradually winning over a majority of congressmen to the formulation of a Radical reconstruction program. See J.S. Allen, Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy, New York 1937. For the Address of the First International to Johnson, see pp. 214–5.