[As a friend has pointed out, this congratulatory
letter to Lincoln drafted by Marx on behalf of the
First International, and the response thereto, may be
considered of some relevance in the current context.]
Congratulatory Letter from the First International to
Abraham Lincoln on His Re-election
http://marxists.architexturez.net/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
Address of the International Working Men's Association
to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America
Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865 [A]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169,
November 7, 1865;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Basgen;
Online Version: Marx & Engels Internet Archive
(marxists.org) 2000.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sir:
We congratulate the American people upon your
re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the
Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first
election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election
is Death to Slavery.
From the commencement of the titanic American strife
the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the
star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their
class. The contest for the territories which opened
the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the
virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the
labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of
the slave driver?
When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to
inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the
world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when
on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea
of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up,
whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was
issued, and the first impulse given to the European
revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those
very spots counterrevolution, with systematic
thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas
entertained at the time of the formation of the old
constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a
beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of
the great problem of "the relation of capital to
labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the
cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working
classes of Europe understood at once, even before the
fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the
Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that
the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin
for a general holy crusade of property against labor,
and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for
the future, even their past conquests were at stake in
that tremendous conflict on the other side of the
Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the
hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis,
opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention
of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe,
contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.
While the workingmen, the true political powers of the
North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic,
while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his
concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative
of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and
choose his own master, they were unable to attain the
true freedom of labor, or to support their European
brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this
barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea
of civil war.
The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the
American War of Independence initiated a new era of
ascendancy for the middle class, so the American
Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They
consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it
fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded
son of the working class, to lead his country through
the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained
race and the reconstruction of a social world. [B]
Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's
Association, the Central Council:
Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell,
Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake,
Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby,
Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot,
Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff,
Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff,
Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski,
Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen,
Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;
George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez,
Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx,
Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana,
Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp,
Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung,
Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R.
Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.
18 Greek Street, Soho.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[A] From the minutes of the Central (General) Council
of the International — November 19, 1864:
"Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the
subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had
been drawn up for presentation to the people of
America congratulating them on their having re-elected
Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as
follows and was unanimously agreed to."
[B] The minutes of the meeting continue:
"A long discussion then took place as to the mode of
presenting the address and the propriety of having a
M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by
many members, who said workingmen should rely on
themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was
then proposed... and carried unanimously. The
secretary correspond with the United States Minister
asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation,
such deputation to consist of the members of the
Central Council."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ambassador Adams Replies
Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865
Sir:
I am directed to inform you that the address of the
Central Council of your Association, which was duly
transmitted through this Legation to the President of
the United [States], has been received by him.
So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal,
they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious
desire that he may be able to prove himself not
unworthy of the confidence which has been recently
extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many
of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the
world.
The Government of the United States has a clear
consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be
reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the
course which it adopted at the beginning, of
abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful
intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice
to all states and to all men and it relies upon the
beneficial results of that effort for support at home
and for respect and good will throughout the world.
Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to
promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by
benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this
relation that the United States regard their cause in
the present conflict with slavery, maintaining
insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they
derive new encouragements to persevere from the
testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the
national attitude is favored with their enlightened
approval and earnest sympathies.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams
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