[lbo-talk] Reconstruction

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Fri Nov 19 09:02:39 PST 2004


This neo-Confederate site analyzes Marx as the source of "Lincolnite" ideas.

Charles

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Ever wondered where the Lincolnites get their arguments? Look no further than Karl Marx


>From GOPcapitalist

I was reading some articles online and came across some pro-northern writings by the father of communist thugs and big centralized government himself, Karl Marx. Marx, it turns out, was one of the north's biggest advocates and defenders in the British newspapers during the 1860's. He also thought very highly of Lincoln. Perhaps the most shocking ( Oh my , God !- CB) thing about it all is the strong similarities between the arguments Marx put forth on behalf of the north in the 1860's and the arguments the Lincoln defenders put forth today. They are often identical! See for yourself -

MARX ON THE CAUSES OF THE WAR -

"It is above all to be remembered that the war did not originate with the North, but with the South. The North finds itself on the defensive. For months it had quietly looked on while the secessionists appropriated the Union's forts, arsenals, shipyards, customs houses, pay offices, ships and supplies of arms, insulted its flag and took prisoner bodies of its troops. Finally the secessionists resolved to force the Union government out of its passive attitude by a blatant act of war, and solely for this reason proceeded to the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston." - Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861

(NOTE: The firing upon Fort Sumter occurred one day prior to the arrival of a war fleet tasked specifically by Lincoln to increase the fort's garrison by force if necessary.)

"Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place." - Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861

(NOTE: Marx's dates are incorrect. The Morrill Tariff Bill passed the U.S. House on May 10th, 1860. The act's Senate approval came on March 2, 1861.)

"A strict confinement of slavery within its old terrain, therefore, was bound according to economic law to lead to its gradual effacement, in the political sphere to annihilate the hegemony that the slave states exercised through the Senate, and finally to expose the slaveholding oligarchy within its own states to threatening perils from the poor whites. In accordance with the principle that any further extension of slave Territories was to be prohibited by law, the Republicans therefore attacked the rule of the slaveholders at its root." - Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861

(Note: Marx's characterization of Lincoln's policy regarding the non-extension of slavery as a supposed tool to end the institution is an argument shared and forwarded by many modern Lincoln supporters)

"The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders; whether the vast Territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery; finally, whether the national policy of the Union should take armed spreading of slavery in Mexico, Central and South America as its device." - Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861

(NOTE: In this passage Marx argues that the entirity of the dispute was the slavery question and nothing more)

MARX ON THE VALIDITY OF SECESSION:

"In reality, if North and South formed two autonomous countries, like, for example, England and Hanover, their separation would be no more difficult than was the separation of England and Hanover. "The South," however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan." - Karl Marx, On the Civil War in the United States, late October, 1861 (followup to the October 20th editorial)

"The advice of an amicable separation presupposes that the Southern Confederacy, although it assumed the offensive in the Civil War, at least wages it for defensive purposes. It is believed that the issue for the slaveholders' party is merely one of uniting the territories it has hitherto dominated into an autonomous group of states and withdrawing them from the supreme authority of the Union. Nothing could be more false... What the slaveholders, therefore, call the South, embraces more than three-quarters of the territory hitherto comprised by the Union. A large part of the territory thus claimed is still in the possession of the Union and would first have to be conquered from it...The war of the Southern Confederacy is, therefore, not a war of defense, but a war of conquest, a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery." - Karl Marx, On the Civil War in the United States, late October, 1861 (followup to the October 20th editorial)

(NOTE: In this passage, Marx claims the existence of a Confederate plot to increase their territory by drawing the border states into secession through war - a popular argument among Lincoln supporters)

MARX ON THE COMMUNIST SUPPORT OF THE NORTH -

"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" - Karl Marx on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on reelection as President of the United States, January 28, 1865

"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." - Karl Marx, letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on reelection as President of the United States, January 28, 1865

MARX ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN -

"Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority." - Karl Marx, letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on reelection as President of the United States, January 28, 1865

"[Lincoln was] one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr." - Karl Marx, Address of the International Working Men's Association to President Johnson, 1865

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