It was previously observed in these columns3 that President Lincoln, legally cautious, constitutionally conciliatory, by birth a citizen of the border slave state of Kentucky, is escaping only with difficulty from the control of the "loyal" slaveholders, seeking to avoid any open breach with them and precisely thereby provoking a conflict with the parties of the North which are consistent in point of principle and are being pushed more and more into the foreground by events. The speech that Wendell Phillips delivered at Abington, Massachusetts? on the occasion of the anniversary of the slaves' emancipation in the British West Indies,[245] may be regarded as a prologue to this conflict.
Together with Garrison and G. Smith, Wendell Phillips is the leader of the Abolitionists in New England. For 3f0 years he has without intermission and at the risk of his life proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves as his battle-cry, regardless alike of the persiflage of the press, the enraged howls of paid rowdiesc and the conciliatory representations of solicitous friends. Even his opponents acknowledged him as one of the greatest orators of the North, as combining iron character with forceful energy and purest conviction. The London Times—and what could character^ i'se this magnanimous paper more strikingly — today denounces Wendell Phillips' speech at Abington to the government in Washington. It says it is an "abuse" of freedom of speech.
"Anything more violent it is impossible to imagine," .says The Times, "and anything more daring in a time of Civil War was never said in any country by any sane man who valued his life or liberty. In reading the speech it is scarcely possible to avoid coining to the conclusion that the speaker's object was to lorce the government to prosecute him/' [1]
And The Firnes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its hatred of the Union government, appears not at all disinclined to assume the role of public prosecutor!
In the present state of affairs Wendell Phillips' Abington speech is of greater importance than a battle bulletin. We therefore summarise its most striking passages.
"The government," he says among oilier things, "is fighting for the preservation of slavery, and therefore it is lighting in vain. Lincoln is waging a political war. Lven now he is more afraid of Kentucky than of the entire North. He believes in the South. 1 he Negroes on the Southern battlefields, when asked whether the rain of cannon-balls and bombs that tore up the earth all round and split the trees asunder did no! (errifv them, answered: 'No, massa; we know that the y are not meant loi us!' the rebels could speak of McClellan's bombs in the same way. Thev know that lhe\ are no! meant for them, to cfo them harm. I do not sa\ that McClellan ts a traitor; but I say lhat, if lie were a traitor, he would have had to act exactly as he has done. Have no fear for Richmond; McClellan will not take: it. If-the wai is continued in this fashion, without a rational aim, then it is a useless squandering of blood and gold. It would be better were the South independent toda\ than to ha/aid one more human life for a war based on the present execrable policy. To continue the war in the fashion prevailing hitherto, requites 125,000 men a year and a million dollars a clay. But you cannot get rid of the South. As Jelferson said of slavery:
"The Southern states have the wolf bv the ears, but they can neither hold him nor let him go." In the same way, we have the South by the ears and can neither hold it nor let it go. Recognise it tomorrow and you will have no peace. For 80 years it has lived with us, in fear of us the whole time, with hatred for us half the time, ever troubling and abusing us. Made presumptuous by a concession of its present claims, it would not keep within an imaginary border-line a year — nay, the moment that we speak of conditions of peace, it will cry victory! We shall never have peace until slaven is uprooted. So long as you retain the present tortoise[1]' at the head of our government, you make a hole with one hand in order to fill it with the other. Let the entire nation endorse the resolutions of the New York Chamber of Commerce-'[1]'(1) and then the army will have something for which it is worth while fighting. Had Jefferson Davis the power, he would not capture Washington. He knows that the bomb that fell in this Sodom would rouse the whole nation.
"The entire North would thunder with one voice! 'Down with slavery, down with everything that stands in the way of saving the republic!' Jefferson Davis is quite satisfied with his successes. They are greater than he anticipated, far greater! If he can continue to swim on them till March 4, 1863, England will then, and this is in order, recognise the Southern Confederacy.... The President has not put the Confiscation Act' into effect. He may be honest, but what has his honesty to do with the matter? He has neither insight nor foresight. When I was in Washington, I ascertained that three months ago Lincoln had written the proclamation for general emancipation of the slaves and that McClellan bullied him out of his decision and that the representatives of Kentucky bullied him into the retention of McClellan, in whom he places no confidence. It will take years for Lincoln to learn to combine his legal scruples as an attorney with the demands of the Civil War. This is the appalling state of a democratic government and its greatest evil.
"In France a hundred men, convinced of the righteousness of their cause, would cart) the nation with them; but in order that our government may take a step, 19 million people must previously put themselves in motion. And to how many of these millions has it been preached for years that slavery is an institution ordained by God! With these prejudices, with paralysed hands and hearts, vou entieat the President to save you from the Negro! If this theory is correct, then only slaveholding despotism can bring a temporal) peace.... I know Lincoln. I have taken his measure in Washington. He is a first-rate second-rate man,'[1] He waits honestly, like a new broom, for the nation to take him in hand and sweep away slavery through him.... In past years, not far Ironi the platform from which I now speak, the Whigs-[17] fired small mortars in order to smother my voice. And what is the resultr
"The sons of these Whigs now fill their own graves in the marshes of Chickahominv ! - t s Dissolve this Union in Cod's name and replace it with another, on the corner-stone of which is written: 'Political equality for all the citizens of the world'... During my stay in Chicago I asked lawvers of Illinois, among whom Lincoln had practised, what sort of man lie was. Whether he could say No. The answer was: 'He lacks backbone. If the Americans wanted to elect a man absolutely incapable of leadership, of initiative, then thev were bound to elect Abraham Lincoln.... Never has a man heard him say No!' 1 asked: 'Is McClellan a man who can say No?' The manager of the Chicago Central Railroad, on which McClellan was employed, answered: 'He is incapable of making a decision. Put a question to him and it lakes an hour for him to think of the answer. During the time that he was connected with the administration of the Central Railroad, lie never decided a single important controversial question."
"And these are the two men who, above all others, now hold the fate of the Northern Republic in their hands! Those- best acquainted with the state of the armv assure us that Richmond could have been taken five times, had the do-nothing at the head of the army of the Potomac allowed it: but he preferred to dig up dirt in the Chickahominv swamps, in order lo ignominious!) abandon the locality and his dirt ramparts. Lincoln, out of a cowaidlv fear ol the border slave- states, keeps this man in his present position; but the day will come when Lincoln will confess that lie has never believed in McClellan.... Let us hope thai the wai lasts long enough to make men of us, and then we shall soon triumph. God has put the thunderbolt of emancipation into our hands in order to crush this rebellion..."
Endnotes
[244] First published in English in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, New York, 1937, London, 1937, pp. 201-29.
[245] See Note 69.
[17] 7 The Black slave Dred Scott had lived for four years in the non-slave States of Illinois and Wisconsin. In 1848 he brought a lawsuit, claiming freedom. In 1857 it was turned down by the US Supreme Court. The ruling implied that a slave remained the property of his master even in the free States — an example of the slaveholders' efforts to have slavery legalised throughout the country.
[1] Marx and Engels began to contribute to the New-York Daily Tribune in 1851 (see Vol. 11, Note 2). 1861 and 1862 were the last two years of their work for the Tribune. With the outbreak of the US Civil War interest in European affairs in America declined. The Tribune cancelled its contracts with all its European correspondents except Marx, who was asked to reduce the number of his contributions from two to one a week. Between February 1861 and March 1862 the paper published ten items by Marx and one by Engels. One appeared as a leading article, nine were marked "From an Occasional Correspondent" and one was marked "From Our Own Correspondent". Marx's final break with the newspaper occurred in the spring of 1862 (see Vol. 12, Note 1 and Vol. 39, Note 4). The theme and basic content of this article were suggested to Engels by Marx, who in a letter dated January 22, 1861 (Vol. 41 of the present edition) asked Engels to write on the Schleswig-Holstein question for the NYDT. Engels wrote the article on January 23. On the following day Marx sent it to New York by the steamer Anglo-Saxon.