Mark and Lincoln: And Unfinished Revolution

that he wanted slaves to slaughter their masters and mistresses in 
their beds. Cabinet colleagues urged him to wait until there was 
good news, so that the emancipation would not seem like an act of 
desperation. In September 1862, following the battle of Antietam, 
he issued the preliminary proclamation, giving the rebels time to 
abandon the insurrection, failing which the proclamation would 
come into force on January 1, 1863.
Marx and Engels had from the outset insisted on the war’s anti-
slavery logic, but the fi rst eighteen months of the confl ict  tested 
their conviction. Engels was particularly distressed by the passivity 
and defensiveness of the Union commanders, and beyond that what 
he called “the slackness and obtuseness” that appeared throughout 
the North, the lack of popular zeal for the republic, contrasting it 
with the daring and energy of the rebels. On August 7, 1862 Marx 
urged his friend not to be overinfl uenced by the “military aspect” 
of matters. On October 29, following the announcement of the 
Emancipation Proclamation, Marx was powerfully reassured. He 
wrote: 
Th
 e fury with which the Southerners have received Lincoln’s 
[Emancipation] Acts proves their importance. All Lincoln’s Acts 
appear like the pettifogging conditions which one lawyer puts to 
his opposing lawyer. But this does not alter their historic content. 
Indeed it amuses me when I compare them with the drapery 
in which the Frenchman envelops even the most unimportant 
point.
54
Th
  ereafter Marx and Engels had growing confi dence in Lincoln, 
even if they continued to complain about the quality of the Union’s 
military leadership and the need for a thoroughgoing shake-up in 
the republic’s ruling institutions. 
Th
  e Emancipation Proclamation brought new legitimacy and—
at least in principle—new opportunities to deepen the struggle. 
However, it did not entirely sever the Union from support of slavery. 
Its terms respected the slave property rights of loyal slavehold-
ers in the border states and in areas occupied by the Union Army. 
Emancipation applied to the roughly three million slaves beyond 
54  Marx and Engels, Th e Civil War in the US, p. 258.
38  an unfinished revolution

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Union control, since they were the property of slaveholders still in 
rebellion. Th
  ese freed people were enjoined “to abstain from all vio-
lence, unless in necessary self-defense” and to be willing to work at 
“reasonable wages.” Th
  e Proclamation includes a clause permitting 
freedmen to be enrolled for garrison duty. Th
  e Proclamation went 
further than the Confi scation Acts in allowing former slaves to be 
organized in fi ghting units though for some time many were kept 
in menial support roles. Th
  ose who were enlisted as soldiers were 
placed under white offi
  cers and, to begin with, given a lower rate 
of pay. Eventually the thirst for manpower in a hugely destructive 
war led to the enrollment of 180,000 African Americans in the 
Union Army and over 10,000 in the Navy. (By the end of the con-
fl ict, however, only about a hundred African Americans had been 
commissioned as offi
  cers of the colored units, most of these being 
chaplains or doctors). Many “contrabands” did not become soldiers 
but were put to work digging trenches or graves, or in other support 
roles.
 
Most Union commanders remained cautious in their use of 
black troops and their appeals to the black population, shunning 
the sort of autonomous mobilization thought entirely appropriate 
for German American or Irish American troops. 
Th
  e Emancipation policy exacerbated Confederate problems in 
areas near the fi ghting, but it remained unclear whether the proc-
lamation’s message was reaching much further or whether the 
slaves could respond even if it was. Militia, patrols, and military 
police roamed the Southern countryside looking for slave fugi-
tives and Confederate deserters. Th
 e number of slave fugitives 
grew to as many as 400,000 or 500,000 by the end of the war, a 
total that includes many who fl ed their masters in Kentucky, the 
border states, and the other Union-occupied areas that had been 
excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation. Although there are 
some signs of slave desertion or noncooperation in rebel-held areas, 
the patrols, militia, and military police were still a strong deter-
rent for those deep in Confederate territory, and only those close 
to the front could escape. A few could hide out in swamps and 
forests, but it was Union advances—from Vicksburg in July 1863 
to Atlanta in September 1864—that eventually made it possible 
for slaves to desert the plantations en masse. Th
  is having been said, 
the war placed the slave order under great strain, with many white 
introduction  39

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men of military age away and their wives managing as best they 
could. Anxious about their economic fate, planters ordered cotton 
to be grown and neglected the cultivation of foodstuff s. Th
 e war 
still made for very uneasy relations between slaves and overseers or 
mistresses. Peter Kolchin writes: 
Slaves took advantage of wartime disruption in numerous ways: 
they obeyed orders with less alacrity, they challenged weakened 
authority more readily, they followed the progress of Yankee forces 
and aided that progress in a variety of ways, from providing valu-
able military intelligence to enlisting in the Union army, and they 
fl ed in increasing numbers, especially when Federal troops neared. 
Despite heightened fears on the part of the white population, 
however, they did not engage in the sort of massive uprising that 
occurred in Saint Domingue during the French Revolution.
55 
It was more rational for Southern slaves to look to the Union army, 
with its new black contingents, to lead the assault on the slave 
order. 
Th
  e emancipation policy certainly helped in Europe, rendering 
public opinion in Britain and France more hostile to recognizing 
the rebels. Th
 e fl edgling labor and socialist movements were not 
completely united, but the most dynamic and representative cur-
rents now rallied against the Confederacy. Marx and Engels based 
their eff orts to develop the International Workers Association 
on this trend. Marx believed that the willingness of Manchester 
workers to rally in support of the North, even though the “cotton 
famine” menaced their own livelihood, showed the moral superior-
ity of a rising class. 
Lincoln was dismayed when General Meade failed to aggres-
sively follow up his victory over the rebels at Gettysburg. Instead, 
Meade issued a proclamation saying that the country “looks to the 
army for greater eff orts to drive from our soil every vestige of the 
presence of the invader.” Lincoln was dismayed to fi nd that he had 
yet another general who entirely failed to grasp the simple idea that 
55  Peter Kolchin, “Slavery and Freedom in the Civil War South,” in James 
McPherson and William Cooper, eds. Writing the Civil War, Charleston 1998, 
pp. 241–60. 
40  an unfinished revolution

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