Mark and Lincoln: And Unfinished Revolution

the slaveholders—but it is quite true that many of the Germans 
and English who sought refuge in the United States after 1848 
brought with them a secular radicalism that changed and strength-
ened the antislavery cause in the United States by broadening 
its base of support. Before considering the nature of what might 
be called the German corrective it will be helpful to look at the 
evolution of Marx’s analysis. 
Th
 e clear premise of Marx’s argument is that the North was 
expanding at a faster pace than the South—as indeed it was. But 
Marx contends that it is the South that is consumed by the need to 
expand territorially. Th
  e expansion of the North and Northwest, as 
Marx well knew, was even more rapid, a refl ection of a momentous 
industrial growth and far-reaching commercialization of farming. 
Th
  e North and the Northwest, with a combined population of 20 
million, were now linked by an extensive network of railroads and 
canals. Th
  e South might talk about King Cotton, but the truth was 
that economic growth in the South was not at all as broadly based 
as that in the North. Cotton exports were growing, but little else. In 
1800 the South had the same population as the North; by 1860, it 
was only a little more than half as large, 11 million persons, about 
7.5 million being Southern whites and 3.5 million slaves. 
In Marx’s view, the South had three motives for territorial expan-
sion. First, its agriculture exhausted the soil, and so planters were 
constantly in quest of new land. Second, the slave states needed 
to maintain their veto power in the Senate, and for this purpose 
needed to mint new slave states just as fast as new “free” states 
were recognized. Th
  ird, there was in the South a numerous class 
of restive young white men anxious to make their fortune, and the 
leaders of Southern society were persuaded that an external out-
let must be found for them if they were not to become disruptive 
domestically.
11
By itself the argument that there was a shortage of land in the 
11 Karl 
Marx, 
“Th
  e North American Civil War,” Die Presse, October 25, 
1861.Th
  is text is reproduced in full in the present volume. However there is 
no space here to print all Marx’s writings on the United States and the Civil 
War. Th
  ese are to be found either in the Collected Works, or in the already-cited 
collection edited by Saul Padover, or in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Th e 
Civil War in the United States, third ed., New York 1961, pp. 57–71. 
introduction  9

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South has limited validity. Expansion of the railroads could have 
brought more lands into cultivation. Additionally, the planters 
could have made better use of fertilizers, as did planters in Cuba. If 
there was a shortage, it was a shortage of slaves, relative to the boom 
in the cotton plantation economy of the 1850s.
Combined with the third point—the mass of restless fi libus-
ters
12
—the shortage argument gained more purchase. Th
  ere was no 
absolute shortage of land and slaves, but planters could off er only so 
much support to their children. Southern whites had large families, 
and there was a surplus of younger sons who wished to make their 
way in the world. In the 1850s these young men—with what Marx 
called their “turbulent longings”—had been attracted to “fi libus-
tering” expeditions aimed at Cuba and Nicaragua—just as similar 
adventurers had sought glory and fortune in Texas and Mexico. 
Th
  eir parents might not always approve of freelance methods, but 
did see the attraction of acquiring new lands. 
Undoubtedly Marx’s clinching argument was that which referred 
to political factors:
In order to maintain its infl uence in the Senate, and through the 
Senate its hegemony over the United States, the South therefore 
requires a continual formation of new slave states. Th
 is, however, 
was only possible through conquest of foreign lands, as in the case 
of Texas, and through the transformation of the territories belong-
ing to the United States fi rst into slave territories and then into 
slave states.
13
12  During this period the term fi libuster meant an irregular military adven-
turer, particularly one from the United States who hoped to seize land abroad, 
especially in Latin America.
13 Marx, 
“Th
  e North American Civil War.” Marx’s stress on the central-
ity of political issues can be compared with the brilliant analysis off ered by 
Barrington Moore Jr., in Th e Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New 
York 1969, pp. 111–58). Moore writes: “Th
  e fundamental issue became more 
and more whether the machinery of the Federal government should be used 
to support one society or the other” (p. 136). Although Moore’s analysis stands 
up very well, it does not suffi
  ciently register three vital aspects to which I 
will be paying particular attention: the rise of nationalism, the role of African 
American resistance, and the awakening of the working classes. Directly or 
indirectly, Marx’s articles and letters do address these issues. For other accounts 
that were infl uenced by Marx, see Eric Foner, “Th
  e Causes of the American 
10  an unfinished revolution

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He concluded: 
Th
  e whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave 
question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves in the existing slave 
states should be emancipated or not, but whether twenty million 
free men of the North should subordinate themselves any longer to 
an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders.
14
 
As social science and as journalism this was impressive, but it did 
not bring Marx to the political conclusion at which he aimed. Th
 e 
political subordination of Northerners—scarcely the equivalent of 
slavery—would be ended by Southern secession. Marx was focused 
on the possibility of destroying true chattel slavery, which he knew 
to be a critical component of the reigning capitalist order. He 
further insisted that it was folly to imagine that the slaveholders, 
aroused and on the warpath, would be satisfi ed by Northern rec-
ognition of the Confederacy. Rather, it would open the way to an 
aggressive South that would strive to incorporate the border states 
and extend slaveholder hegemony throughout North America. He 
reminded his readers that it was under Southern leadership that the 
Union had sought to introduce “the armed propaganda of slavery 
in Mexico, Central and South America.”
15
 Spanish Cuba, with its 
fl ourishing slave system, had already been singled out as the slave 
power’s next prey.
Marx’s argument and belief was that the real confrontation was 
between two social regimes, one based on slavery and the other on 
free labor: “Th
  e struggle has broken out because the two systems 
can no longer live peaceably side by side on the North American 
continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or 
the other.” In this mortal struggle the North, however moderate 
its initial inclinations, would eventually be driven to revolutionary 
measures. 
Civil War,” in Foner’s Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (Oxford 
1980, pp. 15–33) and John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism and Politics in the 
Antebellum Republic, Vol. 2, Th
  e Coming of the Civil War, Cambridge 2007. 
14 “Th
  e North American Civil War,” p. 71. 
15 “Th
  e North American Civil War,” p. 71. Marx’s argument was on target. 
See Robert May, Th e Southern Dream of Caribbean Empire, London 2002.
introduction  11

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