Mark and Lincoln: And Unfinished Revolution

Th
  is passage certainly put “American slavery” at the center, and 
strikingly memorialized its enormity as a system for the exploita-
tion of labor. But the Second Inaugural Address did not mention 
the black soldiers or outline any ideas as to the future fate of the 
emancipated slave. In the preceding months Radical members of 
Congress had urged that the freedmen should be given the vote as 
part of the reconstruction of the rebel states. Lincoln had been non-
committal to begin with, but as he explained himself, he became 
more positive. Writing to the governor of Louisiana at a time 
when that state was establishing franchise qualifi cations, he gently 
observed, “I barely suggest for your private consideration whether 
some of the colored people may not be let in—as for instance the 
very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly 
in our ranks.”
77
 In this attempt to cajole the Louisiana governor, 
using a moderate tone was no doubt advisable, and the enfranchise-
ment of black soldiers would already establish a considerable bloc 
of black voters. If Lincoln had lived, it seems quite possible that 
as the situation evolved, so would his views on this matter. James 
Oakes has noted that Lincoln, in the last year of his life, went out 
of his way to seek out Frederick Douglass, the outstanding black 
abolitionist, as on the occasion noted already. Given the racism that 
permeated the North as much as the South, Lincoln’s willingness to 
solicit the views of the veteran abolitionist and treat him as an equal 
was a signifi cant development. When Douglass was stopped at the 
door of the reception held following Lincoln’s second inaugural, the 
president went over publicly to greet him and make clear to all how 
welcome this black leader was in the White House. 
78
Douglass himself later wrote, “Viewed from genuine abolition 
ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indiff erent, but 
measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he 
77 Charles 
Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana During Reconstruction, 
Baton Rouge 1976, p. 22.
78 Oakes, 
Th
  e Radical and the Republican, pp. 238–43. Oakes explains that 
Douglass had declined an invitation from the president about a week after his 
meeting at the Oval Offi
  ce in August 1864 on the grounds of a prior speaking 
engagement. Th
  eir third (very friendly) encounter was not until six months 
later. While both men were very busy the apparent lack of follow-through to 
the second meeting remains puzzling. 
52  an unfinished revolution

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was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, 
and determined.” Th
  is verdict doesn’t directly refer to race, but we 
may assume that racial feeling is also covered by the term senti-
ment. Lincoln’s attempts to reach out to Douglass in the last year of 
his life seem to signal the stirring of an awareness of the need for 
African American agency if freedom were really to be won.
By the time of the Second Inaugural the Confederacy was col-
lapsing. Th
  e North’s belated victory refl ected growing success in 
mobilizing its potential resources—and the Confederacy’s increas-
ing failure to do so. Th
  e emancipation policy, black enlistment and 
Union strikes deep inside rebel territory allowed black courage and 
toil to favor and fortify the Union. So long as it could maintain 
400,000 men in the fi eld—as it did until the last months of 1864—
the Confederacy still had a hope of exploiting one of the waves of 
Northern defeatism that periodically swept the North and bringing 
it to terms. But while the North was at last bringing its resources to 
bear the Confederacy was dragged down by problems that stemmed 
directly from the slave regime. Confederate nationalism and the 
battlefi eld eff ectiveness of the rebel forces were sapped by severe 
shortages, hyperinfl ation and market collapse. Th
 e Southern armies 
possessed the war materiel they needed to maintain the fi ght. 
Indeed, if he had known about it, Marx could have been impressed 
by the success of the state-directed Southern war industries. But 
the class-egoism of the planters—their tax allergy and their obses-
sion with growing cotton—led to fi nancial chaos and agricultural 
dearth. Th
 e planter-dominated government resorted to printing 
bank notes and haphazard requisitions. Th
  e resulting hyperinfl a-
tion disorganized production and exchange. Th
 e planters stockpiled 
some 7 million bales of the commodity in the hope of selling at 
a good price once the war had ended. Th
  e depreciating currency 
robbed producers of any incentive to grow food for sale, leading to 
desperate food shortages—in an agricultural state. Th
 e Southern 
desertion rate overtook that of the North. Eventually the Southern 
military decided to negotiate surrender rather than to pursue a 
guerrilla struggle that might once again have put wind in the sails 
of a Northern peace movement. Educated Americans knew about 
the major role played by “guerrilla” struggle in the Spanish resist-
ance to Napoleon. Th
  ey also knew about Toussaint Louverture’s 
introduction  53

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victory over the British and the defeat of the French by the Haitian 
republic. But the Southern elite had no stomach for such a fi ght 
since it would have imperilled the entire social order of the South. 
By surrendering when they did the Southern offi
  cers were able to 
retain their side-arms, their horses and some hope of keeping their 
land and, as we have seen, of rebuilding their local leadership and 
cross-sectional alliances. 
79
  
Th
  e assassination of Lincoln prompted the International to send 
another “Address,” this time to Andrew Johnson, the new American 
president.
80
 Th
  is address closed with the observation that the way 
was now open to a “new era of the emancipation of labor.” But 
Marx and Engels were soon alarmed by the actions of Lincoln’s 
successor. On July 15, 1865, Engels writes to his friend attacking 
Johnson: “His hatred of Negroes comes out more and more vio-
lently…If things go on like this, in six months all the old villains 
of secession will be sitting in Congress at Washington. Without 
colored suff rage, nothing whatever can be done there.”
81
 Th
 e IWA 
General Council sent a protest to President Johnson in September 
1865 and urged that the freedmen should not be denied the vote. In 
April 1866 Marx writes to Engels, “After the Civil War the United 
States are only now really entering the revolutionary phase.”
82
 A 
clash between president and Congress drove the Republicans to 
79  For social conditions in the Confederacy and of the reasons for its defeat, 
see James Roark, “Behind the Lines: Confederate Society and Economy,” in 
Writing the Civil War: the Quest to Understand, James McPherson and William 
Cooper, eds.,Charleston 1998, pp. 201–27. Famine led to bread riots and con-
tributed to the collapse in morale. See Paul Escott, After Secession: Jeff erson Davis 
and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism, Baton Rouge 1978, pp. 137–8. See 
also Mary DeCredico, “Th
  e Confederate Home Front,” in Ford, A Companion 
to the Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 258–76 and David Williams, Rich Man’s 
War, Athens GA 1998, pp. 98–103.
80 Th
  is address, like the fi rst written by Marx, heaps praise on Lincoln as “a 
man neither to be browbeaten by adversity nor intoxicated by success; infl ex-
ibly pressing on to his great goal, never compromising it by blind haste; slowly 
maturing his steps, never retracing them; carried away by no surge of popular 
favor, disheartened by no slackening of the popular pulse” and so forth. “Address 
of the International Workingmen’s Association to President Johnson,” Th e 
Civil War in the United States, Marx and Engels, p. 358.
81  Marx and Engels, Th e Civil War in the United States, pp. 276–7.
82  Marx and Engels, Th e Civil War in the United States, p. 277.
54  an unfinished revolution

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