It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely" It is time to cease muting the fact that Dr. Du Bois was a genius and chose to be a Community. Our irrational obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking.
Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., "Honoring Dr. Du Bois
Karl Marx attended what W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880 describes as a "monster" of a meeting on March 6, 1863. There, in London and in Manchester (the meetings were conducted simultaneously), at a meeting of English working men held at St. James Hall, the subject is about America's commitment to the enslavement of Black people. At one point, Marx stands up to testify.
Marx, writes Du Bois, recognized the "liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race, the "liberties of free labor on a free soil." However, there's the matter of slavery, the "degradation of men guilty only of a colored skin or an African parentage." Those human beings aren't basking in "liberties." How "free" is a nation of people, if some, designated as property, are denied their freedom?
Marx sent Lincoln a summary of the meeting. He first began by congratulating Lincoln on winning his electionproof, he adds, that "'universal freedom and equality'" were "'rising to the ascendant.'" The conspirators and rebels seeking to "'overthrow the supremacy of a government'" won't win. Suffrage is popular in the world. What isn't popular, however, are policies and laws established "'to perpetuate the hateful inequalities of race.'"
Marx continues, "every strain of your freedom will shortly be removed" when slavery ends, during your presidency. Expect, then, the name Abraham Lincoln to be "'honored and revered by posterity.'"
Lincoln's response, he agrees with Marx's characterization of the Civil War, referring to it as "'the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built upon a foundation of human rights.'" The conspirators and rebels would prefer to "'substitute'" these rights with one that would situate "'human slavery'" as the foundation of this government.
The South, writes Du Bois, keen on maintaining slavery, not only feared for the loss of their "identity," but also the loss of their capital. The cold reality of a region's economy resting on a foundation which dependent on the subjugation of Blacks to labor was becoming harder to incorporate into a narrative of an America, home of the brave and free. A collapse of the mechanism of sacrifice, that is, the end to free labor, would destroy the South and its way of operating in the world. And for Du Bois, living while Black in the aftermath of slavery and Reconstruction, he knew that the South went to war to preserve the future of a slaveocracy, a deep commitment to an economy of master and slave.
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