LINCOLN ROOM
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
LIBRARY
from
CARL SANDBURG'S LIBRARY
309.73
UNCO'
LINCOLN, LABOR
AND
SLAVERY
A CHAPTER
FROM THE
t
By
HERMAN SCHLUTER
1913
SOCIALIST LITERATURE CO.
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1913
By
HERMAN SCHLUTER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACK
PREFACE ............................... 5
I. ECONOMIC ANTAGONISM AND PO-
LITICAL STRUGGLE ................. 13
1. Historical Review .................. 13
2. Economic Contrast ................. 18
3. Political Struggle ....... ............. 22
II. THE WORKINGMEN AND CHATTEL
SLAVERY ............................. 34
1. The Industrial Workers of the North
* and Slavery ....................... 34
2. The German Workingmen in America
and Slavery ...................... 70
3. The White Workingmen of the
South ............................ 84
4. The Workingmen of England and
Negro Slavery ................... 103
III. FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE
OF THE UNITED STATES ........... 113
- IV. THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR
AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT.... 123
1. General Condition of the Labor
Movement ....................... 123
2. The Attitude of the Workingmen
towards the War ................ 128
3. Effects of the War on Labor.. 137
4 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
V. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE
WORKING CLASS 143
1. The English Workingmen and the
Civil War 143
2. Abraham Lincoln and the Working-
men of England 157
3. Lincoln's Attitude towards the Work-
ing Class 168
VI. THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING-
MEN'S ASSOCIATION AND THE
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 186
1. Address of the General Council to
Abraham Lincoln ^ 186
2. Address of the General Council
the International Workingmen's
Association to President Andrew
Johnson 193
3. Address of the General Council t<
the People of the United States... 198
VII. THE LABOR MOVEMENT DURING
THE CIVIL WAR 202
1. The Draft Riot in New York 202
2. Laws Against Labor Organizations.. 210
3. Military Interference in Labor
Troubles 215
4. White Slavery 224
PREFACE
This book has a two-fold purpose: First, to
thfow light upon the position taken by the work-
ing class and the international labor movement
regarding chattel slavery; secondly, to indicate
theattitude taken by one of the most famous
characters in the struggle for the emancipation
of the Negro, Abraham Lincoln, towards the la-
bor question and the working class.
The author's standpoint in the treatment of
this subject is that of historical materialism, first
brought into the science of history by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels. According to this his-
torical conception the political and intellectual
phenomena of history stand in the most intimate
relation with the economic and social events in
society. It is the economic production, and the
division of society into classes caused thereby,
6 PREFACE
which constitutes the foundation of the political
and intellectual history of any given epoch. The
division of society into classes and their antagon-
istic interests necessitate the conflict of classes,
the class struggle, within this society. Feudal,
absolutistic, bourgeois and proletarian interests
in a given epoch of society become solidified into
principles, into ideas of these specific classes, and
produce by their contentions with one another
universal history. This history offers us the
spectacle of a series of struggles which have taken
place between the ruled and the ruling, the ex-
ploited and the exploiting classes, in the ^E^us
phases of historical development — struggles from
which modern bourgeois society is not exempt.
In our present society class antagonism rests
on the exploitation and domination of the work-
ing classes, who are deprived of the means of
production, by the owners of these means of
production, the capitalists. The owners of the
soil, of the factories and machinery, of the means
of communication, and all other instruments of
production, constitute the ruling class precisely
because they own these means of production.
The workers constitute the subjected and ex-
ploited class precisely because they are excluded
from the ownership of these means of produc-
tion. These two classes of modern society, the
capitalists and the proletarians, or workingmen,
are therefore antagonistic to each other alike in
I
PREFACE 7
their interests and in their ideas. The antagon-
ism of classes naturally produces struggles which,
with continued development, will assume larger
and larger dimensions. The labor movement and
the workingmen's organizations are the expres-
sion of these class antagonisms from the side of
the working class. Instinctively the workingmen
turn against the bourgeois. This class instinct
changes with increasing antagonism and the
greater understanding caused thereby into class
consciousness. The class struggle assumes
greater dimensions and more definite outlines.
We now see what a mistaken notion it is to
represent the class consciousness of the working-
men merely as the result of the agitation of labor
leaders. It is rather the natural result of social
evolution, of the increasing antagonism between
the interests of the exploited and the exploit-
ing classes.
It is from the standpoint of this materialistic
conception of history that those economic and
political questions which the agitation and the
struggles in behalf of the emancipation of the
Negro slaves brought to the fore, are considered
in this book. The position of the early labor
movement in relation to the agitation for the abo-
lition of chattel slavery; the economic antagonism
between the North and the South and the inevi-
tability of the conflict resulting therefrom, and
the position of the international labor movement
8 PREFACE
in relation to the War of Secession, are consid-
ered from this point of view — namely, from the
standpoint of the working class. The present
work is consequently not impartial, does not in-
tend to be impartial. There is indeed no "impar-
tial" history. The historian reflects history as
he sees it, and he sees it from the standpoint of
the class whose interests he himself represents,
whose opinions and ideas he shares, whose
struggles are also his struggles. The writer of
this work takes the position of the most advanced
section of the labor movement.
The part which the working class, foreigners
as well as Americans, played in the question of
Negro slavery and in the struggles resulting
therefrom, has never been connectedly treated
And yet this part is well worth the attention of
the historian. It is very questionable whether the
United States could have passed through the
great crisis into which it was thrown by the se-
cession of the Southern States, or could have
carried to a victorious finish the tremendous
struggle for its existence which ended with the
overthrow of chattel slavery, if the working
classes of all countries, and the young interna-
tional labor movement, at that time only begin-
ning, had not helpfully stood by its side.
The United States is indeed under the heavi-
est obligations to the workingmen, especially to
the workingmen of England. The attitude of the
PREFACE 9
English working class during the gloomiest
period of the North American Republic consti-
tutes one of the brightest pages in the history of
the labor movement. It is a subject which has
not only not received the attention it deserves
at the hands of bourgeois historians, but has
even been deliberately ignored by them.
Thus it happens, that even in the ranks of the
American labor movement but few are aware that
the United States probably owes its existence to
the attitude of the working class of England.
For it was the working class, and the working
class only, which then opposed in England the war
which the ruling classes of that country, with the
Government at their head, were about to declare
,vor of the seceding Southern States against
orthern States of the Union. It was the
working class of England which, under the guid-
ance of leaders, the best that ever stood at the
head of the English labor movement, through its
determined attitude prevented the intended war,
a war which would have added enormously to the
perils by which at that time the 'United States
was surrounded. The representatives of the Gov-
ernment at Washington spoke indeed only of the
"popular sentiment" in England in favor of the
North. They were ignorant of the division of
classes in society, and they failed to perceive that
it was the English working class which backed
this "popular sentiment," and that this class divi-
10 PREFACE
sion was the cause of the workingmen taking
sides against the ruling class of their country,
because the continuance of unfree labor was an
obstacle in the path of the development of free
labor.
Among the few in Washington who at that
time recognized the fact that it was the working-
men of England, and these only, who stood be-
hind the "popular sentiment" in favor of the
North, was Abraham Lincoln. In his answer
to an address of the workingmen of Manchester
he declared the attitude of the English working
class on the question of Negro slavery, to be "an
instance of sublime Christian heroism which has
not been surpassed in any age or in any country."
Lincoln's keener insight in this case does no
prove that he was equally clear-sighted in the mat-
ter of the labor movement and all that it implies,
or that he arrived at a clear understanding of it.
His public utterances in regard to his position
toward the working class, as well as in regard to
his views on the labor movement, reveal no spe-
cial clarity. He did not recognize the significance
of the labor movement and its struggles ; he could
not recognize it. In his time the American labor
movement was still in its infancy. Only in the
Eastern section of the country, where manufac-
ture had begun to develop, could its beginning
be discerned. Lincoln himself did not come
into touch with the American labor movement,
wu
•s
PREFACE 11
at least not into close touch, and it was therefore
perfectly explicable why he could not reach de-
finite conclusions concerning the aims of this
movement, its tasks and the economic causes
which gave rise to it.
In the present work the author has attempted
to determine Lincoln's position toward the work-
ing class. In this attempt he has examined all the
documents and speeches of Lincoln relating to
workingmen. If it should appear that Lincoln
was not a man who arrived at clear views in re-
gard to the labor movement and to a knowledge
of its causes, no reproach is thereby intended. He
was not a member of the class of industrial
workers, but a representative of the lower middle
ss (known in Europe as the petit bourgeoisie),
ich in conjunction with the farmers constituted
the majority of the inhabitants of the United
States in his time. He championed the interests
of this middle class and could not rise above its
opinions. And how small was the effect which
the labor movement made on public opinion in the
United States prior to the Civil War !
In the statement of his subject the author has
preferred not only to support his assertions by
reference to documentary evidence, but to a great
extent to let these documents speak for themselves.
The coherence of the narrative may occasionally
suffer by reason of the use of so many quotations;
but as many of these documents are rare and com-
12 PREFACE
paratively inaccessible, it has been thought best
to reproduce them.
The author is indebted to Mr. Algernon Lee
and Mr. W. J. Ghent for their careful reading
of the manuscript.
HERMAN SCHLUTER.
New York, Summer of 1913.
cal
r,
CHAPTER I.
ECONOMIC ANTAGONISM AND POLITICAL
STRUGGLE.
1. HISTORICAL REVIEW.
Long before a bloody civil war put an end to
chattel slavery in the United States, this social in-
stitution was the source of all kinds of economic
antagonisms which found expression in the politi-
cal life of the nation. Our ante-bellum political
d economic history can be understood only by
consideration of Negro slavery and all pertain-
ing to it, even in the judgment of questions which
were not directly related to it.
The entire domestic and foreign policy of the
United States in the first half of the last century
was defined in all its contents through slavery.
The opposing interests which were created
through the existence of slavery brought about
that movement and that conflict within the ruling
classes of the country which finally led to civil
war. What came to be decided in this Civil War
was not so much the question whether people
within the United States should be held as slaves
on account of the color of their skin, as the ques-
14 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tion whether the interests of the slaveholders of
the South or the interests of the industrialists and
manufacturers of the North should have the de-
ciding voice in the shaping of our national life.
In the South the prevailing mode of production
was slavery, unf ree labor. The Southern proprie-
tors of plantations produced their staples — to-
bacco, cotton, rice, sugar — by means of Negroes
who were their personal property, whom conse-
quently they were obliged to feed and clothe, but
to whom they did not have to pay money wages.
In the North, especially after the second war with
England (1812-1815), industries developed which
employed "free" laborers — laborers who did not
sell themselves and their entire time, but only
their labor power during certain hours to thei
employers for wages. The struggles resultin
from these antagonisms, which in the main were
struggles waged for political supremacy in the
Union, constitute the contents of the political de-
velopment which led to the abolition of slavery.
Changed economic conditions produce a change
in the opinions and ideas of men. As long as the
possessing classes of New England had an in-
terest in Negro slavery, they manifested no hos-
tility to this institution. As long as the ships of
the New Englanders, laden with rum made in
New England, sailed to Africa and there ex-
changed their rum for Negro slaves, whom they
carried to the Southern States to exchange for
lis
HISTORICAL REVIEW 15
molasses, which in turn they took to New Eng-
land, where rum was made out of it; as long as
this circle — rum, Negroes, molasses, rum — re-
mained and proved to be profitable, so long few
voices were heard in New England demanding the
abolition of slavery.
All this was changed when modern industry
began to develop. There were cotton factories in
New England as early as 1790, but it was the
second war with England which carried them to
prosperity. By the interruption of its commerce
with England the United States was cut off from
its source of supplies and thrown upon its own
resources. The increased demand gave a power-
ful impetus to cotton and woolen manufacture.
Snd although with the advent of peace the Eng-
;h commodity regained its former advantage, in-
dustry continued to develop in New England, en-
tailing antagonisms of various sorts between its
interests and the interests of the slaveholders, the
planters of the South. The idea of the abolition
of slavery arose in New England.
In the South, also, a change in economic inter-
ests was accomplished by a change in the opinions
of men. In the Border slave states — in Virginia,
for instance — there arose in the latter part of the
eighteenth century ideas and movements aiming
at the mitigation or abolition of slavery. Rapac-
ious tillage and the exhaustion of the soil incident
thereto, peculiar to slave labor, led to a condition
16 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
of the tobacco plantations which made their fur-
ther cultivation unprofitable. People began to
feel the possession of slaves as a burden, and in
consequence became philanthropically inclined.
We see this demonstrated by the fact, for in-
stance, that the South, and especially Virginia,
sent delegates to the annual Abolitionist conven-
tions in Philadelphia, which had their inception in
New England. But this practice ceased when
slavery suddenly again became profitable. Phil-
anthropy went to the devil when money poured
into the cash-box.
Meanwhile in 1803, the United States had pur-
chased from France the extensive territory which
was at that time known as Louisiana. The sugar
and rice fields of the new territory created a ma
ket for Negro slaves, the demands of which coul
hardly be satisfied. The planters of the Border
slave States, to whom the cultivation of tobacco
had become unprofitable and who for climatic rea-
sons could not think of raising cotton, now threw
themselves into the production of Negro slaves,
into the "manufacture" of Negroes. They bred
Negroes, as cattle are bred, and sold them to the
planters of the cotton and sugar States. With
the increased interest in Negro slavery in Vir-
ginia philanthropy disappeared, and nothing
further was heard there in regard to the abolition
of slavery. But voices began to be raised in favor
of the abolition of the slave trade. New Eng-
HISTORICAL REVIEW 17
land ships carrying slaves from the coast of
Africa to America offered a sharp competition to
the -Virginia planters who bred Negroes on Amer-
ican soil. As early as 1808 the slave trade was
legally prohibited. Notwithstanding this prohibi-
tion the ship owners of the North, and especially
of New York, continued to carry on the trade
briskly, and it was still active as late as the be-
ginning of the sixties.
These and other antagonistic interests between
the ruling classes of American society, between
the manufacturers of the North and the planters
of the South, gave rise to the later movement for
the abolition of slavery, a movement which first
manifested itself in the formation of Abolitionist
fcieties. These societies originated in the be-
nning of the thirties in the large cities of the
North, especially in Boston, after an earlier move-
ment by the same name and with the same ends
had completely ceased to exist. While the ear-
lier Abolitionists had fought slavery with the
Bible in their hands, the new movement forged
additional weapons for itself out of political
economy and statistics, and from economic con-
siderations demonstrated the necessity for the
abolition of slave labor. These Abolitionists were
untiring in demanding immediate abolition. Al-
though they were very weak in the beginning, they
nevertheless accomplished wonders by the agita-
tion among the masses coincident with the in-
18 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
creasing antagonism of interests between the
North and the South.
2. ECONOMIC CONTRAST.
Economic antagonism between the North and
the South had for a long time found political ex-
pression in tariff legislation. The capitalists of
the North, who paid their free laborers wages,
were interested in legislation which depressed
wages and raised the price of commodities. The
Southern slaveholders, on the other hand, sought
to purchase cheaply the supplies which they re-
quired for the support of their numerous slaves
and for the operation of their plantations, and
they consequently advocated such legislation as
promised to depress the prices of these suppli
to the lowest possible level. We thus observe i
the North tendencies aiming at a protective tariff.
Its infant industries could be protected against
foreign competition only by a high tariff. The
protective system which "manufactures" manu-
facturers by creating high prices for manu-
factured goods, was for this very reason abhorred
by the South. We consequently find there the
most ardent champions of free trade.
Slavery precluded .all industrial development,
as well as all agriculture on a scientific and econ-
omical basis, and was restricted exclusively to the
cultivation of staple articles. The prime staple
was cotton, the cultivation of which admitted of
ECONOMIC CONTRAST 19
the application of human labor power in its most
primitive form and by means of the most primi-
tive tools. The cotton planter knew but one in-
terest— namely, to sell his cotton at high prices
and to buy his supplies at the lowest possible
prices.
Slave labor became profitable only when the
planter gave his undivided attention to cotton.
The less grain and food products he produced, the
larger was his harvest of cotton, the greater his
profit. The cheaper he purchased his provisions,
the cheaper could he produce his cotton, and the
larger was his profit. If he had undertaken to
raise his own grain, he would hardly have been in
position to produce enough cotton for export.
Northern and Western farmer consequently
worked for the South, by sending the surplus of
his grain there. But he demanded good prices
for his products, while the planter was willing to
pay but little, and so the former was brought into
further antagonism with the South.
The fact of the predominance of protective-
tariff sentiments in the North and of free-trade
sentiments in the South did not preclude opposi-
tion to these tendencies on the part of certain
groups of interests within those sections. Thus,
in the North, the commercial element of the large
cities, especially of New York, as well as the ship-
owners, were pronounced free traders and in turn
20 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
supporters of slavery, while the sugar planters of
the South advocated a high tariff.
The conflict between the two tendencies in tariff
legislation dates back to the year 1828. In that
year the manufacturers favoring a protective
tariff succeeded for the first time in passing a
tariff law which was wholly dictated by a regard
for the development of industrial enterprise. Be-
fore that tariffs had been levied mainly for
revenue, with a regard to meeting the expenses
of government. The first attempt to inaugurate
a protective policy created a storm of dissent in
the South and led to a fierce struggle against it.
Beginning with 1833 one duty after another was
abolished, until in 1857, after many changes in
tariff legislation, the Democrats in Congress su<
ceeded in passing a tariff schedule with lower
duties than the Union had known since 1812.
The South was connected with England by a
bond of common interest. The rapidly develop-
ing textile industries of Great Britain were in
great need of the raw cotton of the South, which
possessed a monopoly in its production. As re-
turn freight the cotton ships brought back Eng-
land's industrial products, which became cheaper
and cheaper, and which came into the country
unchecked by the prevailing tariff. England's
competition became more and more oppressive to
Northern industry. The antagonism between the
capital which employed free labor in the North
ECONOMIC CONTRAST 21
and the capital which employed slave labor in the
South became more and more pronounced, and a
serious clash seemed inevitable.
We must mention one more fact which intensi-
fied the antagonism between the farmers of the
North and West and the planters of the South.
Slave labor and plantation farming led to a rapid
deterioration and exhaustion of the soil. The
slaveholders were therefore in constant need of
new territory for exploitation and devastation.
Hence the endeavors of the South to acquire new
territory and to make slavery there a legal insti-
tution. The economic life, and consequently the
political predominance of the South in the Union,
lay in the extension of cotton culture. If the
th lost the power of expansion, it lost the pos-
sibility of existence. This fact explains the virul-
ence of the slaveholders whenever the question of
the extension of slave territory came up for de-
bate. Therefore the interminable intrigues which
in the thirties and forties led first to the inde-
pendence and then to the annexation of Texas
Therefore the Mexican War and the extension of
the territory of the United States to include Cali-
fornia, Utah and New Mexico. Therefore also
the various expeditions to Cuba in order to ac-
quire this island for the South. Therefore even
the invasion of Central America, of which it was
frankly said that the aim of its promoters was
the restoration of slavery, which had been abol-
22 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ished there. Therefore especially also the attempt
to make of slavery a legal institution in all those
States of the Union which were suitable for the
production of cotton or of slaves.
But these attempts aiming at the seizure of the
still extant virgin soil in behalf of slave labor
were at war with the interests of the farmer of
the North and the West. The farmer, also, was
greatly interested in new territory. Often enough
he left his old homestead in search of new virgin
soil. But there was no place for the labor of the
free farmer where slave labor prevailed, and the
competitive struggles between him and the
planter, especially in the border territory between
the free and slave states, formed an additional
reason for him to take a stand against slavery^
It was in the main pre-eminently the farmer ele-
ment, too, which took the field for the preserva-
tion of the Union and the subjugation of the in-
surgent South.
3. POLITICAL STRUGGLE.
In Congress the Southerners spent all their
energy in efforts to establish their dominion. In
August, 1850, the Fugitive Law was passed,
which empowered every slave holder to pursue
and seize fugitive slaves throughout the whole
Union, including the free states, where slavery
did not exist. By this law the very sovereignty
of the Northern States was abolished. Another
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 23
measure of the Compromise of 1850 permitted
the first extension of slavery over new territory
(New Mexico and Utah). This was followed by
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) which de-
prived Congress of the power of prohibiting slav-
ery anywhere, but left the decision to the indi-
vidual States and practically opened the entire
West to the introduction bf slavery. Then came
the bloody encounters between the free-State
people and the adherents of slavery in Kansas.
The Dred Scott decision of 1857 followed. It
was these questions almost exclusively which
dominated the internal policy of the country and
determined the formation of new parties.
The Republican party was formed in 1854 by
the progressive elements of the Democratic and
the old Whig parties and the Free Soilers. It was
opposed to slavery, but its opposition was directed
far more against the extension of slavery than
against the institution itself. Its slogan was not
originally the abolition of slavery, but rather:
No more Slave States. As late as 1856 a radical
paper hostile to slavery complained of the Re-
publicans: "Everywhere bargains, compromises,
concessions which make it almost impossible for
an honest man to participate in the struggle!"
How little the Republican party originally
thought of demanding complete abolition is made
plain by a glance at the platform which was
adopted by its first general convention at Phila-
24 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
delphia, in 1856. The planks which in this plat-
form referred to slavery were : First, opposition
to the introduction of slavery into the Territories,
so that neither Congress, nor the Territorial Leg-
islature, nor any company or individual should
have the right under the prevailing constitution
to legalize slavery there; and, further, an asser-
tion of the constitutional power and obligation of
Congress to prohibit slavery and polygamy in the
Territories. Absolutely nothing was said in be-
half of the abolition of slavery itself in the slave
States.
Even in 1860, when a violent conflict already
seemed inevitable; when the proceedings in Con-
gress had carried the political antagonisms to an
acute stage; when John Brown's attempted in-
surrection and his death on the gallows had set
the population in both camps aflame with excite-
ment— even then the Republicans did not demand
abolition. In their convention of that year at
Chicago, in which Abraham Lincoln was nomi-
nated for the Presidency, a new platform was
adopted, containing, among others, these planks
in regard to slavery :
"That the new dogma, that the Constitution,
of its own force, carries slavery into any or all
of the Territories of the United States, is a dan-
gerous political heresy, at variance with the ex-
plicit provisions of that instrument itself, with
contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 25
and judicial precedent ; is revolutionary in its ten-
dency and subversive of the peace and harmony
of the country.
"That the normal condition of all the territory
of the United States is that of freedom; that as
our republican fathers, when they had abolished
slavery in all our national territory, ordained that
'no person should be deprived of life, liberty or
property without due process of law/ it becomes
our duty, by legislation, whenever such legisla-
tion is necessary, to maintain this provision of the
Constitution against all attempts to violate it;
and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Ter-
ritorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give
legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the
United States.
"That we brand the recent reopening of the
African slave trade, under the cover of our na-
tional flag, aided by perversions of judicial power,
a<? a crime against humanity and a burning shame
to our country and age, and we call upon Con-
gress to take prompt and efficient measures for
the total and final suppression of that execrable
traffic."
Thus we see that on the very eve of the out-
break of hostilities between the North ani the
South the Republicans were silent in regard to
abolition. They contented themselves with pro-
testing against the extension of the institution
over Federal territory and with condemning the
26 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
slave trade, which had been reopened. They still
had no objections to urge against slavery itself,
or at least they did not consider it expedient to
place the demand for abolition in the foreground.
In the Fall of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was
elected to the Presidency of the United States.
The South unfurled the flag of rebellion. Futile
attempts to effect a compromise were still made
in Congress, and the Republicans, in order to save
the union, showed a willingness to concede much
of what they had previously stood for. But with
the outbreak of hostilities the attitude of the Re-
publican leaders gradually became more radical,
though the necessity of conciliating a large part
of the population in the Border States compelled
the utmost caution. No one better understood the
necessity of this caution than Lincoln; and from
time to time he had to withstand bursts of angry
impatience from sections of the Northern people
who insisted upon a more radical attitude.
Lincoln's position in regard to secession and
slavery during the early part of the war, and the
position of the radicals and the Abolitionists in
regard to Lincoln and the Republican Adminis-
tration is brought out most clearly in a contro-
versy on the subject between Lincoln and Horace
Greeley, the Abolitionist editor of the New York
Tribune. In August, 1862, Greeley published in
the New York Tribune an open letter addressed
to Lincoln. His appeal to the President was en-
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 27
titled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," and in
the course of it he requested Lincoln to write to
the United States Ministers in Europe and ask
them "to tell you [Lincoln] candidly, whether the
seeming subserviency of your policy to the slave-
holding, slavery-upholding interest, is not the
perplexity, the despair of statesmen and of par-
ties, and be admonished by the general answer !"
Lincoln replied to this public appeal of Horace
Greeley as follows :
"Executive Mansion, Washington.
"August 22, 1862.
"Hon. Horace Greeley:
"Dear Sir : I have just read yours of the 19th,
addressed to myself through the New York
Tribune. If there be in it statements or assump-
tions of fact which I may know to be erroneous,
I do not now and here controvert them. If there
be in it any inferences which I may believe to
be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue
against them. If there be perceptible in it an im-
patient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in defer-
ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always
supposed to be right.
"As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing/ as
you say, I have not meant to leave any one in
doubt.
"I would save the Union. I would save it the
shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner
28 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
the national authority can be restored, the nearer
the Union will be 'the Union as it was.' If there
be those who would not save the Union unless
they could at the same time save slavery, I do
not agree with them. If there be those who
would not save the Union unless they could at
the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree
with them. My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and is not either to save or
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union with-
out freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do
it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving
others alone, I would also do that. What I do
about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save this Union; and what I
forbear doing, I forbear because I do not believe
it would help to save the Union. I shall do less
whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts
the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall
believe doing more will help the cause. I shall
try to correct errors when shown to be errors;
and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall
appear to be true views. I have here stated my
purpose according to my views of official duty,
and I intend no modification of my oft expressed
personal wish that all men, everywhere, could
be free.
"Yours,
"A. Lincoln."
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 29
Horace Greeley published a reply, in which he
raised the question whether Lincoln intended to
save the Union "by recognizing, obeying, and en-
forcing the laws, or by ignoring, disregarding and
in fact defying them."
Greeley's answer to this question was as fol-
lows:
''I stand upon the law of the land. The humb-
lest has a clear right to invoke its protection and
support against even the highest. That law — in
strict accordance with the law of nations, of Na-
ture and of God — declares that every traitor now
engaged in the infernal work of destroying our
country has forfeited thereby all claims or color
of right lawfully to hold human beings in slavery.
I ask of you a clear and public recognition that
this law is to be obeyed wherever the national
authority is respected. I cite to you instances
wherein men fleeing from bondage to traitors, to
the protection of our flag, have been assaulted,
wounded, and murdered by soldiers of the Union,
unpunished and unrebuked by your General Com-
manding,— to prove that it is your duty to take
action in the premises, — action that will cause
the law to be proclaimed and obeyed wherever
your authority or that of the Union is recognized
as paramount. The Rebellion is strengthened,
the national cause is imperilled, by every hour's
delay to strike treason this staggering blow.
"When Fremont proclaimed freedom to the
30 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
slaves of rebels, you constrained him to modify
his proclamation into rigid accordance with the
terms of the existing law. It was your clear
right to do so. I now ask of you conformity to
the principle so sternly enforced upon him. I
ask you to instruct your generals and com-
modores, that no loyal person — certainly nono
willing to render service to the national cause —
is henceforth to be regarded as the slave of any
traitor. While no rightful government was ever
before assailed by so wanton and wicked a rebel-
lion as that of the slaveholders against our nation-
al life, I am sure none ever before hesitated at so
simple and primary an act of self-defence, as to
relieve those who would serve and save it from
chattel servitude to those who are wading through
seas of blood to subvert and destroy it. Future
generations will with difficulty realize that there
could have been hesitation on this point. Sixty
years of general and boundless subserviency to
the slave power do not adequately explain it.
"Mr. President, I beseech you to open your
eyes to the fact that the devotees of slavery every-
where— just as much in Maryland as in Missis-
sippi, in Washington as in Richmond — are to-
day your enemies, and the implacable foes of
every effort to re-establish the national authority
by the discomfiture of its assailants. Their Presi-
dent is not Abraham Lincoln, but Jefferson Davis.
You may draft them to serve in the war; but they
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 31
will only fight under the Rebel flag. There is not
in New York to-day a man who really believes in
slavery, loves it, and desires its perpetuation, who
heartily desires the crushing out of the Rebellion.
He would much rather save the Republic by
buying up and pensioning off its assailants. His
'Union as it was' is a Union of which you were
not President, and no one who truly wished free-
dom to all, ever could be.
"If these are truths, Mr. President, they are
surely of the gravest importance. You cannot
safely approach the great and good end you so
intently meditate by shutting your eyes to them.
Your deadly foe is not blinded by any mist in
which your eyes may be developed. He walks
straight to his goal, knowing well his weak point,
and most unwillingly betraying his fear that you
too may see and take advantage of it. God grant
that apprehension may prove prophetic !
"That you may reasonably perceive these vital
truths as they will shine forth on the pages of
history, — that they may be read by our children
irradiated by the glory of our national salvation,
not rendered lurid by the blood-red glow of na-
tional conflagration and ruin — that you may
promptly and practically realize that slavery is to
be vanquished only by liberty, — is the fervent and
anxious prayer of
"Yours truly,
"Horace Greeley."
32 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
The attitude of the Administration and of Con-
gress toward slavery, though cautious, was stead-
ily progressive. In August, 1861, Congress
passed a Confiscation act, freeing slaves who
were directly employed in aiding the Confederate
cause. Gen. John C. Fremont, in command in
Missouri, soon after issued a proclamation ex-
ceeding the terms of this act in that it freed the
slaves of all persons in rebellion against the
Government. Lincoln immediately disallowed
the proclamation and soon after (November 2d)
removed Fremont. Gen. B. F. Butler, however,
was not interfered with for treating the slaves
in the Fort Monroe neighborhood as "contraband
of war." In March, 1862, Lincoln sent a mes-
sage to Congress advocating the gradual aboli-
tion of .slavery, with compensation, but the meas-
ure failed. In the following month Congress
abolished slavery in the District of Columbia,
and an average compensation of $200 per slave
was paid. In June Congress abolished slavery in
the Territories, granting no compensation; and
in July the Confiscation act was extended and
strengthened. On July 22d Lincoln read the first
draft of his Emancipation Proclamation to his
cabinet, but decided to withhold it until a de-
cisive victory had been gained. Shortly after-
ward Gen. David Hunter, in command in South
Carolina, issued a proclamation as sweeping as
the one issued a year before by Gen. Fremont.
POLITICAL STRUGGLE 33
This, also, was disallowed by Lincoln, though
within a few weeks (September 22d) he issued
his own proclamation. On January 1, 1863, this
proclamation went into effect. On February 1,
1865, by a two-thirds majority, Congress passed
the Thirteenth Amendment, and on December
18th it was officially proclaimed as having been
ratified by a sufficient number of States.
CHAPTER II.
THE WORKINGMEN AND CHATTEL SLAVERY.
1. THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE NORTH
AND SLAVERY.
The whole course of development sketched in
the foregoing chapter — the inception and rise of
the movement in behalf of the emancipation of
the Negro slaves, the economic and political an-
tagonisms and struggles engendered by slavery,
the formation of new political parties, and fin-
ally the attempt to disrupt the Union — this whole
course of development was accompanied by, and
stood in the most intimate relation with, another
economic phenomenon — namely, the rise of capi-
talist industry in the North and the concomitant
growth of an industrial working class with sep-
arate class interests and separate class feelings,
developing into perfect class consciousness with
the advent of greater intelligence.
Now, what position did these industrial work-
ers of the North take regarding chattel slavery?
It was in the nature of things that slavery and
free labor could not peaceably continue to exist
side by side. The intelligence and the class con-
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 35
sciousness of the free workingmen may not have
been sufficiently developed than to apprehend the
economic reasons which preclude the co-existence
of slave labor and free labor, and the working-
men may especially not have been able to see that
their own development as a class was imperiled
by slavery, but their class feeling was certainly
far enough advanced to dispose them in most
cases against the existence of slavery. This atti-
tude, however, was originally less the result of
a clear apprehension than of the emanation of a
certain feeling, which again and again, as we
shall see, was traversed by their own class inter-
est, and which gave to the position of the work-
ingmen in regard to Negro slavery a strangely
contradictory aspect.
Previous to the Civil War in America but few
countries knew anything about the labor move-
ment and labor organization. Only in England
and in the United States was there a working
class with separate class interests sufficiently de-
veloped to admit of its organization and mobil-
ization as an independent class.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century
trade unions had begun to appear in England.
In the thirties and forties the British proletariat
had created for itself a vigorous political labor
organization in the Chartist movement. In Ger-
many, France and the other European countries
the workingmen had not got beyond the first at-
36 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tempts at organization and were as yet without
any idea of an independent labor movement. It
was not to be expected therefore that the Con-
tinental workingman would take an independent
position in regard to Negro slavery.
In the United States the first trade organiza-
tions of workingmen had made their appearance
simultaneously with the formation of trade
unions in England. As early as the latter part
of the twenties and the beginning of the thirties
we note also the formation of independent politi-
cal labor organizations, but all of short duration.
The development of the trade-union movement
was again and again interrupted by the economic
crises of the ante-bellum period, especially those
of 1837 and 1857, and the existing organizations
were destroyed. The political labor parties also
soon disappeared : wrecked partly by the incom-
plete development of conditions and partly by the
intrigues of professional politicians and the cor-
ruption of the labor leaders. Nevertheless new
organizations and new movements started into
life again. The more industry developed, the
more numerous became the attempts of working-
men to found independent organizations.
Corresponding with the development of indus-
try, the American labor movement of that period
was restricted to the Northern States, especially
to the Eastern portion. New England, New
York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were the prin-
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 37
cipal seats of activity. In the South single asso-
ciations of mechanics, especially printers, ship-
wrights, and iron moulders, were indeed formed
in the fifties, but in general they were of little
account. The entire West was devoted to agri-
culture and consequently offered but little soil for
the growth of an industrial labor movement.
In the Eastern portion of the country, espe-
cially in New York, the German immigrant work-
ingmen played a part. Many trades were almost
exclusively in the hands of skilled German ar-
tisans. They organized independent unions for
the promotion of their own interests, and in the
middle of the forties there arose a German labor
movement on American soil, which frequently
exerted great influence. In determining the po-
sition of the labor movement in regard to Negro
slavery only England and the United States are
consequently to be considered, and in the latter
country the attitude of the immigrant German
workingmen must be taken into account along
with that of the native organizations.
Through the agitation of the Abolitionists,
which was vigorously supported by the social re-
formers of the Fourier and Owen schools and by
the men and women interested in Brook Farm,
who exercised a great influence upon the work-
ingmen, the industrial laborers and artisans ot
New England became early enlightened with re-
gard to slavery, and they took position accord-
38 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ingly. Their altitude on this matter furnishes
another proof that the salvation of the world does
not proceed from the palaces, but comes from the
hovels; and that it is the despised and lower strata
of society in which all reformatory movements,
which together constitute the progress of man-
kind, strike root and have their soil.
The strong hold which the teachings of the
Abolitionists gained among .the mass of the work-
ingmen of New England, and the coldness with
which these teachings were received by the upper
ten of society, are facts attested by an eye-witness
who himself sprang from the latter class.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a native of New
England, writes of the early thirties of the last
century, after William Lloyd Garrison had
launched his Abolitionist agitation and founded
the Liberator in Boston :
"The anti-slavery movement was not strong-
est in the more educated classes, but was pre-
dominantly a people's movement, based on the
simplest human instincts and far stronger for a
time in the factories and shoe-shops than in the
pulpits or colleges."
And further:
"All of us were familiar with the vain efforts
of Garrison to enlist the clergy in the anti-slavery
cause, and Stephen Foster, one of the stanchest
of the early Abolitionists, ' habitually spoke of
them as the 'Brotherhood of Thieves.' Lawyers
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 39
and doctors, too, fared hard with those enthusi-
asts, and merchants not much better."*
Thus we see it was the working class, and not
the property owners of New England, that list-
ened to the Abolitionists. And like the unorgan-
ized mass of the workingmen of the North, so
also the first organized workingmen showed an
understanding of the question of Negro slavery
and sympathized with the Abolitionists in their
efforts to abolish the institution. The platform
of one of the first political labor parties of New
York contained a plank demanding the abolition
of chattel slavery; and as an expression of their
own class interest, they demanded at the same
time the abolition of wage slavery, a term which
had far greater currency in the American labor
movement at that period than subsequently.
The question of the abolition of wage slavery,
as well as the demands of the labor movement in
general, met with far less understanding among
the Abolitionists than the question of the aboli-
tion of chattel slavery among the workingmen.
The Abolitionists denied the very existence of
''white slavery.'' They opposed the spokesmen
of the workingmen who in their speeches and
articles used the term "white slavery," and flatly
denied that wage workers were slaves. The
Abolitionists, indeed, evinced so little understand-
* Thomas Wentworth Higginson : Cheerful Yester-
days. 1898. pp. 115-117.
40 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ing of the rising movement of the workingmen
that they denied them the right of independent
organization, of making separate demands as a
class, and of securing their special interests.
On January 1, 1831, there appeared in Boston
the first number of the Liberator, the organ of
the Abolitionists, which William Lloyd Garri-
son published for thirty years in the interest of
the emancipation of the Negro slaves. The same
time saw the birth of a movement for the purpose
of organizing the workingmen of New England
into an independent political labor party. This
labor party was founded in a contention held at
Boston in February, 1831, under the name "New
England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and
other Workingmen." In the first issue of the
Liberator William Lloyd Garrison opposed the
agitation in behalf of this independent labor party
in the following wrords :
"An attempt has been made — it is still mak-
ing— we regret to say, with considerable success
— to inflame the minds of our working classes
against the more opulent, and to persuade men
that they are contemned and oppressed by a
wealthy aristocracy. That public grievances ex-
ist, is unquestionably true; but they are not con-
fined to any one class of society. Every profes-
sion is interested in their removal — the rich as
well as the poor. It is in the highest degree crim-
inal, therefore, to exasperate our mechanics to
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 41
deeds of violence or to array them under a party
banner; for it is not true, that, at any time, they
have been the objects of reproach. Labor is not
dishonorable. The industrious artisan, in a gov-
ernment like ours, will always be held in better
estimation than the wealthy idler.
"Our limits will not allow us to enlarge on this
subject; we may return to it another time. We
are the friends of reform ; but this is not reform,
which in one evil threatens to inflict a thousand
others."
The hostile attitude of Garrison and a portion
of the other Abolitionists toward the labor move-
ment very naturally put a damper on the enthu-
siasm of the workingmen, especially the organ-
ized workmen, for the Abolitionists' movement.
In their meetings, conventions, and newspapers
the workingmen set forth more strongly than
ever the slave character of wage labor, but con-
tinued as a matter of course to champion the
emancipation of the Negro slaves, without, how-
ever, emphasizing its immediate necessity. A
spokesman of the Boston workingmen, probably
William West, combated Garrison's views in the
columns of the Liberator itself. In a communi-
cation to this paper he described the condition of
the wage worker and addressed Garrison in the
following manner:
''Although you do not appear to have per-
ceived it, I think there is a very intimate connec-
42 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tion between the interests of the workingmen's
party and your own. You are striving to excite
the attention of your countrymen to the injustice
of holding their fellow-men in bondage and de-
priving them of the fruit of their toil. We are
aiming at a similar object, only in application to
another portion of our fellow-men."
West then discusses the causes which in his
opinion bring about the slavery of white work-
ingmen, saying among other things that "the
value and the prices of labor have been rated not
by the worth of their product, but by the power
of those who command its proceeds, or for whom
it is performed to obtain it, and enjoy its bene-
fits." ....
And then West continues :
"You propose to remedy these evils, by extend-
ing to the enslaved the sympathy of the philan-
thropic, by educating and otherwise fitting them
to take care of themselves ; and by awakening the
moral sense of those who now enjoy the fruit of
their labors, to the injustice and wickedness of
thus robbing their fellow-men of the products
of their industrial toil.
"We seek to enlighten our brethren in the
knowledge of their rights and duties; to excite
them to the acquisition of useful knowledge and
the practice of virtue; and to cherish that self-
respect which they are entitled to feel, who sup-
port all other classes of society. We, too, appeal
43
to the moral sense of the wealthy and powerful,
and to their justice and philanthropy, in behalf
of those whose labor give value to their estates —
income to their capital — ornament and beauty to
their dwellings and apartments. We demand of
these, that they should pay to the hard-working
farmer and mechanic, not only a fair equivalent
for his services, but that homage and respect
which are due to him who braves the inclemency
of winter and the intensity of summer ; who toils
early and late to raise up into life a virtuous
family. We insist that where reason and argu-
ment will not avail, it is a duty owned by work-
ingmen to themselves and the world, to exert
their power, through the ballot-box, — and by
ameliorating our system of Laws, to eradicate
those evils which operate so extensively and un-
justly."
The discussion between the Abolitionist and
that Boston workman went on through several
numbers of the Liberator. On January 29, 1831,
Garrison answered West and told him, that "there
is a prevalent opinion that wealth and aristocracy
are indissolubly allied; and the poor and vulgar
are taught to consider the opulent as their natural
enemies. Those who inculcate this pernicious doc-
trine are the worst enemies of the people, and in
grain, the real nobility. There is, no doubt, an
abuse of wealth as well as of talents, office and
emolument; but where is the evidence that our
44 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
wealthy citizens, as a body, are hostile to the
interests of the laboring classes? It is not found
in their commercial enterprises, which whiten the
ocean with canvas, and give employment to the
useful and numerous class of men: it is not
found in their manufacturing establishments,
which multiply labor and cheapen the necessities
of the poor; it is not found in the luxuries of their
tables, or the adornments of their dwellings, for
which they must pay in proportion to their ex-
travagance.
"It is a miserable characteristic of human na-
ture to look with an envious eye upon those who
are more fortunate in their pursuits, or more ex-
alted in their station. In every grade, there are
unprincipled, avaricious and despotic men : but
shall individual cases condemn the whole body?
Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to affirm,
that mechanics are more inimical to the success
of each other, more unjust toward each other,
than the rich toward them."
As we see, Garrison did not penetrate to the
kernel of the matter. He simply had no under-
standing for the point of view of his adversary,
who even at that time, more than eighty years
ago, rose far above the level of the mass of the
American workingmen of the present day as re-
gards a true conception of the labor question.
West replied once more to Garrison's rejoinder,
in these words:
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 45
"You must concede that those who indulge in
luxury, are in no sense more deserving than the
working classes who live frugally and in repub-
lican simplicity. But do we see the latter en-
joying the advantages of the former? Where
do you find the men whose toil and labor have
produced all the magnificence and grandeur
which adorn our capital? Living in the poorest
hovels, or meanest dwellings — subsisting on the
humblest fare — working in all weather, exposed
to every evil — and enjoying but little leisure or
opportunity for the cultivation of heart or in-
tellect. Would this be so, if they were equitably
paid for their labor? Is it not obvious that the
prices of mechanical and agricultural labor are
altogether too low, when an idle libertine, who
produces nothing, can command the proceeds of
the labor of all around him, and live at the cost
which would support a hundred industrious work-
ing citizens and their useful families ? I am per-
suaded that a moment's reflection on this subject
must satisfy you, that labor is altogether inade-
quately compensated. The very existence of
such accumulations is proof of it."
The antagonism revealed in this controversy
between the spokesman of the Abolitionists and
the champion of the workingmen found expres-
sion during the whole period of the Abolitionist
movement whenever the workingman, in their
meetings or in their papers, had occasion to de-
46 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
fine their position in regard to Negro slavery.
It would be a mistake, therefore, to assume that
Garrison's attack upon the labor movement was
the sole cause of the estrangement existing be-
tween the two movements, an estrangement evi-
denced among other things by the fact that the
workingmen very seldom expressed an opinion
about the efforts for the abolishment of Negro
slavery and that the Abolitionists reported very
little about the labor movement. The attitude of
the organized workingmen towards Southern
slavery had a deeper cause. As already stated,
this cause lay in their awakening class conscious-
ness. This indeed did not dispose the working-
men against the emancipation of the Negro
slaves, but it suggested to them that their own
emancipation was a matter of more vital import-
ance to them than that of the Southern blacks.
Their feelings and their sympathies in general
aligned them indeed on the side of the- agitation
in behalf of the abolition of Negro slavery; but
with their awakening understanding and their
dawning insight into their own lot the conviction
grew within them that their own emancipation
touched them more nearly. While the great mass
of the unorganized workingmen of New England
thus furnished the great body whence the Abo-
litionists drew their recruits, there came a reac-
tion with the rise of the labor movement and the
formation of independent organizations by work-
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 47
ingmen, whether political parties or trade unions.
In the labor organizations the specific demands of
labor and the class feeling were naturally more
sharply emphasized than among the unorganized
masses. This fact explains also why the agitation
in behalf of the abolition of Negro slavery met
with less response among the organized work-
ingmen of that period than among the unorgan-
ized masses. Though the hostility of the Abo-
litionists may have widened the breach, yet their
own affairs, their own struggles, and their own
agitation — in short, the awakening class con-
sciousness of the workingmen — made of the abo-
lition of Southern Negro slavery a matter of sec-
ondary importance to them. We come face to
face with this fact again and again. Labor or-
ganizations at that time were not yet well estab-
lished institutions. Crises and accidents of all
sorts too often put an end to jthem. But they
always rose afresh, and in the three decades pre-
ceding the Civil War we note again and again the
fact that with the rise of the new organization
the question of Negro slavery gives way to the
question of wage slavery.
There is also to be noted among the working-
men of that period a certain natural suspicion
which is wont to go with every genuine labor-
class movement when it must declare itself in
reference to middle-class reform. For instance,
when, in the Fall of 1835, Governor Vroom, of
48 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
New York, in a message to the Legislature, made
an attack on the Abolitionists, the Workingmen'^
Advocate then published in New York, declared:
"We believe that many of the Abolitionists are
actuated by a species of fanaticism, and are de-
sirous of freeing the slaves, more for the purpose
of adding them to a religious sect, than for a love
of liberty and justice, but their desire to free the
slaves, so far as they can do so by the force of
moral power, we believe to be a good and a just
cause, and one that they have not attempted to
advance by any but constitutional means."*
At that period, especially in New England, the
disciples of Fourier and Robert Owen and other
Utopian social reformers, who had inaugurated
a great movement throughout the United States,
exercised a powerful influence on the ideas and
opinions of the workingmen. The men and
women participating in this movement, especially
also those interested in the Brook Farm experi-
ment, not only exercised great influence upon the
workingmen, but they were also in close touch
with the Abolitionists and they promoted the
anti-slavery cause with great energy. Whatever
school they might belong to, all these social re-
formers agreed with the organized workingmen
on the question of Negro slavery, although they
took a livelier interest than did the workingmen
* Working Men's Advocate, New York, Nov. 21, 1835.
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 49
in the special work of the Abolitionists. In the
Liberator, as well as in the numerous anti-slavery
conventions, these social reformers never tired of
urging the view that not only Negro slavery but
all slavery must be abolished.
Thus on May 27, 1845, at a convention of the
New England Anti-Slavery Society, Robert
Owen took the floor, and said that "from an early
period he was opposed to Negro slavery, and also
to slavery of all kinds. At home in England he
had seen by far worse slavery than any he had
witnessed among the colored population — all
should look at the great causes of slavery. They
could be traced to the spirit of inequality in and
under all governments — all we wanted was the
establishment of equal rights over all lands and
countries. The black man proclaimed liberty for
his color — but he stood there to contend for
liberty to the white man, who was bound to the
most arrant slavery of all. They were slaves,
mentally and physically, to an unequal system of
government, both here and in England, which
crushed the laborer and the poor man everywhere
down to the dust."*
Tn a series of articles on "The Question of
Social Reform," published in the Liberator in
1845, Albert Brisbane, the well-known exponent
of Fourier's ideas in America, speaks of "the
* Liberator, Boston, June 6, 1845.
50 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
institution of slavery" in its numerous varieties.
Besides the slavery of race or color and the
slavery of capital, he speaks of foreign slavery,
home slavery, compound slavery, slavery of caste,
slavery of the soil and military slavery. The
slavery of capital he defines as follows :
"Slavery of capital, under which man is the
dependent drudge, and the menial of the power
of money, and must sell his time, labor and tal-
ents— which is equivalent to selling himself day
by day, or by retail — to him who has the means
of buying them. With a thick population, and
anarchical competition among the laboring classes
for work, the toiling millions are subjected, un-
der this variety of servitude, to the most pro-
longed and oppressive drudgery, and reduced to
the most abject poverty and destitution. This
miserable system, which wears out the souls and
bodies of the working classes enriching the few,
and leaves them and their families to starve in
sickness and old age, is only a modification of
serfdom and one degree above slavery; it sways
with iron rule the destinies of the laboring classes,
where slavery and serfdom no longer crush them
to the earth.
"If there is a reform which is imperiously de-
manded, it is a reform of this servitude to capital,
which is sinking the working classes of this
country into poverty and dependence, blotting out
their manhood, and thus destroying morally the
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 51
only population on earth which has the intelli-
gence and the political power to effect a great and
universal reform that will redeem the whole of
the human family from the condition in which
they are sunk. It would be a noble step, it strikes
me, if the advanced guard of the Abolitionists
would include in their movement a reform of the
present wretched organization of labor, called the
wage system. It would add to their power by
interesting the producing classes in a great in-
dustrial reform including chattel slavery, and
would prepare a better state for the slaves when
emancipated, than that of servitude to capital,
to which they now seem to be destined."*
It is surely needless to note especially the fact
that Brisbane's appeal to the Abolitionists was in
vain. They were unable to understand him and
the aspirations of the workingmen, and to some
extent probably did not want to understand.
It was at this time, in the summer of 1845.
while Brisbane was publishing his series of ar-
ticles, that Horace Greeley issued his celebrated
definition of slavery. He had been invited to at-
tend an anti-slavery convention. He declined
the invitation and took occasion to show where-
in he disagreed with the callers of the convention,
his aim being to unite all opponents of slavery
* Liberator, Sept. 5, 1845.
52 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
and of all slavery. He raised the question : What
is slavery ? and answered it as follows :
"What is slavery f You will probably answer,
'The legal subjection of one human being to the
will and power of another.' But this definition
appears to me inaccurate on both sides — too
broad, and at the same time too. narrow. It is
too broad, in that it includes the subjection
founded in other necessities, not less stringent
than those imposed by statute. We must seek
some truer definition.
"/ understand by slavery, that condition in
which one human being exists mainly as a con-
venience for other human beings — in which the
time, the exertions, the faculties of a part of the
human family are made to subserve, not their
own development, physical, intellectual and
moral, but the comfort, advantage or caprices
of others. In short, wherever service is rendered
from one human being to another, on a footing
of one-sided and not of mutual obligation — where
the relation between the servant and the served
is one not of affection and reciprocal good of-
fices, but of authority, social ascendency and
power over subsistence on the one hand, and of
necessity, servility and degradation on the other
— there, in my view, is slavery.
"You \vill readily understand, therefore, that,
if I regard your enterprise with less absorbing
interest than you do, it is not that I deem slavery
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 53
a less, but a greater evil. If I am less troubled
concerning the slavery prevalent in Charleston or
New Orleans, it is because I see so much slavery
in New York, which appears to claim my first
efforts. I rejoice in believing that there is less
of it in your several communities and neighbor-
hoods ; but that it does exist there, I am compelled
to believe. In esteeming it my duty to preach
reform first to my own neighbor and kindred, I
would by no means attempt to censure those
whose conscience prescribes a different course.
Still less would I undertake to say that the
slavery of the South is not more hideous in kind
and degree than that which prevails at the North.
The fact that it is more flagrant and palpable
renders opposition to it comparatively easy and
its speedy downfall certain. But how can I de-
vote myself to a crusade against distant servitude,
when I discern its essence pervading my immedi-
ate community and neighborhood? nay, when
I have not yet succeeded in banishing it even
from my own humble household? Wherever
may lie the sphere of duty of others, is not mine
obviously here?
"Let me state what I conceive to be the essen-
tial characteristics of human slavery:
"1. Wherever certain human beings devote
their time and thoughts mainly to obeying and
serving other human beings, and this not because
54 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
they choose to do so, but because they must; there
(I think) is slavery.
"2. Wherever human beings exist in such re-
lations that a part, because of the position they
occupy and the functions they perform, are gen-
erally considered an inferior class to those who
perform other functions, or none, there (I think)
is slavery.
"3. Wherever the ownership of the soil is so
engrossed by a small part of the community that
the far larger number are compelled to pay what-
ever the few may see fit to exact for the privilege
of occupying and cultivating the earth, there is
something very like slavery.
"4. Wherever opportunity to labor is ob-
tained with difficulty, and is so deficient that the
employing class may virtually prescribe their own
terms and pay the laborer only such share as
they choose of the product, there is a very strong
tendency to slavery.
"5. Wherever it is deemed more reputable to
live without labor than by labor, so that 'a gentle-
man' would be rather ashamed of his descent
from a blacksmith than from an idler or mere
pleasure-seeker, there is a community not very
far from slavery. And —
"6. Wherever one human being deems it hon-
orable and right to have other human beings
mainly devoted to his or her convenience or com-
fort, and thus to live, diverting the labor of these
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 55
persons from all productive or general useful-
ness to his or her own special uses, while he or
she is rendering or has rendered no correspond-
ing service to the cause of human well-being,
there exists the spirit which originated and still
sustains human slavery.
"I might multiply these illustrations indefin-
itely, but I dare not so trespass on your patience.
Rather allow me to apply the principles here
evolved in illustration of what I deem the duties
and policy of Abolitionists in reference to their
cause. And here I would advise:
''Oppose slavery in all its forms. Be at least
as careful not to be a slave-holder as not to vote
for one. Be as tenacious that your own wives,
children, hired men and wromen, tenants, etc.,
enjoy the blessings of rational liberty, as that the
slaves of South Carolina do "
Whether it was that men like Owen, Brisbane,
Greeley and others influenced the leaders of the
Abolitionists, or whether these • independently
came to see that it would amount to cutting off
the branch on which they were sitting if they
persisted in challenging the hostility of the labor
movement, the fact is that the attacks of Gar-
rison and his friends on the independent organ-
ization of the working class were in the main
confined to the first beginnings of the Abolition-
ist movement. They soon ceased, and the old
antagonism found vent only now and again, on
56 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
special occasions. Of course, the early attempts
at an independent political labor movement in
New England and in New York in the thirties
were doomed to failure. The crises of 1837 put
an end also to the frail beginnings of trade-union
organizations, so that there was little occasion for
collision between the Abolitionists and the labor
movement. But it seems also that the spokesmen
of the former came to the conclusion that it would
be in the interest of their own agitation if they
left the labor organizations in peace.
Some of the Abolitionist leaders gradually
even came to conceive sound views in regard to
the labor question. Most noted among these was
Wendell Phillips, who in later years, after the
abolition of Negro slavery had been accom-
plished, thoroughly identified himself with the
emancipatory aspirations of the workingmen.
In a speech delivered in 1847 before the Anti-
Slavery Society in Boston, he suggested, for in-
stance, that people cease using the products of
slave labor — in other words, that they declare a
boycott against Southern goods. On this occa-
sion he expressed himself as follows :
''In my opinion the great question of labor,
when it shall come up, will be found paramount
to others, and the operatives of New England,
peasants of Ireland and laborers of South Amer-
ica, will not be lost sight of in the sympathy for
the Southern slave."
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 57
A labor paper, in calling attention to these re-
marks, said:
"Mr. Phillips is on the high road to the prin-
ciples of social reform. May he and like philan-
thropists be brought to see that slavery, war,
poverty and oppression are inseparable from the
system of civilization, the system of antagonism
of interest; that the only effectual remedy is the
introduction of a higher system of union of in-
terest and union of industry."*
In the middle of the forties an active labor
movement sprang into being which sought to ex-
tend its activities alike over the political and the
economic field. Gatherings and labor conven-
tions were of daily occurrence, everywhere labor
organizations were formed and labor papers
started. The organized workingmen emphasized
their sympathy for the Negro slaves of the
South, but did not fail to point out again and
again the necessity for the abolition of wage
slavery. In an appeal to the workingmen of New
England, L. W. Ryckman, president of the New
England Workingmen's Association, called on
them to "abolish all slavery, by connecting the
obligation to cultivate, with the right to own
the land."**
Half a year later, on January 16, 1846, a con-
* George E. McNeil : The Labor Movement. 1887. p.
113.
** Liberator, July 4, 1845.
58 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
vention of New England workingmen met at
Lynn, Mass., and took such unequivocal ground
against Negro slavery as to make it perfectly
clear that the special emphasis placed on the class
interests of the workingmen, the demand for the
abolition of all slavery, certainly did not imply
any friendship for the slaveholders of the South
and for Negro slavery. Public opinion in the
United States at that time was excited by the
impending war with Mexico for the possession
of Texas — a war, in fact, waged for the exten-
sion of Negro slavery and in the interest of the
slaveholders. A resolution was adopted at this
convention which is characteristic of the uncom-
promising sentiments entertained by the working-
men of the North, despite the opposition of the
Abolitionists to their demands. This resolution
was worded:
"Whereas, there are at the present time three
millions of our brethren and sisters groaning in
chains on the Southern plantations; and, where-
as, we wish not only to be consistent, but to
secure to all others those rights and privileges
for which we are contending ourselves; there-
fore,
"Resolved, that while we honor and respect our
forefathers for the noble manner in which they
resisted British oppression, we, their descendants,
will never be guilty of the glaring inconsistency
of taking up arms to shoot and to stab those who
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 59
use the same means to accomplish the same
objects.
"Resolved, that while we are willing to pledge
ourselves to use all means in our power, consis-
tent with our principles, to put down wars, in-
surrections and mobs, and to protect all men from
the evils of the same, we will not take up arms
to sustain the Southern slaveholders in robbing
one-fifth of our countrymen of their labor.
'''Resolved, that we recommend our brethren
to speak out in thunder tones, both as associa-
tions and as individuals, and to let it no longer bo
said that Northern laborers, while they are con-
tending for their rights, are a standing army to
keep three millions of their brethren and sisters
in bondage at the point of the bayonet."*
Among the labor papers which the new move-
ment had called into life, The Working Men's
Advocate, with George H. Evans as editor, was
one of the most prominent. Later, in 1846, the
paper changed its title to Young America, and
in the main championed the demands of the Free
Soilers, but for the rest remained a stanch de-
fender of the interests of labor. In this paper the
antagonism between the Abolitionists and the la-
bor movement was pointedly revealed, and occa-
sionally Evans did not hesitate to declare himself
quite frankly against Negro emancipation, on the
* McNeil : The Labor Movement, p. 107.
60 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ground that in his opinion the blacks would be
economically in a worse position under the system
of wage labor than they were under slavery.
Evans felt especially embittered over the fact
that in England, where the Abolitionists had
many connections and where a great outcry was
made against Negro slavery, no voice was raised
within the ruling classes against the frightful
conditions produced by industrial development
among wide sections of the English workingmen.
In Young America he reproached particularly the
English correspondents of Garrison's Liberator
with "never having a word to say against the
worse slavery of the plundered landless of Eng-
land." Wendell Phillips protested against this
assertion and declared the statements of Evans
to be false. Evans replied in Young America:
"If it is betime as I most firmly believe it is,
that wage slavery in its legitimate results of
crowded cities, debasing servitude, rent exactions,
disease, crime and prostitution, as they now ap-
pear in England and in our Northern and Eastern
States, are even more destructive of life, health
and happiness than chattel slavery, as it exists in
our Southern States, then the efforts of those
who are endeavoring to substitute wages for chat-
tel slavery are greatly misdirected, and if they
cannot be convinced of their error, they should,
if possible, be prevented from making more con-
verts to their erroneous doctrine. .
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 61
". . . .As the Liberator's correspondents sel-
dom, if ever, allude to the giant wrong of Eng-
land, the usurpation of the soil, which makes the
working classes the slaves of wages, they are
probably in as blissful ignorance of any wrong in
the matter as the 'young master' of a Southern
plantation who believes that he was born to be
waited upon by the dark skins.
''Those who, like the editor of the Liberator,
are willing to devote themselves to the object of
redressing the manifest injustice of society, can-
not well afford to be divided in their forces
The National Reform measures would not
merely substitute one form of slavery for an-
other, but would replace every form of slavery
by entire freedom."*
In a communication to the editor of the Liber-
ator in which he thanked him for publishing
Evans' reply to Phillips, William West attempted
to soften its harshness. He wrote, among other
things : "They [the workingmen] do not hate
chattel slavery less, but they hate wage slavery
more. Their rallying cry is : 'Down with all
slavery, both chattel and wages.' '
But Evans had become so obsessed with the
idea that wage slavery was a harder lot than the
slavery of the Negro, and he was so convinced
that the realization of the programme of the Na-
* Liberator, Sept. 4, 1846.
62 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tional Reformers and of "free land" would re-
move all evils, that he completely lost sight of
the importance of the solution of the question of
Negro slavery. He had no comprehension of
the fact that the solution of the question of Negro
slavery was a condition precedent to the success
of the labor movement. He regarded the eman-
cipation of the workingmen from wage slavery
with a certain religious fanaticism, with the re-
sult that he became embroiled in controversies not
only with the Abolitionists, as against whom he
was in the right, but also with the leaders and
champions of the working class itself, and in these
was often carried to such extremes by his re-
ligio- fanatical zeal that his hatred of the white
slavery of the wage laborers came near turning
into a defence of Negro slavery.
In April, 1844, there appeared in the chief or-
gan of the English Chartists, the Northern Star
of Leeds, published by Feargus O'Connor, a
leading article entitled "Abuses of American Re-
publicanism." As the first count in illustration
of the abuse of republicanism in America we find
cited here Negro slavery, concerning which
O'Connor wrote:
"That damning stain upon the American es-
cutcheon is one that has caused the republicans
of Europe to weep for very shame and mortifi-
cation; and the people of the United States have
much to answer for at the bar of humanity for
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 63
this indecent, cruel, revolting and fiendish viola-
tion of their boasted principle — that 'All men are
born free and equal.' '
Another abuse of American republicanism
O'Connor found in the fact that the struggle of
the working classes of England, "their own kith
and kin," had excited no sympathy among the
Americans. "With a million times the difficul-
ties to contend with that the Americans had, the
English Chartists have been ridiculed and cul-
minated by a no small section of the republican
(?) press for seeking the establishment of the
very principles of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. But this we cease to be surprised at,
when we find the patriots of Rhode Island treated
as 'rebels' for demanding universal suffrage."
For Evans the conditions in England and the
lot of the workingmen there represented the depth
of degradation, and he consequently did not re-
ceive O'Connor's attack on America good-natur-
edly. He replied to it in an article in the Work-
ing Men's Advocate of June 1, 1844, in which
he said, among other things :
"The Northern Star does not seem to under-
stand the difficulty of the slavery system which
British rule has entailed on this country; does
not appear to know that the white slave states
have no more to do with the black slave states
on this question than they have with England;
does not appear to see that a restoration of the
64 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
right to land would strike at the root of all
slavery.
"We of the North may sympathize with the
Southern slave, who is secure of a home and a
subsistence, such as they are, at every stage of
factory slave of England, whose toil is harder
and whose fare is more scanty than the blacks
while able to work, and who must starve or be a
prisoner in his premature old age; but, while the
same abuse is in quick operation among ourselves
from which both systems of slavery have sprung,
and while we 'have the axe,' shall we waste our
time in fruitless sympathy, or shall we ply the
instrument to the roots of the upas?"
Evans held that the solution of the question of
wage slavery contained the solution of all other
questions, consequently also of Negro slavery,
and he believed so firmly in this solution through
the realization of the free land plank of the Na-
tional Reformers, which was to guarantee to
every citizen 160 acres of land, that he regarded
all other aspirations as superfluous and directed
his own efforts stubbornly toward this one end.
Notwithstanding that he compared the more se-
cure lot of the Negro slaves to the uncertain life
of the wage workers, he was far from seeing re-
dress in the further enslavement of the latter.
He hated both forms of slavery equally, and only
set forth the dark sides of wage slavery the more
glaringly because he believed that it depended
65
simply on the good will of men whether or not
wage slavery could be abolished. In his view
men needed only to will it, in order to revolution-
ize, reorganize and improve society. Neither
Evans, nor the social reformers of all shades,
nor the workingmen in the forties knew any-
thing about the historical and economic prere-
quisites for such change. This fact explains why
some of them regarded the emancipation of the
Negro slaves as superfluous. Why, they argued,
agitate for the abolition of Negro slavery if by
the same effort not only the slavery of the blacks
but also the slavery of the whites, of the wage
laborers, may be abolished? This reasoning,
moreover, explains the zeal with which Evans at-
tempted to convert prominent Abolitionists to his
views.
One of the Abolitionists who had won great
fame as a champion of his cause was Gerrit
Smith of New York, a wealthy landowner and
philanthropist, to whom Evans addressed an open
letter with the appeal that he devote himself to
the cause of the workingmen and the National
Reformers. He wrote, in part :
"All I ask of you is, seeing as I trust you now
do, that white as well as black slavery is wrong,
that you lend your aid to prevent the further ex-
tension of the evil; to prevent any further sale
of the land that is now unappropriated as private
property ; that you take the mote out of your own
66 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
eye, before you attempt to pluck that out of your
neighbor's
". . . . I was formerly, like yourself, sir, a
very warm advocate of the abolition of slavery.
This was before I saw that there was white
slavery. Since I saw this, I have materially
changed my views as to the means of abolishing
Negro slavery. I now see, clearly, I think, that
to give the landless black the privilege of chang-
ing masters now possessed by the landless white,
would hardly be a benefit to him in exchange for
his surity of support in sickness and old age, al-
though he is in a favorable climate. If the South-
ern form of slavery existed at the North, I should
say the black would be a great loser by such a
change."*
Smith frankly admitted that he did not under-
stand Evans' reasoning, and declared that he had
never before heard similar opinions expressed
and that he could not accept them. Smith was
subsequently elected (1852) to the lower house
of Congress as an Abolitionist. That his views
had undergone considerable change in the mean-
time is evidenced by the following extract from
a speech delivered in Congress in 1854:
"The world will be much happier when land
monopoly shall cease, because manual labor will
then be so honorable, because so well-nigh uni-
* Working Men's Advocate, July 4, 1844.
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 67
versal. It will be happier, too, because the wage
system, with all its attendant degradation and un-
happy influences, will find but little room in the
new and radically changed condition of society."
The position of Evans and his friends is very
neatly brought out in a series of parables which
he quoted in his paper: "The poor Negro," he
said; "must work for others or be flogged; the
poor white man must work for others, or be
starved. The poor Negro is subjected to a single
master; the poor white man is subjected to many
masters — to a master class. The poor Negro
leads the life of a farm-horse; the poor white
man, like a horse kept at a livery stable, is worked
by everybody and cared for by nobody. The poor
Negro has a master both in sickness and in
health ; the poor white man is a slave only so long
as he is able to toil, and a pauper when he can
toil no more.'7*
Only a few of the labor leaders of that period
were carried to such extremes by their bitterness
as was Evans, who in his work and zeal in be-
half of the emancipation of the wage workers
almost became a champion of Negro slavery.
The mass of the organized workingmen of the
Northeastern portion of the country remained
hostile to Negro slavery; they were among the
most enthusiastic agitators in the Abolitionist
* Working Men's Advocate, June 22, 1844.
68 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
cause. But they never failed, in the interest of
their class, to emphasize the desirability of the
improvement of their own lot and the necessity
of the abolition of wage slavery.
The Revolution of 1848 in Europe met with
a ready response in America and gave a fresh
impetus to both Abolitionism and the labor move-
ment. When the news reached these shores of
the insurrection of the people of Paris in Febru-
ary, 1848, a whole series of labor meetings, and
especially trade-union meetings, was called to
pass resolutions conveying to the people of Paris
the felicitation of the American working class.
On May 9th a mass meeting of the workingmen
of Boston was called in Faneuil Hall for the pur-
pose of expressing their sympathies with the
workingmen of Europe and of discussing the
state of labor movement in America. Albert T.
Wright was the chairman of the meeting. Some
of the resolutions passed congratulated the work-
ing people of France and the Provisional Govern-
ment in Paris and expressed the sympathy of the
workingmen of Boston for the Chartists in Eng-
land and the Repealers in Ireland. A further
resolution passed by the meeting was as follows :
"While we rejoice in the organization of free
institutions in the old world, we are not indiffer-
ent to their support at home, and we regret the
despotic attitude of the slave power at the South,
and the domineering ascendency of the monied
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 69
oligarchy in the North as equally hostile to the
interests of labor, and incompatible with the pre-
servation of popular rights.
"Resolved, that if we would procure the pas-
sage of just and efficient laws to protect labor,
and raise it from its present degrading depen-
dence on wealth, we must purge the halls of legis-
lation of the hirelings who basely pander to the
interests of capital, and to accomplish this result
we recommend for the laboring classes to try for
once the experiment of trusting the management
of their political affairs to men of their own class,
who know their interests and have a fellow-feel-
ing in supporting them."*
As we see, the industrial workingmen still
clung to the idea that it was not alone the South-
ern oligarchy of slaveholders, but also the money
power of the North, that had to be combated —
a view which survived into the fifties, but which
thereafter was less emphasized, presumably be-
cause the social reformers of different tendencies
who had stirred the working masses by the cry of
wage slavery gradually began to disappear from
the scene.
As the movement against Negro slavery gained
in momentum, the conviction that the slavery of
the blacks was doomed naturally took firmer hold
also of the working class. We note here the fact,
* McNeil, p. 115.
70 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
easily enough to be explained, that the working
classes of the purely industrial centers, especially
of New England, took a more decided stand
against Negro slavery than those of the large
cities like Boston and New York, where Demo-
cratic influences were active in behalf of the
slaveholders and where, through commerce, vari-
ous economical considerations tended to dispose
the workingmen in favor of Negro slavery.
2. THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN IN AMERICA
AND SLAVERY.
In the forties and fifties the immigrant Ger-
man workingmen played an important part in the
United States, especially in New York and its
vicinity. Entire trades were in their hands, and
from the start they took an active part in the la-
bor movement. Indeed, they were the pioneers of
the modern radical wing.
In their travels through Switzerland, France
and England, German workingmen of that period
were powerfully influenced by the secret Com-
munist organizations which had everywhere
sprung into life. Members of the Bund der Ge-
rechten, of the Kommunisten-Bund, of Weitling's
workingmen's leagues, of the workingmen's so-
cieties for self-culture in Switzerland, Paris
and London, came flocking to the United States
and made converts to their views. In the middle
of the forties, on the initiative of a certain Her-
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 71
mann Kriege, there was formed a branch society
of the Bund der Gerechten, from which sprang a
German branch, Jung Amerika, which took up
and championed the demands of the American
land reformers.
By the end of the forties the German labor
organizations had already attained to great powei
and influence. Often, on Sunday afternoons, in
the public parks, one could hear addresses in the
German language propagating Communist ideas,
though not very clearly defined. The Commun-
ist propaganda was, moreover, supported by
weekly papers in New York, Philadelphia and
St. Louis; and when, in 1848, the overthrow of
the Revolution drove tens of thousands of revo-
lutionary Germans to America, the number of
these Socialist Communist papers was very
largely increased.
We have seen that the workingmen of New
England early defined their position in regard to
Negro slavery. They condemned it, but at the
same time always emphasized the necessity of
abolishing wage labor, which they described,
much to the chagrin of the Abolitionists, as
"white slavery."
This position, which was assigned to the work-
ingmen by their dawning class consciousness, we
find also taken by the German workingmen of
this country, especially those of New York, only
with greater intensity, presumably because they
72 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
had developed a pro founder understanding of the
aims and ends of the labor movement. The con-
sciousness of the necessity of the struggle to
achieve their own emancipation carried these
workingmen to such extremes as to dispose cer-
tain sections of them, under demagogic influence,
even in favor of slavery. They failed to perceive
the historical necessity of the abolition of Negro
slavery as a condition precedent to the improve-
ment of their own lot.
In an article in a New York labor paper, ei>
titled "Our Position on the Issues of the Day,"
in 1846, Hermann Kriege declared with special
reference to the slavery question:
"That we see in the slavery question a property
question which cannot be settled by itself alone.
That we should declare ourselves in favor of the
Abolitionist movement if it were our intention to
throw the Republic into a state of anarchy, to ex-
tend the competition of 'free workingmen' beyond
all measure, and to depress labor itself to the last
extremity. That we could not improve the lot of
our 'black brothers' by abolition under the condi-
tions prevailing in modern society, but make in-
finitely worse the lot of our 'white brothers.'
That we believe in the peaceable development of
society in the United States and do not, there-
fore, here at least see our only hope in a condition
of the extremest degradation. That we feel con-
strained, therefore, to oppose Abolition with all
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 73
our might, despite all the importunities of senti-
mental philistines and despite all the poetical effu-
sions of liberty-intoxicated ladies."
Wilhelm Weitling. the German Communist
who came to America in 1847 and started a lively
agitation among the German workingmen, also
had only disdain for the Abolitionists, and gave
only scant attention to the question of slavery,
which at the time of his public career was begin-
ning to crowd out all other questions. He indeed
never forgot himself so far as to vent his spleen
against the Abolitionists in the silly fashion of
Kriege (who had evidently been influenced by
George H. Evans) or to openly side with the
slaveholder. But we search in vain the columns
of the labor paper which Weitling published in
New York during the fifties, or his other public
utterances, for an explicit condemnation of
slavery — for an allusion to the fact that in its
own interest the working class of the North was
bound to combat with all its might the superan-
nuated system of production by slaves.
The first German labor convention which met
at Philadelphia in 1850 under the lead of Weit-
ling passed a series of resolutions of a political
nature, but not a word did they contain against
slavery, not a plank with any reference to the one
question which even at that time was beginning
to inflame the public mind, and in regard to which,
as we have shown, the native American working-
74 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
men of the industrial sections of the North had
expressed themselves in no uncertain tone.
In treating of Kriege and Weitling we must
note the fact that both joined the Democratic
party. The former did so from demagogism, the
latter from conviction, a conviction which grew
out of the circumstances that the opposition party,
the Whigs of that time, contained a large sprink-
ling of elements hostile to labor, and especially
out of the further circumstance that the elements
hostile to foreigners, the Know-nothings, who
rose to the surface in the beginning and the mid-
dle of the fifties, exercised great influence in the
councils of this party. It must be ascribed to this
circumstance that large numbers of immigrant
Germans joined the Democrats, the opponents of
the Whigs. But the Democrats stood also for the
maintenance and extension of Negro slavery, and
their German following — including the German
workingmen — in their ignorance of American
conditions and their confusion in economic mat-
ters, joined in the Democratic battle cry in be-
half of slavery.
Little was known, moreover, in these labor
circles concerning the economic significance of
the slavery question. They betrayed scant intel-
ligence in dealing with it, and in so far as they
discussed it at all they did so from the point of
view of the political party which they favored
and from the point of view of the sentiments
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 75
which governed them. And the radical and
progressive workingmen, like their English-
speaking brothers in New England and New
York, scented in the agitation of the slavery
question a peril to their own agitation, the aim
of which was the emancipation of the white
workingmen, the wage workers. In their opin-
ion, participation in the anti-slavery movement
diverted the attention of the German working-
men from their own struggles and caused them,
in their interest in what was considered a mat-
ter of secondary importance, to forget that which
was of prime importance, their own emancipa-
tion.
Under the controlling influence of Joseph
Weydemeyer, a friend of Karl Marx, the Ar-
beiterbund (the Workingmen's League) was
founded in March, 1853. The Arbeiterbund,
which was distinguished from the labor organiza-
tions founded by Weitling and Kriege by a
greater definiteness of aim, originally also gave
little heed if any to the question of slavery, and
its platform contained no plank referring to it.
But when the question became a burning one the
Arbeiterbund defined its position, and as on the
labor question so now on the slavery question Jt
was well advised by its counsellors. In a mass
meeting called by the Arbeiterbund in New York
on March 1, 1854, the following resolution was
adopted :
76 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
"Whereas, capitalism and land speculation
have again been favored at the expense of the
mass of the people by the passage of the Ne-
braska Bill;
"Whereas, this bill withdraws from or makes
unavailable in a future homestead bill vast tracts
of territory;
"Whereas, this bill authorizes the further ex-
tension of slavery, but we have, do now, and shall
continue to protest most emphatically against
both white and black slavery;
"Whereas, finally, we desire to consider and
shape our own welfare, free from the dictation
of lawmakers, wire-pullers and the hireling
masses ;
"Therefore, be it resolved that we solemnly
protest against this bill and brand as a traitor
against the people and their welfare every one
who shall lend it his support."
This emphatic declaration against the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill is explained by the fact that it ac-
tually opened the entire West to slavery. The
New York Staats-Zeitung, Democratic and pro- •
slavery, on the occasion of the introduction of
this bill counselled people everywhere to abstain
from all agitation against the extension of
slavery, and thereby incurred the lively opposi-
tion of the entire liberal German population of
New York. The passage in the above resolution
of the Arbeiterbund referring to traitors against
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 77
the people and their welfare presumably was
aimed at the newspaper.
With the advance and cumulative intensity of
the Abolitionist agitation, and with the culminat-
ing political antagonisms between the North and
the South, the German workingmen gathered in
the Arbeiterbund, gave increased attention to the
question of slavery, and a large number of them,
the clearer headed, ranged themselves uncompro-
misingly on the side of the Abolitionists, Indi-
vidual organizations, such as the Communist
Club, contributed liberally toward spreading the
light on this question, and they were so down-
right in their opposition to the slaveholders as to
call any of their members promptly to account
who fell under the slightest suspicion of sympa-
thizing with the South. A number of the gym-
nastic societies — the Socialen Turn-Vereine —
also strongly opposed slavery and embodied in
their platforms and resolutions planks demanding
its abolition.
Slavery did not, however, so engross the at-
tention of the organizations of German work-
ingmen at this period as to crowd out all other
questions. When in December, 1857, the Ar-
beiterbund reorganized, and a new platform was
adopted, slavery was not even mentioned in it.
The question which at that time was stirring and
agitating other people everywhere was simply
ignored. And when in April, 1858, the Soziale
78 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
Republic appeared as the organ of the Arbeiter-
bund, its expressions on slavery were very luke-
warm. The management of the paper held that
for the time being the institution of Negro
slavery was still firmly rooted in America. We
find this statement in the first issue of the paper,
April 24, 1858: "The question of the present
moment is not the abolition of slavery, but the
prevention of its further extension"; and again:
"At this moment the question of the abolition of
slavery is still remote."
Although the policy of the Soziale Republik
here indicated betrays small political sagacity, it
shows no open hostility to the abolition of
slavery. The editors of the paper merely be-
lieved slavery to be more firmly rooted than it
really was.
But matters were different with another divi-
sion of the German workingmen's organizations
in New York. This division was not very power-
ful and was of but short duration. It had secede;!
from the Arbeiterbund in 1857, and was unde;
the lead of a certain W. Banque, who published
in New York a German labor paper entitled Der
Arbeiter. It had further framed a platform, with
these planks :
"Abolition of slavery in two steps: (a) Abo
lition of the slave trade; (b) introduction of the
apprenticeship system; opening up of the con-
tinents, civilizing Africa and South America
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 79
through emancipated slaves; transplantation of
the plantation and apprentice system to Mexico
and Central America under the authority of the
United States."
In reality these planks were not directed against
slavery at all. But popular sentiment against the
institution of slavery had become so powerful
that in the North no one dared openly oppose it
any longer, and could do so only indirectly and
by qualified expression. As against the plank of
the Abolitionists demanding the immediate and
complete abolition of slavery, which was becom-
ing very popular, this division of the Arbeiter-
bund and the editor of Der Arbeiter demanded
merely cessation of the slave trade and slave cul-
ture, and for the rest left slavery itself untouched.
In a series of articles the editor dissuaded Ger-
man workingmen from joining in the boycott
declared by the Abolitionists against Southern
products. They were told that they could not
afford to do it because they could not live with-
out cotton, the chief staple of the Southern plan-
tations. There was also an attempt at a vindica-
tion of the Southern slaveholders, by extolling
their humanitarian aspirations. It was stated
that many slaves were set free by them, provided
with money, and thus enabled to settle in the
free States; also that some were sent to the west
coast of Africa, to Liberia, to live in freedom
there. In regard to the agitation for the aboli-
80 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tion of slavery the editor wrote: "In so far as
the agitation aims at the destruction of the in-
stitution as a whole, threatening at the same time
to destroy the Southern plantations, it fails of its
full effect, because men even of the Middle and
Northern States, for the best of reasons, must
declare in favor of the unconditional retention of
the plantation."
Banque advocated the liberation of Negroes
by purchase and the substitution in their place of
"free Chinamen," of whom there was an excess
and who would supply cheap labor. "The free-
dom of the Negroes may be effected by means of
the money gained from the sale of the public
lands."
By the so-called "apprenticeship system," of
which mention is made in the platform of this
division of the Arbeiterbund, the Southern Coast
States, whose staples were cotton, rice and sugar,
were to be empowered to exchange those of their
black workingmen who "were touched by civil-
ization and had become stubborn, intractable and
insurrectionary," for fresh Africans to be im-
ported on time and under contract. The war-
ships of the United States were to convey the
freed workers to Africa, where they were to
put to use the instruction gained in America,
plow, sow and reap, and exchange the products
of the new soil against our "labor of superior
enjoyment.'' It was further demanded that this
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 81
"apprenticeship system" should be extended also
over Mexico and Central America "under the au-
thority of the United States." In other words,
the aim was, by means of the "apprenticeship
system," to conquer for the United States, but
mainly in the interest of the slaveholding element,
the Spanish-American countries lying south of
the Union. The "apprenticeship system," indeed,
meant nothing else than an extension of the slave
trade.
It was charged by the opponents of the editor of
Der Arbeiter within the Arbeiterbund, that is, by
the German workingmen opposed to slavery, that
Banque was subsidized by the party of the slave-
holders and that a daily newspaper subsequently
founded by him was also supported by them.
Banque's whole conduct in regard to slavery
lends probability to this accusation, although it
need not be assumed that he was directly influ-
enced by the slaveholders, but rather by the
Democratic party of the North. He could, how-
ever, explain and in a measure justify his con-
duct by pointing to the original platform of the
Arbeiterbund, which was silent in regard to
slavery, and consequently left him free to treat
the question in accordance' with his own judg-
ment.
The editor of Der Arbeiter was probably the
last of the spokesmen of the German working-
men of New York who openly advocated Negro
82 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
slavery — the last and, with the exception of the
eccentric Kriege, the only one. Many of the
others failed to appreciate the full significance of
the solution of this question, but none ever sank
so low as to undertake an open defence of the
institution and of the Southern slaveholders.
After the Arbeiterbund had cast off Banque,
mainly on account of his friendly attitude toward
slavery, a somewhat firmer tone in regard to this
issue began to prevail in the organ of the main
body, the Soziale Republik. Only gradually, of
course; for as late as November, 1858, it warned
its readers against overlooking, in the conflict be-
tween liberty and slavery, "the other burning is-
sues of the day." And again : "Not only years,
but more likely decades, will pass before this
great conflict is decided." That these pessimis-
tic expressions of the Soziale Republik reflected
the dominant sentiment of the Arbeiterbund is
made plain by the conduct of the society's first
convention in 1859. This convention adopted the
following resolution in regard to slavery.
"We condemn all slavery, in whatever form it
may appear, and we pledge ourselves to combat
it with all the means at our disposal. We es-
pecially demand the immediate repeal of the Fugi-
tive Slave Law."
In principle the wording of this resolution was
entirely correct. But there are times when plac-
ing the emphasis on the purely theoretical posi-
THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN 83
tion amounts to an impairment of this position.
This was the case here, where the practical de-
mand of the immediate abolition of slavery would
at the same time have meant a more emphatic
avowal of the theoretical position of the German
workingmen.
But the rapid succession of events and the de-
fiant attitude of the slave barons presently led
to a pro founder insight among the men of the
Soziale Republik and the Arbeit erbund. They
roused themselves and offered a more stubborn
opposition to slavery, without, however, attain-
ing to a full theoretical comprehension of the
question. It was especially in the last months
of its existence, under the editorship of J. Rodel,
that the Soziale Republik uncompromisingly
championed the abolition of slavery and urged
the cause in the circles of the German working-
men. And when the crisis came, and force as-
sumed the direction of things, a large portion of
the German workingmen and their spokesmen
obeyed the call to arms, in order to fight on the
side of the North, and against the slaveholders
and their armies. We mention among the better
known: Gustav Struve, Jos. Weydemeyer, F.
Annecke, August Willich, Rudolph Rosa, Fritz
Jacobi, Dr. Beust. There were still others who
so distinguished themselves in the skirmishes and
battles of the Civil War as to rise to high rank,
84 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
while many others gave their lives for the eman-
cipation of the Negro.
3. THE WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH.
The population of the Southern States previous
to the Civil War was composed not only of slave-
holders and slaves, but there was an intermediate
stratum which, in the controversies of that period,
was not mentioned as often as the former, though
it was by far the more numerous. This stratum
consisted of the white non-slaveholders.
There was in the South a number of Christian
sects which, from religious motives, kept no
slaves and whose adherents either did their own
work themselves or had it done for them by paid
free wage workers. The number of free white
agricultural laborers in the South alone amounted
to a million in 1850. There was also a consider-
able number of independent farmers, who for one
reason or another, declined to have anything to
do with slavery. Added to these were the mer-
chants, clerks, teachers and men of similar call-
ings. But the bulk of these non-slaveholders
among the white population of the South, out-
side of the agricultural laborers, was formed by
mechanics, artisans, skilled workers and the nu-
merous laborers who gained their livelihood in
the most various enterprises and callings.
Although, as we have said, but small mention
was made of the white non-slaveholders of the
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 85
South, they formed the most numerous part of
the population there. Of a total population of
9,500,000 in the Southern States in 1850 the ac-
tual slaveholders with their families did not con-
stitute quite 2,000,000, and these claimed 3,500,-
000 slaves as their own. The remainder of the
population, about 4,250,000, was composed of the
white non-slaveholders, the great majority of
whom were either proletarians or the "danger-
ous class," the scum of society.
The slaveholders themselves as a whole did not
form a homogeneous stratum. At the apex of
the pyramid of Southern society were the large
landed proprietors, according to the census of
1850 about 8,000 in number, each with fifty or
more slaves. They were followed by the stratum,
about 165,000 persons in 1850, who owned from
five to fifty Negro slaves. After these came the
lowest stratum of the slaveholders, owning from
one to four slaves each. In 1850 there were in
the South 68,820 persons who owned one slave
each, while 105,683 called two, three and four
Negroes their own. Altogether, consequently,
174,503 persons belonged to this lowest order of
the slaveholders, who were not rich enough to
have slaves exclusively working for them, but
who were obliged to do part of their work them-
selves.*
*Denton J. Snider: The American Ten Years' War.
pp. 291-92.
86 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
It was the uppermost stratum, numbering 8,000
persons, who exercised political domination in the
South and who determined the whole course of
Southern social life. In 1850 there were only
two persons among the slaveholders who owned
more than 1,000 slaves. Nine owned from 500
to 1,000, fifty-six from 300 to 500, and 187
claimed as their property from 200 to 300 Ne-
groes. These few persons constituted the apex
of the uppermost stratum of the oligarchy,
whose will was law in the South. Although the
smaller slaveholders were connected with the rul-
ing oligarchy of the upper 8,000 by the system
of slavery, there was frequent dissatisfaction
among them with the ruling policy, in consequence
of conflicting interests. But notwithstanding
their numerical inferiority, the large landed pro-
prietors were in complete control of the political
institutions of the country. Their sway was ab-
solute in the Legislatures. They systematically
saw to it that the poor white population should re-
ceive no public school education and deliberately
kept it in the densest ignorance. They acted in-
deed as if these poor whites were not in exist-
ence at all. "The non-slaveholding whites of the
South," observed a certain George M. Weston,
"being not less than seven-tenths of the whole
number of whites, would seem to be entitled to
some inquiry into their actual condition. But, for
twenty years, I do not recollect ever to have seen
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 87
or heard these non-slaveholding whites referred
to by the Southern 'gentlemen' as constituting
any part of what they call 'the South.' '
The terrible ignorance of the poor whites in
the South made it impossible for them to come
to an understanding of their true interests, which
would have ranged them in direct opposition to
the landlords and slaveholders. On the lowest
plane of social culture were those among them
who in the immediate neighborhood of large plan-
tations occupied impoverished and abandoned
rural holdings, and who gained their meagre sub-
sistence by hunting and fishing, by forbidden
trading with Negroes, and by all kinds of dirty
service for the slaveowners. They were ever the
most willing tools in the hands of the Southern
oligarchy, they hunted its slaves, and during the
Civil War fought its battles despite the fact that
this oligarchy had sinned against the ignorant
whites of the South still more even than against
the Negro slaves.
An American historian, speaking of the atti-
tude maintained by the large slaveholders as
against the poor whites of their States, observes :
"How is the society of which they are members
fulfilling its responsibility toward them? The
record is universally admitted to be bad, in fact,
it is the worst count in the indictment against the
Southern oligarchy, worse than the count against
88 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
them on the subject of black slavery, though this
must be regarded as the first cause of the evil."*
The fact is that the ruling slaveholders were
under the necessity of keeping the mass of the
population, including the poor whites, in ignor-
ance and of denying them all schooling. Only
25 per cent, of the latter could read and write.
The education of these masses would have en-
dangered the dominion, would have threatened
the existence, of the slaveholders as the ruling
class. In the United States Senate the statement
was made in 1858 that "200,000 men with white
skin in South Carolina are now degraded and
despised by 30,000 slaveholders."
The ignorance, and in its wake the crimes ana
the poverty of the "white trash," as the poor
whites were called by their brothers who were in
the possession of wealth and power, became so
alarming that even members of the ruling class
itself petitioned for their relief.
"In December, 1855, Governor Adams of
South Carolina urges almost frantically: 'Make
at least this effort' — the appointment of a State
Superintendent of Education — 'and if the poor
of the land are hopelessly doomed to ignorance,
poverty and crime' — which he seemed to1 think,
'you will at least feel conscious of having done
* Snider, p. 306.
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 89
your duty, and the public anxiety on the subject
will be quieted.' "*
This contrast between the rich landlords and
the "white trash" had always existed. "The
people of Carolina consist of two classes, the rich
and the poor," as already General Marion of
Revolutionary War fame had observed. "The
poor in general are very poor, since they are not
employed by the rich who do not need them,
having slaves to work for them. Thus deprived
of the support of the rich, they remain poor and
oppressed. They rarely have any money, and the
little that comes their way they spend for brandy
to cheer their spirits; not for newspapers and
books to instruct their minds."
As then, so now ; as at the time of the Revolu-
tionary War, so at the time of the Civil War; as
in the Carolinas, so in the other slave states. A
born Southerner who had lived a number of
years in South Carolina and who had travelled ex-
tensively through Latin America, placed the poor
whites of the States named even below the Span-
ish-Indian half breeds, known as Pmtos, and de-
clared that he had never found the latter in their
most abandoned state so degraded, so feeble, so
indolent and so bereft of all purpose in life as
the former.
Besides the ignorance of the poor whites, the
*Olmstead: Seabord Slave States, pp. 505-6. Snider,
p. 307.
90 LINCOLN; LABOR AND SLAVERY
slaveholders had still another support of their do-
minion in the social bias of all Southern whites
against the Negroes, a bias which the ruling class
did not fail carefully to cultivate. A "nigger,"
even in the eyes of the poor whites, was not a
human being, and to be placed on an equality
with one was an affront that could not be ex-
piated promptly enough in blood. This bias was
reinforced by a certain economic antagonism in
such a way that the ruling oligarchy could avail
itself of it as a lever for the maintenance and
continuation of its dominion. It was enough for
the large landed proprietors to tell the poor whites
that it was the aim of the North to place the
Negroes on an equality with the whites, to range
this entire ignorant stratum of the population,
most of whom could neither read nor write,
against the North. In explanation of the hatred
which the poor whites of the South harbored
against the Negroes, we may point to the class
antagonisms which developed between free and
unfree labor which furnished the material foun-
dation of this hatred.
Slave labor did not merely degrade the dignity
of labor, including the labor of the free work-
ingman, it did not merely make labor contemp-
tible, it also depressed the wages of free work-
ingmen, lowered their standard of life and of-
fered the labor of the white workingmen such
sharp competition that they could not meet it.
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 91
This fact was frankly conceded by representa-
tives of the ruling class in the South, as when
Governor Cannon of Delaware stated: "Slave
labor is uncompensated, white labor is compen-
sated; when the two are brought into competi-
tion, white labor is crowded out. If capital owns
its labor, the avenues to honest livelihood are
forever closed to the white."
The slaveowner with his slave labor was a
competitor of the free workingman. Originally
the slaves were employed only on the plantations
and as domestic servants. But later they were
instructed in certain trades, they became me-
chanics, especially blacksmiths, carpenters and
wagon-makers, and by displacing the white me-
chanics they became of especial value to their
masters. Gradually the slaveholders even nego-
tiated for the performance of mechanics' work
under contract, setting their slaves to do it.
Olmsted relates that at Austin, the capital of
Texas, the German mechanics complained that
when labor for building the State capitol was
given out, many of them came with offers, but
were underbid by the owners of the slave-me-
chanics. But when the free mechanics had left
town, in search of employment elsewhere, the
slaveowners threw up their contracts, and, hav-
ing no longer any opposition, obtained new con-
tracts at advanced prices.
Charles Nordhoff states that he was told by a
92 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
wealthy Alabaman, in 1860, that the planters in
his region were determined to discontinue alto-
gether the employment of free mechanics. "On
my own place," he said, "I have slave carpenters,
slave blacksmiths, and slave wheelwrights, and
thus I am independent of free mechanics." And
a certain Alfred E. Mathews remarks: "I have
seen free white mechanics obliged to stand aside
while their families were suffering for the neces-
saries of life, when the slave mechanics, owned
by rich and influential men, could get plenty of
work; and I have heard these same white me-
chanics breathe the most bitter curses against the
institution of slavery and the slave aristocracy."*
As soon as his interests came into play the
slaveholder put his despised "niggers" even above
the free white workingmen. A planter of Vir-
ginia employed a gang of Irishmen in draining
some land. And why did he use free labor for
this kind of unskilled work, which could have
been performed perhaps cheaper by his slaves?
"It's dangerous work, it's unwholesome, being
malarious ditches," he said, "and a negroe's life
is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies,
it is a considerable loss, you know." .... "Slaves
are, on the southwestern steamboats, employed to
do the lightest and least dangerous labor; but
Irish and German free workingmen are employed
* Charles Nordhoff: America for Free Workingmen.
1865, p. 8.
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 93
to perform the exhausting and dangerous
work."f
The development of industry in the South also
furnished an occasion to the slaveowners for
employing their slaves in competition with the
white workingmen. As early as the fifties the
beginning had been made with the erection of
factories in which slaves only were employed as
operatives. The wages of the white working-
men, so far as they were employed, were terribly
depressed in consequence of the competition of
slave labor in the respective branches. While in
the cotton mills of Lowell, Mass., in 1852, work-
ing men received 80 cents each per day and
women 2.00 per week, the wages of free work-
ingmen in Tennessee in the same line amounted
to barely 50 cents each per day and of women
$1.25 per week.
Even at these starvation wages free labor was
underbid by the slaveholders. Their control of
the labor market was absolute, since in any case
they could produce more cheaply than free work-
ingmen. "It matters nothing to him" [the slave-
holder], says Nordhoff, "how low others can
produce the article; he can produce it lower still,
so long as it is the best use he can make of his
labor, and as long as that labor is worth keeping
A free white mechanic is at the mercy of his
t Nordhoff, pp. 7-8.
94 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
neighbor, the capitalist, in a slave state, because,
if the capitalist does not like his price, he can go
and buy a carpenter and sell him again when the
work is done."
But despite the best intentions of the slave-
holders, the purely industrial employment of
slaves made small progress. An industrial popu-
lation must first be educated and developed. But
everything smacking of popular education, as al-
ready observed, was intensely offensive to the
South, even the education necessary for making a
good factory operative. The greatest dependence
of the masses presupposes the greatest helpless-
ness of the individuals composing them. The
Southern slaveholders were as well aware of this
as was the Catholic Church, which reared its
authority on the same fact. It was therefore in
the interest of the slaveholders to maintain their
chattels in darkest ignorance, no matter how
much the latter's usefulness might suffer in other
ways.
There was another factor to cross the calcula-
tions of the slaveholders. Modern industry gives
to workingmen a character of its own which is
incompatible with slavery as it had developed in
the South. Even the Negroes who were em-
ployed at industrial pursuits were touched by the
spirit which transforms submissive and patient
agricultural slaves into revolutionary proletar-
ians. That great conspiracy of slaves which
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 95
spread dismay over the entire South shortly be-
fore the outbreak of the Civil War had its origin
not on the plantations, but in the Cumberland
Iron Works of Tennessee, the largest industrial
enterprise carried on with slave labor in the
South. This conspiracy gave the slaveholders a
sense of the danger with which modern industry
was threatening them.
Nevertheless, the mere attempts to organize
industry on the basis of slave labor proved an
injury to the Southern free workingmen, princi-
pally through the powerful pressure which was
thereby exerted on their wages and their standard
of life. And that the modern, the industrial
workingmen were necessarily hostile to slavery
was instinctively felt by the slaveholders, who
promptly reciprocated this hostility with their
own profoundest hatred. The Standard, an
organ of the slaveholders in Charleston, declared
in 1855:
"A large portion of the mechanical force that
migrate tc the South are a curse instead of a
blessing; they are generally a worthless, unprin-
cipled class, enemies to our peculiar institution
[slavery] and formidable barriers to the success
of our native mechanics [slaves]."
The merchants and other middle-class men
who came from the North to the Southern States
were, according to the same paper, "better quali-
fied to become constituents of our institution
96 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
than a certain class of our native born, who from
want of capacity are perfect drones in society,
continually carping about slave competition.
The mechanics, the most of them, are pests to
society, dangerous among the slave population,
and ever ready to form combinations against the
interests of the slaveholders."
Evidently the slaveholders saw in the mechan-
ics, the socially soundest element among the
white non-slaveholders, their natural enemy.
They took good care not to invest this enemy
with political weapons by means of which he
might imperil their own dominion. The free
white laborer in South Carolina, for instance,
could vote, but not for one of his own class;
only a slave-owner could serve in the Legislature,
only a slave-owner could be governor; and the
Legislature, composed exclusively of slave-own-
ers, appointed the judges, the magistrates, the
senators and the electors for President. And as
in South Carolina, so approximately in the other
States of the South.
Thus we see that while the free white work-
ingmen apparently participated in the business
of the State, they were nevertheless practically
shorn of all political influence by the crafty sys-
tem of the slaveholders. Although there existed
a certain class hatred against the slaveholding
obligarchy, and although the non-slaveholders
constituted the majority of the white population,
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 97
it was impossible to unite them in an organized
and general opposition against the ruling class.
Their economic interests would have forced them
into a union with the black slave population if
it had not been prevented by racial antagonism.
But also for other reasons this stratum of so-
ciety lacked that homogeneous character which
might have led to the formation of an indepen-
dent class with independent and conscious aims.
Racial antagonism made of the non-slaveholders
enemies of the Negro; class antagonism made
of them, in so far as they were wage workers,
enemies of Negro slavery. The terrible ignor-
ance in which they were artificially kept made it
impossible for their class interests to transform
them into avowed opponents of the slaveholders.
In consequence of their lack of insight and their
race prejudice, they despised the Negro and failed
to see that the slaveholder was the real enemy of
their class. As Nordhoff says :
"Is it strange that the ignorant, neglected, de-
spised free white workingman of the slave States
hates the slave? He feels that the slave injures
him in every possible way; the slave robs him
of work, the slave deprives him of bread and
clothing for his children ; the slave gets the easiest
tasks, the free laborer the hardest and most dan-
gerous; the slave steps before him whenever he
looks for a job, and has the preference every-
where, because he is the tool of a capitalist whose
98 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
influence and wealth enable him to grasp for his
own benefit whatever might be of advantage to
the free mechanic or laborer."
Thus the white workingman of the South saw
things through the spectacles of his race preju-
dice, while his class interest should have told him
that not the slaves, but the slaveholders were his
enemies. Partly indeed he felt this to be so, and
that recognition made of him an enemy of
slavery. It even aroused him to a certain
resistance, manifested in two ways, passive and
active — in a very considerable emigration from
the slave States on the one hand, and on the
other in the attempts to improve his lot by means
of petition, organization and the press.
There was for years a continuous stream of
emigrants from the slave States of the South
to the Northern and the Middle Western States,
and it was of course exclusively non-slaveholders
who fed this stream. According to the census
of 1860, 399,700 Virginians were living beyond
the boundaries of their native State. From Ten-
nessee 344,765 persons had emigrated; from
North Carolina, 272,606; from Maryland,
137,258; from Delaware, 32,493; from Ken-
tucky, 331,904. It is of course true that not all
of these emigrants sought refuge in the free
States. But it is also true that the majority of
them had gone to the Middle West, where free
land held out the promise to them of a life as
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 99
farmers and where there was no competition of
Negroes depressing the wages of mechanics to
the lowest level. The historian Snider is of the
opinion that the Southern slave States sent as
many settlers to the West as did the Northeastern
States. And it was the social system based on
slavery which drove those large numbers of emi-
grants out of the South.
In a certain sense this emigration from the
Southern States was a blessing to the ruling
oligarchy there. It diverted the rising discon-
tent of the non-slaveholders, with its accompany-
ing unrest, and took from the scene of action the
ablest and most energetic portion who might have
served as leaders of their class.* The "white
trash,'' the non-resisting, ignorant, enfeebled and
degraded element of the poor whites, remained
behind, incapable of any opposition against the
ruling class.
Certain traces of a spirit of self-assertion —
and this leads us to the second form of resistance
of the poor whites of the South — had manifested
themselves among this stratum of the population
for several decades. As early as 1831 white
mechanics had petitioned the Legislature of Vir-
ginia to abolish the competition of slave mechan-
ics. In 1853 the free mechanics called a meet-
ing at Concord, N. C, in which they voiced the
* Snider, p. 311.
100 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
complaint that "wealthy owners of slave mechan-
ics were in the habit of underbidding them in
contracts." The free mechanic who had inau-
gurated and directed this movement of the white
non-slaveholders was driven from the place by
the ruling class.
Of greater importance than these examples of
a feeble opposition of the white non-slaveholding
element against the ruling oligarchy is the fol-
lowing :
In 1860, that is, shortly before the outbreak
of the Civil War, a man named Robert C. Thar in,
of Alabama, undertook to inaugurate a general
movement among the white non-slaveholders of
his State for the protection of their interests
against the ruling class. He endeavored to set
up a newspaper called the Non-Slaveholder, to
urge the passage of a law forbidding the employ-
ment of slaves except in agricultural labor and
as servants. "He thus sought to protect the free
mechanics and secure them employment. For
this Mr. Tharin was summarily driven from the
State."*
In a controversy with a representative of the
slaveholders, who opposed his aspirations, Mr.
Tharin wrote:
"He had seen the rich man's negro 'come in
contact' with the poor white blacksmith, the poor
* Nordhoff, pp. 5 and 6.
WHITE WORKINGMEN OF THE SOUTH 101
white bricklayer, carpenter, wheelwright and
agriculturist. He had seen the preference in-
variably given to the rich man's negro in all such
pursuits and trades; like me, he had heard the
complaints of the poor white mechanic of the
South against the very negro equality the rich
planters were rapidly bringing about. These
things he had heard and seen in Charleston, New
Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, and Wetumpka.
"Have not the planters for years condemned
every mechanic in the South to negro equality ? I
never envied the planters of Wetumpka, or, in-
deed, of any part of the South. My dislike to
them arose from their contemptible meanness,
their utter disregard of decency, their supercil-
ious arrogance and their daily usurpations of
power and privileges at variance with my right
and the rights of my class."*
Such language the slaveholders could not toler-
ate at a time when they were already beginning
to prepare for the war in which the very element,
the poor whites of their States whom Tharin was
summoning to a defence of their own interests,
was to furnish the soldiers who were to fight the
battles of the South against the North. Tharin's
expulsion from his native State was consequently
foredoomed. An independent movement of the
white non-slaveholders just at that moment
*Nordhoff, p. 6.
102 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
would have nipped in the bud the secession of the
slaveholders.
It is plain that the majority of the white popu-
lation of the South had no interest in the preser-
vation of slavery. The workingmen and mechan-
ics of this stratum of the population hated slavery
because it was the cause of their own miserable
social condition, because it depressed their stan-
dard of life to the level of the Negro slaves, and
brought about that "equality with the Negroes"
which the slaveholders had menacingly repre-
sented to them as the aim of the North. But the
hatred of these white workingmen of the South
was neutralized in its effect by the prejudice and
race hatred which they entertained for their black
class comrades, the Negroes. When hostilities
between the North and the South began, the
slaveholders organized these poor whites into
armies and compelled the non-slaveholders and
enemies of slavery to be shot to pieces and made
into cripples on the battlefields for the preserva-
tion of slavery. For during the years of the war
military service offered the easiest and often the
only way for securing the means of subsistence;
the grand ideas which ostensibly actuate soldiers
have in reality ever received but scant considera-
tion at their hands.
4. THE WORKINGMEN OF ENGLAND AND
NEGRO SLAVERY.
Almost simultaneously with the rise of the
Abolitionist movement in the United States, anti-
slavery societies were formed in England which
entered into communication with the American
movement and often joined hands with it for
common work. At the very time when the Eng-
lish middle classes were preparing to subject their
own workers to the worst conceivable industrial
slavery — one needs but recall the conditions pre-
vailing among the factory population of England
in the thirties and forties — a portion of these
ruling classes began to preach in favor of the
abolition of slavery.
The workingmen of England had ranged them-
selves against slavery from the start. But like
their class comrades in the United States they
could not overlook the hypocrisy of the ruling
classes in condemning Negro slavery abroad and
opposing with all their might any limitation of
white slavery at home. With the contemporary
English and German labor press of the United
States, the labor press of Great Britain also de-
nounced this hypocrisy. Everywhere their awak-
ening class consciousness led workingmen
to realize that while the abolition of Negro
slavery was desirable, they must not forget their
own slavery, wage slavery.
Bronterre O'Brien represented their position in
104 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
a specially striking manner in the radical labor
papers in the thirties, in the Poor Man's
Guardian, in The Destructive and others. Among
other things he wrote :
"When one listens to an Abolitionist one might
think that outside of the blacks there was no slave
under British rule If these scoundrels en-
tertained a sincere hatred against slavery they
would begin by abolishing it at home He
who sallies forth on a philanthropic mission in
Jamaica when he needs only to go to Spitalfields
(a poor section in London) to find more misery
than he will be able to abolish, is either a thick-
headed fool or a heartless fraud. How is it that
we never hear the Buxtons or the Wilberforces
complain about slavery here at home? Listen,
Buxton, and we will tell you: it is because you
know, you smooth-tongued rogue, that English
slavery is indispensable for 'our highly civilized
state.' That is the reason, Buxton ! The slavery
of millions is the foundation of our cannibalistic
civilization. Your cannibalistic institutions are
reared on this foundation — just because the mil-
lions are slaves, you and your kidney prosper so
splendidly. You lose nothing by freeing the
Negroes; but you would lose a great deal if you
would free Englishmen."
And O'Brien explains the last statement thus :
"In the one case (that is, in England) the
master employs and supports his slave only when
THE WORKINGMEN OF ENGLAND 105
he needs him; in the other he supports him
whether he has work for him or not Eman-
cipation enables the master to get more labor
and to pay less for it. Emancipation frees the
slave from the whip, but deprives him also of
his food, and since hungry people have small
respect for the laws, he soon discovers that while
he escapes the whip he stumbles upon the tread-
mill or the gallows."
Despite this glaring exposure of the hypocrisy
which was really back of the whole middle-class
movement in behalf of the emancipation of the
slaves, the workingmen of England nevertheless
demanded the abolition of Negro slavery, only in-
sisting, like their American class comrades, on the
equal necessity of the abolition of white slavery.
The workingmen took an active part in the
numerous meetings arranged by the middle class
anti-slavery societies in England in the thirties
and forties in the interest of their cause. The
adoption of the Reform Bill (1832) had put the
English middle class into political power, but at
the same time had set in striking relief the an-
tagonism existing between the middle class and
the working class, and inspired the latter to in-
dependent action.
In June, 1836, the Working Men's Association,
which subsequently played an important part as
the mother organization of the Chartist move-
ment, was founded in London. In the fall of
106 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
1837 the English press, Tory and Whig alike,
teemed with inflammatory attacks against the
United States, whose republican institutions were
bitterly assailed and ridiculed. The Working
Men's Association resolved to combat the mis-
chievous machinations of the ruling class. The
carpenter, William Lovett, who in the following
year outlined the "People's Charter," those six
points embodying the demands of the working-
men which gave the Chartist movement its name,
was entrusted by the Working Men's Association
with the composition of a manifesto in which the
inflammatory attacks of the middle-class press
were to be answered and the existing prejudices
neutralized as far as possible.
The manifesto began with an allusion to the
spirit of fraternity which should govern work-
ingmen in all the countries of the world:
"For, as the subjugation and misery of our
class can be traced to our ignorance and dissen-
sions— as the knaves and hypocrites of the world
live by our follies, and the tyrants of the world
are strong because we, the working millions, are
divided — so assuredly will the mutual instruc-
tion and united exertions of our class in all coun-
tries rapidly advance the world's emancipation."
In this address the English workingmen called
the attention of the working classes in America to
the fact that within the borders of their country
millions of human beings were held as slaves,
THE WORKINGMEN OF ENGLAND 107
because their skins were not white, but black.
The part of the manifesto which alluded to chat-
tel slavery was as follows :
"With no disposition either to question your
political sincerity, impugn your morality or to up-
braid you for vices you did not originate, it is
with feelings of regret, brethren, that we deem
it is even needed to enquire of men who for
more than half a century have had the power of
government in their hands, why the last and
blackest remnant of kingly dominion has not been
uprooted from republican America?
"Why, when she has afforded a home and an
asylum for the destitute and oppressed among all
nations, should oppression in her own land be
legalized, and bondage tolerated? Did nature,
when she cast her sunshine o'er the earth, and
adapted her children to its influence, intend that
her varied tints of skin should be the criterion
of liberty? And shall men, whose illustrious an-
cestors proclaimed mankind to be brothers by
nature, make an exception to degrade to the con-
dition of slaves, human beings a shade darker
than themselves?
"Surely it cannot be for the interest of the
working classes that these prejudices should be
fostered — this degrading traffic be maintained.
No ! No ! It must be for those who shrink from
honest industry, and who would equally sacrifice,
to their love of gain and mischievous ambition,
108 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
the happiness of either black or white. We en-
tertain the opinion, friends, that those who seek
to consign you to unremitting toil, to fraudu-
lently monopolize your lands, to cheat you in the
legislature, to swell your territory by injustice,
and to keep you ignorant and divided, are the
same persons who are the perpetuators and ad-
vocates of slavery.
"They are rich and powerful, we judge from
their corruptive influence; for, with few honest
exceptions, that surest guarantee of liberty, the
press, is diverted to their purpose and subject to
their power, instead of performing its sacred of-
fice in developing truth, and in extirpating the
errors of mankind and — shame to their sacred
calling — there are preachers and teachers and
learned men among you, who plead eloquently
against the foibles of the poor, but shrink from
exposing vice in high stations — nay, who are even
the owners of slaves, and the abettors and ad-
vocates of slavery!"
In the same manifesto the English working-
men expatiate also on the regrettable fact that
the workingmen of the United States do not un-
derstand the democratic principles of their Char-
ter of Independence to that extent "which it be-
comes you to understand them." Further, in
showing what the working class of England was
trying to do for the betterment of its "degrading
condition," the address says:
THE WORKINGMEN OF ENGLAND 109
"Seeing the result of our ignorance and divi-
sions, subjecting us to be tools of party, the slaves
of power, and the victims of our own dissipations
and vices, we have resolved to unite and mutually
instruct ourselves; and, as a means to that end
we have formed ourselves into workingmen's as-
sociations "
". . . . And we would respectfully urge you
to enquire whether similar means might not be
more advantageously and extensively employed
in your country."*
That the Chartist papers in the forties declared
themselves against Negro slavery in the United
States, we have already learned from the con-
troversy between Feargus O'Connor of the
Northern Star in Leeds and George H. Evans
of the Working Men's Advocate in New York,
in which, from a historical point of view, the
English Chartist leader proved himself superior
in insight and clearness of conception to the
American National Reformer. The remaining
organs of the English Chartist press also ranged
themselves bravely against slavery in America.
In 1846 an Anti-Slavery League, whose mem-
bership was composed principally of English radi-
cal workingmen and whose president was the
Chartist George Thompson, was formed in Lon-
* William Lovett : Life and Struggles. London, 1876,
pp. 131-134.
110 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
don. Among the members of the League were
also William Lovett and many other well-known
followers and champions of the Chartist move-
ment. This association was formed when Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, and
Henry C. Wright, all three very active Abolition-
ists, visited England. The chief object of their
visit was to impress upon religious bodies that
slavery was a heinous sin and ought to be abol-
ished; and also to urge on them the necessity
of withholding fellowship from the religious
bodies of America which were the advocates and
abettors of slavery. Among other religious
bodies in England and Scotland they endeavored
to influence the Evangelical Alliance, but were
unsuccessful. They called a public . meeting on
the subject at Exetor Hall, where the Christianity
of the Evangelical Alliance was exposed. The
Workingmen's Anti-Slavery League condemned
in strong terms the conduct of these Christian
bodies, which, for the sake of filthy lucre, and
the subscriptions they were in the habit of re-
ceiving from the religious Christian slaveholders
of America, persisted in recognizing them, re-
gardless of the millions of their fellow-men in
slavery.
The Anti-Slavery League employed and paid
Frederick Douglas for a time as an agitator for
the anti-slavery cause, and he and the president
of the League, George Thompson, made extended
THE WORKINGMEN OF ENGLAND 111
trips throughout the land and called forth great
sympathy in behalf of the slaves.*
As we see, Garrison and his Abolitionist
friends met with the same experience in their
encounters with Christian ministers and similar
middle-class elements which they had made at
the beginning of their agitation in New England.
They found themselves opposed by enemies
where they had hoped to find friends, and they
found friends of their cause among the working
class who had to fight slavery within their own
ranks.
The organized workingmen of England con-
tinued their resolute opposition to slavery also
in the following decade. In the numerous meet-
ings called by the anti-slavery societies it was
especially the workingmen who again and again
protested against the preservation of slavery.
The labor organizations also frequently took a
similar position, and in May, 1853, George Jacob
Holyoake sent an anti-slavery address from the
Democrats of England to the Democrats of the
United States. This address was signed by about
1,800 men, all prominent among the workers and
their organizations in England.
More emphatically than even the free work-
ingmen of the North of the United States, both
American and German, did the workingmen of
* Lovett, p. 321.
112 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
England raise their voice against slavery during
the whole period of the agitation. Although, or
perhaps because, they were at that time them-
selves in a condition which can be truly described
as white slavery, they did not in their own de-
pendence forget that of the poor blacks, who,
bound to the soil and to their masters, were com-
pelled to bear the twofold burden of the op-
pressed class and the oppressed race.
We shall see later how nobly the workingmen
of England during the Civil War redeemed the
promise of their attitude in the anti-slavery
movement. The narrative dealing with this at-
titude covers one of the most glorious pages in
the history of the labor movement.
CHAPTER III.
FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE OF THE
UNITED STATES.
The relations between the labor question and
the question of Negro slavery, and the economic
antagonisms necessarily engendered by indus-
trial development between free workmen and
capitalists, were well recognized by the slave-
holders, and played no inconsiderable part in the
arguments advanced by the latter in defence of
slavery.
The awakening class consciousness, as it mani-
fested itself in the early years of the organized
labor movement, gave workingmen a certain cau-
tion and reserve in their judgment concerning
slavery and Negro emancipation. This caution
and reserve were the more pronounced the more
forcibly class consciousness made itself felt
among them.
The slaveholders promptly saw and recognized
in the rising labor movement the enemy which
free capital was nursing. They foresaw the in-
evitable conflict which had to arise between work-
ingmen and capitalists in consequence of the re-
moval of all barriers against industry based on
114 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
free competition. They sought to exploit for
their own advantage the antagonism between free
workingmen and capitalists which they had fore-
seen. They warned the anti-slavery capitalists of
the North against this development and the con-
sequences which it would have for them. They
saw in the maintenance of slavery the true solu-
tion of the social question and the chief defence
against the social dangers raised by this question
and the movement of free workingmen in gen-
eral, and they appealed to the industrial capital-
ists not to overlook this danger in their cam-
paign against the Negro slavery of the South.
On March 4, 1858, James H. Hammond,
United States Senator from South Carolina and
one of the most rabid champions of Negro
slavery, took the floor of the Senate in reply to
a speech delivered the day before by Senator
Seward of New York. He said, among other
things :
"The Senator from New York said yesterday
that the whole wrorld had abolished slavery. Aye,
the name, but not the thing ; all the powers of the
earth cannot abolish it. God only can do it when
he repeals the fiat, 'the poor ye always have with
you'; for the man who lives by daily labor, and
scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his
labor in the market and take the best he can get
for it — in short, your whole hireling class of
manual laborers and 'operatives,' as you call them,
FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE 115
are essentially slaves. The difference between us
is, that our slaves are hired for life and well com-
pensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no
want of employment among our people, and not
too much employment either. Yours are hired by
the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated
which may be proved in the most painful mannet1
at any hour, in any street, in any of your large
towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day,
in any single street of the city of New York,
than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole
South. We do not think that whites should be
slaves, either by law or necessity. Our slaves
are black, of another and inferior race. The
status in which we have placed them is an eleva-
tion. They are elevated from a condition in
which God first created them, by being made our
slaves. None of that race on the whole face of
the globe can be compared with the slaves of the
South. They are happy, content, unaspiring,
and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness,
ever to give any trouble by their aspirations.
"Your slaves are white, of your own race : you
are brothers of one blood. They are your equals
in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel
galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not
vote. We give them no political power. Yours
do vote; and being the majority, they are the de-
positaries of all your political power. If they
knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box
116 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
is stronger than an army with bayonets, and could
combine, where would you be? Your society
would be reconstructed, your government over-
thrown, your property divided, not as they have
mistakenly attempted to initiate such proceedings
by meetings in parks, with arms in their hands,
but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You
have been making war upon us to our very hearth-
stones. How would you like us to send lecturers
or agitators North, to teach these people this, to
aid and assist in combining, and to lead them?"*
Hammond's description of the idyllic social
conditions in the South had no foundation in
truth. But this did not preclude the clever Sen-
ator of South Carolina from hitting the nail on
the head in everything relating to the develop-
ment of the social relations between capital and
workingmen under the capitalistic regime, as his-
tory has since proved. His point of view was
purely demagogical, but his vision of the future
was clearly and sharply defined. Not only the
Northern capitalists, but the Northern working-
men, might have learned from him, and as far as
the latter are concerned they might well heed his
words even to-day.
Hammond's speech made a sensation. It is
possible that the party of the slaveholders at least
partially made good its threat to send agitators to
* Congressional Globe. U. S. Senate, 1858, p. 962.
FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE 117
the North to teach workingmen there the doc-
trines elucidated by Hammond. In various labor
papers in the North that part of his speech which
related to the labor question and to the antagon-
ism existing between capital and labor was re-
printed and commented upon in his spirit. The
more independent the movement of any fraction
or nationality or trade of the working class had
become, the mere its members were convinced
of the correctness of the arguments of the Sen-
ator from South Carolina. These workingmen
already knew that they would owe the improve-
ment of their lot and their deliverance only to the
incessant struggle against capitalist society. But
their historical sense was not yet sufficiently de-
veloped to cause them to understand that there
could be no solution of the social question, no
deliverance of "free labor," nay, not even a
powerful labor movement in America, without a
previous solution of the slavery question. This
explains that approval with which Hammond's
speech met among them under the influence of
agitators paid by the slaveholders.
The sensation which Hammond's speech had
made in the public forced the representatives of
the North in the Senate to reply to it. The task
devolved upon Henry Wilson, one of the Sen-
ators from Massachusetts, who replied on March
20, 1858. Hammond's statements relating to the
social conditions in the South had been the weak-
118 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
est part of his speech. It was easy for the Sen-
ator from Massachusetts to set them right. "The
Senator tells us," declared Wilson, "that their
slaves are well compensated. The Senator him-
self stated, that a field hand could be supported
for from eighteen to nineteen dollars per annum.
Is that well compensated? There is not a poor-
house in the free States, where there would not
be a rebellion in three days, if the inmates were
compelled to subsist on the quantity of food the
Senator estimates as ample 'compensation' for
the labor of a slave in South Carolina. Wages
in the North are 100 per cent, higher than in the
South. In the iron mills in Massachusetts, they
paid the laborers (1850) $30 a month; in South
Carolina the workingmen of the same occupation
received but $15."
It was easy to convict the South Carolina Sen-
ator of misrepresenting the social conditions of
the South, but it was difficult to refute his state-
ments concerning capitalist development and its
consequences for free workingmen. And the fact
is that his opponent from Massachusetts, in his
answer, hardly got beyond mere phrases. It was
evident that he did not grasp the antagonism ex-
isting between capital and labor, which Ham-
mond had depicted so clearly, and that he did
not see the impending conflict between free work-
ingmen and industrial capitalists. "The Senator
from South Carolina," explained Wilson, "ex-
FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE 119
claims, 'the man who lives by daily labor, your
whole class of manual laborers, are essentially
slaves.' — 'they feel galled by their degradation!'
What sentiment is this to hear uttered in the
councils of this democratic Republic! These
words brand hundreds of thousands of men as
'slaves.'
"I. too, have lived by daily labor. I, too, have
been a 'hireling manual laborer,' but I never felt
'galled by my degradation.'
"I tell the Senator from South Carolina, that
he grossly libels the hireling class of manual la-
borers, when he declares, that they are 'essentially
slaves.' '
And, after showing the real condition of the
South, Wilson continued :
"The laboring men of the free States have
open to their industry all the avenues of agricul-
ture, commerce, manufactures and the multi-
farious mechanic arts, where skilled labor is de-
manded, and where they have not to maintain,
as in South Carolina, 'a feeble and ruinous com-
petition with the labor of slaves.'
"Should the Senator and his agitators and lec-
turers come to Massachusetts, to teach our hire-
ling class of manual laborers 'the secret of the
ballot-box/ they would reply: 'We are free men;
we are the peers of the gifted and the wealthy,
we know the tremendous secret of the ballot-box;
and we mould and fashion these institutions that
120 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
bless and adorn our proud and free Common-
wealth !".... "Go home, say to your privileged
class, which you vauntingly say, 'leads progress,
civilization, and refinement,' that it is the opinion
of the hireling laborers of Massachusetts, if you
have no sympathy for your African bondmen, in
whose veins flows so much of your own blood,
you should at least sympathize with the millions of
your own race, whose labor you have dishonored
and degraded by slavery ! You should teach your
millions of poor and ignorant white men, so long
oppressed by your policy, the 'tremendous secret,
that the ballot-box is stronger than an army with
banners !' You should combine and lead them to
the adoption of a policy which shall secure their
own emancipation from a degrading thrall-
dom!"*
The Senator from Massachusetts did not know
the history of the workingmen in his own State.
Otherwise he would have known that notwith-
standing all their hatred of the system of
slavery in the South and notwithstanding
all their enthusiasm for the emancipation
of the Negroes, the workingmen of Massa-
chusetts had always, when they met in organiza-
tions, emphasized the fact that besides the aboli-
tion of Negro slavery they also demanded the
abolition of wage slavery. Otherwise he would
have known that industrial workingmen, as soon
* Congressional Globe. U. S. Senate, 1858.
FREE LABOR BEFORE THE SENATE 121
as they begin to think about their condition, do
not at all feel as "free men, as peers of the gifted
and wealthy," but that they are conscious of liv-
ing in a slavery hardly inferior to that of the
Negroes of the South, and that they wanted de*
liverance from all slavery, the chattel slavery of
the Negroes and the wage slavery of the white
workingmen.
All this the Senator from Massachusetts would
have known had he been familiar with the his-
tory of labor in his own State. At that moment,
of course, the workingmen of Massachusetts like
those of the North in general were condemned to
remain silent. The terrible crisis of 1857 had
destroyed their organizations, so far as there had
been any, and annihilated their press, what there
was of it. And in March, 1858, when this debate
took place in the United States Senate, the labor
movement had not yet recovered from the blows
it had received.
Otherwise workingmen from the ranks of his
own State might have told the Senator from
Massachusetts that he knew less about the social
conditions of their class than did the Senator
from South Carolina, and that Senator Ham-
mond was right when he said to the capitalists
of the North, "Your whole hireling class of
manual laborers and 'operatives,' as you call
them, are essentially slaves."
That this was the opinion of the advanced por-
122 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
tion of the workingmen of his State, Senator
Wilson might easily have learned from the anti-
slavery press of Massachusetts, the press of his
own party. Although the influence of the real
social reformers upon the working class of the
North had materially diminished in the fifties,
and the necessity of abolishing wage slavery was
no longer emphasized as strongly as formerly, a
workingman wrote in Garrison's Liberator in
September, 1860, shortly before the outbreak of
the Civil War, as follows :
"Let us deprecate Southern slavery in the
depths of our souls ; but, in the name of Heaven,
don't let us be unmindful of this other form of
slavery, equally the result of dire selfishness,
manifesting itself in a greater degree than ever
in the overtopping, all-absorbing, bargaining and
trading spirit of this age — the one accomplished
by man-stealing, the other the outbirth of a false
relation existing in the great department of
labor."*
The feeling that they were not free men was
evidently not yet extinct in the working class of
Massachusetts.
* Liberator, Sept. 14, 1860.
CHAPTER IV.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR AND
THE LABOR MOVEMENT.
1. GENERAL CONDITION OF THE LABOR MOVE-
MENT.
The economic crisis of 1857 had struck a
severe blow at the feeble beginnings of the labor
movement in the United States. There existed
trade organizations, and even national organiza-
tions of some trades — for example, those of the
printers and the hatters — but they had no great
influence, and they were unable to withstand such
blows as those dealt by the prevailing crisis.
The weakness of the American trade-union
movement at that time was due to the relatively
insignificant industrial development of the coun-
try. Capitalist industry on a large scale existed
really only in three of the New England States,
in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Industrial workers, in the present sense, were
therefore to be found only in those regions. The
farmers made up the bulk of the population.
Industrial products were for the most part manu-
factured in the manner of the old trades by handi-
craftsmen. There were proportionately few
124 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
Americans among the mechanics. Owing to their
knowledge of the country and its language they
could more easily find employment in agriculture,
in trading and in commerce than in the
factory and the workshop, at least outside of the
three New England States just named. Un-
skilled labor was principally supplied by Irish im-
migrants, while the mechanic traces were sup-
plied by Germans. The trade organizations of
German workingmen consequently formed a
much more important part of the general labor
movement at that time than they did later. In
correspondence with the industrial development
all labor organizations of the time reflected some-
what the character of artisan gilds. These trade
unions, where they continued to exist, were only
gradually transformed into organizations of
modern industrial workingmen.
It was almost two years before the labor or-
ganizations recovered from the effects of the
crisis of 1857. Then they showed renewed ac-
tivity. Local organizations, both German and
English, were formed in all the large cities, and
national trade federations came into existence.
The iron and steel workers took the initiative by
forming a national federation under the name
"Sons of Vulcan." In March, 1859, at a conven-
tion in Philadelphia, the machinists and black-
smiths followed; in July, in the same city, the
iron molders. In the following year, in 1860,
CONDITION OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 125
there were already twenty-six trades with na-
tional organizations.* Of these national trade
organizations which were formed shortly before
the outbreak of the Civil War, those of the ma-
chinists and blacksmiths and those of the iron
molders are of special interest, because they were
under the influence of persons who subsequently
played an important part in the labor movement
of America.
In the spring of 1859 the iron molders of vari-
ous cities went on strike. The employers refused
to agree to the demands of their workmen and
formed for the Eastern and Middle States a na-
tional organization, The National Founders'
League. This employers' organization tried to
import workingmen from foreign countries and
thus break the strike. There was one working-
man of that trade, William H. Sylvis of Phila-
delphia, who saw through the scheme of the em-
ployers and resolved to work against them. He
attempted to unite the several local organizations
of the trade in order to oppose the national union
of the employers by a national union of the work-
ingmen. In consequence of his efforts the Iron
Holders' Convention met in Philadelphia on July
5, 1859, and effected a strong organization of the
trade.
The convention chose a committee which was
to draft an address to the iron molders of the
*Ely: The Labor Movement. 1886, p. 60.
126 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
United States. This address was written by
Sylvis. It is of interest to-day because it gives
an insight into the conceptions and ideas then
current in the American labor world. Among
other things it said :
"Wealth is power, and practical experience
teaches us that it is a power but too often used
to oppress and degrade the daily laborer. Year
after year the capital of the country becomes
more and more concentrated in the hands of a
few, and, in proportion as the wealth of the coun-
try becomes centralized, its power increases, and
the laboring classes are impoverished. It there-
fore becomes us, as men who have to battle with
the stern realities of life, to look this matter fair
in the face; there is no dodging the question; let
every man give it a fair, full and candid con-
sideration, and then act according to his honest
convictions. What position are we, the mechan-
ics of America, to hold in society? Are we to
receive an equivalent for our labor sufficient to
maintain us in comparative independence and re-
spectability, to procure the means with which to
educate our children, and qualify them to play
their part in the world's drama; or must we be
forced to bow the suppliant knee to wealth, and
earn by unprofitable toil a life of solace to con-
firm the very chains that bind us to our doom?"*
* Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of Wm. H. Syhis,
by his brother, James C. Sylvis, 1872, p. 31.
CONDITION OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 127
Emphasizing the fact that the power of the
workingmen lies in organization, Sylvis urged
his colleagues to join the new union.
At the convention of his national union, held
at Albany, N. Y., in 1860, the author of this ad-
dress, who even at that time brought out clearly
the relation of the workingmen to capital, was
appointed a leading officer in the organization,
and as such played an important part not only in
his union, but also in the American labor move-
ment in general.
Besides the national union of the iron molders
the organizations of the machinists and black-
smiths and of the shipwrights were at that period
particularly active. Both trades were even then
eagerly discussing the eight-hour day. At the an-
nual convention of the former a demand was
made for an eight-hour day legalized by Con-
gress, and the shipwrights in some localities ob-
tained their eight-hour day merely in consequence
of their strong organization. In other English-
speaking trade unions shortly before the outbreak
of the Civil War there was considerable activity,
as also in those of the immigrant German work-
ingmen.
The condition of the few independent political
labor organizations, which were German, was
less encouraging. The anti-slavery agitation and
the impending political conflict were a great hin-
drance to them. The Arbeiterbund (Working-
128 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
men's League) of New York was more deeply
concerned about wage slavery than about chattel
slavery, and the same thing was true of its organ,
the Soziale Republik. In St. Louis there were
German workingmen's organizations which were
loosely allied with the Arbeiterbund, and there
were yet others in Chicago. Pupils of Karl Marx
still exerted some influence in the Lake City:
most noted among these was Joseph Weyde-
meyer, who edited a workingmen's paper,
Stimme des Volkes, which was published by the
central committee of the German workingmen's
organizations. The Soziale Republik and the
Stimme des Volkes were discontinued in the
course of the year 1860. The impending conflict
between the slaveholding South and the "free
labor" North crowded out all other questions,
ind for the time being made impossible any poli-
tical labor movement, although the trade unions
were comparatively active.
Such was the state of the labor movement
when the election of Abraham Lincoln in the Fall
of 1860 induced the Southern States to secede
from the Union and thus inaugurate the Civil
War.
2. THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORKINGMEN TO-
WARDS THE WAR.
The outbreak of a war like that between the
North and the South, threatening with destruc-
WORK1NGMEN AND WAR 129
tion the very foundations of the Union, was
bound to react most profoundly upon the indus-
trial activity of the people and concomitantly also
upon the labor movement. There was indeed at
the beginning of the war a general collapse of all
industry, and the labor organizations which had
prospered since the close of the year 1858 re-
ceived a severe setback; many of them even dis-
appeared altogether during the first years of the
war.
The attitude of the workingmen towards the
War of Secession was by no means uniformly the
same. At the beginning the question of slavery
played no part; it gave way to the question of
the preservation of the Union, whose existence
was threatened by the secession of the Southern
States. Though the slavery question lay at the
foundation of the whole secession movement,
the politicians at Washington did their best to
obscure the situation by causing the ensuing
struggle to appear not as a struggle against the
economic institution of Negro slavery, but as a
struggle for a political form, the preservation of
the Union. And as a struggle for the preserva-
tion of the Union the Civil War was at the out-
set regarded by the labor organizations, though
it cannot be said that they hailed it with general
enthusiasm. The labor organizations of the
South, such as had at that time come into ex-
istence in Baltimore and some other cities of the
130 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
Southern States, were not at all in favor of the
struggle of their States against the Union, and it
must be particularly emphasized that they were
in the beginning generally in favor of the pre-
servation of the Union and against the seces-
sionist movement of the ruling class of their
States.
Some influential representatives of the trade
unions, both North and South, endeavored to per-
suade the laboring class of the country to ex-
ert their influence against the war. One of the
most active among these was Sylvis. A confer-
ence of certain members of the Iron Molders'
Union met in Louisville, Ky., and passed reso-
lutions to the effect that workingmen, regardless
of their political party affiliations, were convinced
that the welfare of the country and the hopes
of the future reposed upon the preservation of
the Union.* The election of Abraham Lincoln,
in their opinion, furnished no grounds for
changing the existing form of government.
The resolutions passed at this conference of
workingmen in a Southern State further urged
the workingmen of the whole country to arrange
meetings in every congressional district and
there demand the resignation of all those mem-
bers of Congress at Washington whose attitude
was inimical to the preservation of the Union.
At the close emphasis was laid on the statement
* Sylvis, p. 42.
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 131
that the mechanics of Kentucky were in favor
of the preservation of the Union, even if they did
not consider themselves its humble subjects.
They knew what their rights were, and they were
determined to maintain them within or outside
o-f the Union.
Similar meetings were held elsewhere in the
South, as well as in the North, by organized
workingmen, and similar declarations were made
there, all these movements finally culminating in
a labor convention at Philadelphia on February
22, 1861. The call for this convention had come
from Louisville.
The attendance at this convention was not so
great as had been expected, although delegates
from many States were present. Sylvis was one
of the most active. Uriah S. Stephens, the gar-
ment cutter who subsequently became the founder
of the Order of the Knights of Labor, was also
one of the delegates. It was resolved to appoint
a Committee of Thirty-four — one for each of
the States then constituting the Union — with the
function of arranging meetings and demonstra-
tions in the spirit of the callers of the convention.
The proceedings closed with a large parade of
workingmen and a mass meeting in which the
speakers emphasized the fact that organized la-
bor was willing to sink political differences for
the sake of preserving the Union.
Some days previous to the convention, on Feb-
132 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ruary 12, Sylvis had expressed his views con-
cerning its tasks in a communication to a work-
ingmen's paper, the Mechanics' Own of Phila-
delphia. After stating that the coming conven-
tion was to be a workingmen's convention, he
declared that "under the leadership of political
demagogues and traitors scattered all over the
Laid, North and South, East and West, the coun-
try is going to the devil as fast as it can. And
unless the masses rise up in their might, and
teach their representatives what to do, the good
old ship will go to pieces." In this communica-
tion he urged the arrangement of meetings in
which the preservation of the Union was to be
championed.
The Committee of Thirty-four, which b?.d
been appointed by the convention at Philadelphia,
continued its activity after the close of the pro-
ceedings and held several sessions. In a letter
of March 23, the corresponding secretary of the
committee, Sylvis, expressed himself with regard
to its mission as follows :
"The business of this committee is to perfect
and perpetuate an organization among the indus-
trial classes of the city and State, for the purpose
of placing in positions of public trust men of
known honesty and ability; men who know the
real wants of the people, and who will repre-
sent us according to our wishes; men who have
not made politics a trade; men who, for a con-
133
sideration, will not become the mere tools of rot-
ten corporations and aristocratic monopolies ; men
who will devote their time and energies to the
making of good laws, and direct their adminis-
tration in such a way as will best subserve the in-
terests of the whole people."*
Simultaneously with the workingmen's con-
vention in Philadelphia a mass meeting of work-
ingmen was held in Faneuil Hall, in Boston,
which was still more outspoken in its condemna-
tion of the war. This meeting issued an "Address
of the Workingmen of Massachusetts to their
Brethren Throughout the United States," in
wliich occur these statements:
"We believe the chief cause of the break in the
Union to have been that the people, North and
South, have been deceived and betrayed by poli-
ticians and office seekers
". . . . It is vain for politicians to tell us that
secession is illegal. Several States have seceded
already; and if the citizens of those States are
united in their determination to leave the Union,
no laws and no force can compel them to remain.
". . . . Since coercion is unwise, unjust and
impossible, we must look to other means for the
restoration of the Union, and we believe that
those means are in the power of the people. Be-
tween the people of the States, there can be no
misunderstanding if they can be brought together.
* Sylvis, pp. 45-46.
134 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
"We believe that the first duty of the people,
South and North, is to put away forever those
designing politicians who have deceived the
people and brought the danger upon the country.
"We appeal to our brethren at the South to
deal with their traitors at home, the sowers of
sedition, who endeavor to mislead and misrep-
resent them.
"We, on our part, will do our best here at the
North to expose and to put down forever the
mischief-makers who have sown discord between
the States, and brought our country to the verge
of civil war."
The address attacks the Abolitionists most vio-
lently. Among the reasons given in justifica-
tion of this attack, are the following :
"Because their pretended love for slaves a
thousand miles away is but hypocrisy. If they
loved mankind, and would prevent sin and suf-
fering and wrong, they could find here at home
objects more than sufficient for the exercise of
all their assumed virtues. But their philanthropy
is mere deception — their affected sympathy is
selfishness — and their feigned love for the slave,
a cloak for their insidious designs.
"For these, and for many other reasons, we ap-
peal to all good citizens at the North — Republicans
and Democrats, Union Men and Americans — to
see to it, that henceforth the pest of Abolition
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 13S
shall under no disguise be tolerated in their
councils.
"But to the Republicans we appeal most earn-
estly, to avow their open hostility, because the
Abolitionists have, for their own purpose, de-
ceived the South and taught them to believe that
all Republicans are Abolitionists.
"Let this be a war not of force, but of opin-
ion "
". . . . The truth is, that the workingmen care
little for the strife of political parties and the in-
trigues of office-seekers. We regard them with
the contempt they deserve. We are weary of
this question of slavery; it is a matter which does
not concern us ; and we wish only to attend to our
business, and leave the South to attend to their
own affairs, without any interference from the
North.
". . . . The workingmen of the United States
have other duties than to put down the treason-
able designs of the Abolitionists. It is in our
power to save the Union, if we will but unite.
Let us forget, then, forever that we have been
Whigs or Democrats, Republicans or Americans,
or Union men, and let the symbols and platforms
and passions and prejudices of party be dis-
carded, never to be recalled
". . . . Let us form throughout the land asso-
ciations of workingmen, whose only platform
136 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
shall be, Liberty and Union, and equal rights to
all
"....; If our Southern brethren choose to re-
turn to the Union, we will give them a sincere
and hearty welcome, and endeavor to protect
them in their rights. If they prefer to cast their
lot with us no longer, we will bid them 'go in
peace,' and we will endeavor to secure to our-
selves the blessings of liberty and independence
in our own government. We wish no Union but
a Union of Friendship, not of force; no associ-
ates but those who remain with us of their own
free will."*
It is probable that this address was not backed
exclusively by the workingmen of Boston, but
that Democratic political influence was brought
to bear in its composition, as the violent attack
upon the Abolitionists would seem to indicate.
The Abolitionists were indeed far less popular
among the workingmen of Boston than among
the population of the essentially industrial centres
of New England. Nevertheless the address is of
interest for the light it sheds upon the attitude of
some of the workingmen of the North at the out-
break of the war.
The address of the Workingmen of Boston,
as well as the activity of Sylvis and the Commit-
tee of Thirty-four, did not of course alter the
march of events. The working class of the
* Liberator. March, 1861.
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 137
United States was by no means strongly enough
developed to make any impression by setting
forth its class interests. And even if the work-
ingmen had been better organized, if their move-
ment had been more powerfully developed, and
if they had constituted a more vital section of
society, their action would nevertheless have
proved futile, for the simple reason that they en-
tered upon it too late. The State of South Caro-
lina had seceded from the Union as early as De-
cember 30, 1860. Five other States had followed
its example in the next month. The anti-slavery
people in the North and the slaveholding element
in the South were alike bent on war, so that the
pacific efforts of the poorly organized working-
men were doomed in advance. Calamity, if one
may speak of historically necessary struggles as
calamity, had to take its course. Already, on
April 12th, the Secessionists had fired on Fort
Sumter, in Charleston harbor. The War of the
Rebellion, which was to lead to the abolition of
slavery, had begun.
3. EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON LABOR.
The first thing to note at the outbreak of the
war was the general industrial depression, with
its accompanying unemployment, a circumstance
which greatly facilitated the organization of the
Northern army, as the unemployed willingly en-
listed in the ranks. The labor organizations suf-
138 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
fered from the prevailing unemployment, and
partly also because their members obeyed the call
for volunteers in such great numbers as to leave
them with a greatly depleted membership. Many
trade-union officials and labor leaders busied
themselves in behalf of reinforcing the army by
recruiting military companies from their organ-
izations and workshops in which they held the
leading positions. A trade-union in Philadel-
phia joined the army in a body, an action which
was recorded by the following remarks in the
minutes of the Union : "It having been resolved
to enlist with Uncle Sam for the war, this union
stands adjourned until either the Union is safe
or we are whipped."*
The enlistment of so many thousands of work-
ingmen in the army was of course accompanied
by a corresponding decrease in the supply of la-
bor. There soon was no army of unemployed.
To furnish the supplies for the army and navy,
equipment, armament, provisions, clothing, tents,
transports and the manifold other needs of a
large military body, made vast demands on pro-
ductive labor. The requirements of the army
stimulated prostrate industry, which presently
showed renewed activity in all its branches. En-
larged opportunity of employment gave the work-
ingmen indeed an increase in wages, but hand
in hand with this enlarged opportunity came an-
* T. V. Powderly : Thirty Years of Labor, p. 57.
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 139
other economic phenomenon which tended to
make their condition worse. War was expen-
sive; it ate up enormous sums. In the year 1861
the amount of money which the Government re-
quired for the army and navy was $35,389,000;
in the following year it had risen to $431,813,-
000; and in 1865 it had mounted to $1,153,307,-
000. The war expenses of the North for the five
years of the war (1861-1865) totalled $3,063,-
180,000.* This colossal sum had to be pro-
cured. Debts were incurred; recourse was had
to the issue of paper money. But the result of
the war was uncertain, and therefore it was also
uncertain whether the government issuing this
paper money would ever be able to redeem it in
gold to pay its debts. Paper money was depre-
ciated. During the war one dollar in paper was
worth only from forty to seventy cents in gold.
The consequence was a general increase in the
price of commodities amounting on the average
to 75 per cent. In some cases the price was
tripled in the years between 1860 and 1866.
Wages were of course paid in depreciated paper
money.
This movement in commodity prices resulting
from the depreciation of paper money put the
American workingmen into such a position that
in spite of a favorable labor market they were
* Katherine Coman : Industrial History of the United
States, p. 270.
140 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
worse off than before. It forced them into a
struggle for the maintenance of their standard of
life; they set forth new demands; their failing
organizations began to revive, and new ones were
formed. The war rebuilt what it had previously
destroyed. The labor movement once more be-
came a powerful factor in public life.
Besides the struggle of the workingmen for
the maintenance of their standard of life, and
besides the increased demand for labor during
the years of the war, there was still another fac-
tor to influence favorably the revival of the la-
bor movement. While the wage worker, in spite
of a favorable labor market, was compelled to
struggle for the maintenance of the prevailing
standard of life, the middle classes of the North
were revelling in "orgies of profit." Under the
fructifying rain of millions which the Govern-
ment spent in liquidation of army and navy con-
tracts and supplies, industry on a large scale be-
gan to develop and consolidate by leaps and
bounds. Mass production of the articles required
by the army resulted in transforming all work-
shops into factories. The various concerns were
enormously enlarged, concentrating the working-
men in large numbers in individual factories.
About this time hand work was replaced by the
use of machines in nearly all industries. There
was an accumulation of wealth in individual
hands hitherto unheard of. Dishonest manipu-
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 141
lations of army contractors — we need recall only
the clothing manufactured out of old woolen
"shoddy," and footgear similarly produced —
poured millions into the pockets of a few
"shoddy aristocrats," as did also the fitting out
of "blockade runners" which carried merchan-
dise between ports declared closed. Legislation,
and especially Congressional legislation, became
k tool in the hands of the middle class to a
greater extent than had ever been the case be-
fore. Millions of acres of government lands
were granted to railroad companies and other
monopolies. Capitalism gloried in unparalleled
successes. The national wealth of the United
States, which in 1860 had been $514 per capita,
had risen in 1870 to $780, despite the colossal
destruction of property in consequence of the
war, from which the Southern States were the
principal sufferers. It was especially in the in-
dustrial districts of New England, in New York,
and other large cities of the Northeastern States
that we meet with these vast accumulations of
wealth. In the Northern Atlantic States the na-
tional wealth amounted to $528 per capita in
1860, or only $14 above the average of the whole
country. In 1870, in the same section, it had
risen to $1,243 per capita, or $463 above the
average. Here in the Northeastern section of
the country the foundation was laid, during the
142 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
Civil War, for the money power of the United
States.
The extraordinary rapidity with which the
process of capitalist consolidation took place in
the hothouse atmosphere of the war was of course
accompanied by the creation at the same pace of
the soil out of which sprang the labor movement.
The first indication of this was seen in the rise
everywhere of local trade unions and their subse-
quent federation into national organizations. As
early as 1863 the locomotive engineers formed
an organization which embraced the entire coun-
try, and in the following year the cigarmakers
and bricklayers did likewise. At the close of the
war between thirty and forty trades had formed
national organizations in the United States.
CHAPTER V.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE
WORKING CLASS.
1. THE ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE CIVIL
WAR.
Of the European countries, it was especially
England that was affected by the outbreak of the
Civil War. As we have seen, England was con-
nected with the Southern States by a bond of
common interests. Its textile industry, which
had reached its highest development towards the
close of the fifties, needed the raw cotton of the
cultivation of which the Southern States pos-
sessed a monopoly. The latter, owing to the in-
stitution of slavery, were interested in the impor-
tation of English products free of duty, while
the young manufacturing industry of the North
favored a protective policy which found actual
expression in the national tariff laws. It was
consequently in the interest of the English middle
class that the Southern States should form an in-
dependent confederacy with tariff regulations of
its own which should grant England undisturbed
free trade. Under such an arrangement the
144 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
•South could supply England with the raw cot-
ton which was so necessary to it, and English
manufacturers could export their industrial pro-
ducts of all kinds to the Southern States, free
of duty, and without fear of competition. Un-
der the pressure of these interests the early Abo-
litionist impulses of the ruling class in England
disappeared, and English intervention in favor of
the Southern States was advocated in these
circles.
Besides England, France also was interested in
the events taking place in the United States.
Textile industry was of course far less developed
in the Second Empire than in Great Britain, and
cotton did not play as important a role in French
politics as in English. Nevertheless, French tex-
tile workers were also affected by the scarcity
of cotton and suffered severely from the crisis
produced thereby. But although their distress
was due to the War of Secession, like their Eng-
lish comrades they stood by the Union and op-
posed Negro slavery, and by no means shared
their ruler's bias in favor of the Southern slave-
holders. On the contrary, they took a very de-
cided stand against them.
It was, however, not the part which the cot-
ton famine and all it involved played in France
that drove the French Emperor to sympathize
with the South. Louis Napoleon was filled with
the lust of conquest and aggrandizement. He
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 145
had designs upon Mexico that could scarcely be
realized if the United States remained intact,
and for this reason he sided with the Southern
States, He would gladly have made the attempt
to break the blockade of the Southern ports pro-
claimed by the Washington Government, and he
would even have directly intervened in favor of
the South, had he not feared thereby to involve
France in conflicts of far-reaching consequences.
For this reason, he desired the co-operation of
England in this enterprise, and he did his best to
obtain it.
In England the Government was far more de-
pendent on public opinion than in France. If
public opinion in Great Britain had really de-
manded the recognition of the Southern Con-
federacy, if it had demanded active intervention
in its favor, the Government would only too will-
ingly have obeyed the pressure. But in the face
of public opinion emphatically opposed to all in-
tervention on the part of England in the affairs
of America, the Government dared not pursue
a contrary course. The decision consequently
lay with England.
Only a few years had passed since England,
on the occasion of the visit of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, the author of Uucle Tom's Cabin, the
book which graphically described the sufferings
of Negro slaves, melted in sentimental approval,
especially since the author was the honored guest
146 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
in the most exclusive circles of the English no-
bility. After the outbreak of the Civil War not
a trace of this sentiment remained in the hearts
of the English middle class. "To-day [1862]
we find only here and there one among the Eng-
lishmen who does not fanatically side with the
slave States, and that one probably has not the
courage to express his opinions."* This was true
as far as the ruling classes were concerned, and
they indeed tried their best to persuade the Gov-
ernment to intervene in behalf of the South.
They arranged labor demonstrations and meet-
ings declaring in favor of the South and of open
hostilities against the North for the purpose of
showing that these sentiments had the backing
of English "public opinion." But under the in-
fluence of persons, many of whom subsequently
belonged to the General Council of the Interna-
tional Workingmen's Association, the working-
men of England offered the most determined op-
position to the attempt of forcing them into
demonstrations favoring the slaveholders. Eng-
lish workingmen had themselves become only too
well acquainted with slavery to espouse its sup-
port in one of its most aggravated forms.
The manufacturers now resorted to intimida-
tion to compel the workingmen to join in the
* Lothar Bucher : Die Londoner Industrieausstellung von
1862. Berlin, 1863, p. 155. Bucher evidently considered
only the ruling class as "Englishmen."
cry for war. Starvation, that ever ready weapon
in the hands of the middle class, was to force
the workingmen of England to declare for
slavery in America and thereby enable the Gov-
ernment to say that public opinion demanded its
hostile intervention in behalf of the South. The
Civil War, and especially the blockade of the
Southern ports by Northern forces, had created
a scarcity of cotton in England which, by the
way, was not altogether unwelcome to the manu-
facturers. For there had been an overproduc-
tion in the cotton industry of England in 1860.
"Its effects were still felt during the years imme-
diately following The demand for labor
had in consequence already been decreased here
[in Blackburn, where in 1860 there were 30,000
mechanical looms], months before the effects of
the cotton blockade made themselves felt
The stock on hand [of the manufacturers] of
course rose in price as long as it lasted, and the
alarming depreciation which ordinarily inevitably
accompanies such crises was thus avoided."*
A temporary closing of factories thus sent up
the prices of the accumulated commodities, a situ-
ation by no means deprecated by the cotton lords,
especially since they cherished the hope that
starvation would speedily cause the workingmen
to adopt the views of the manufacturers in re-
* Report on Factories. October, 1862, pp. 28-29.
Quoted by Karl Marx: Kapital, III., 1, p. 106.
148 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
gard to the Civil War in America. So the tex-
tile factories in the north of England were shut
down. More than half of the looms and
spindles were idle. The wages of the spin-
ners and weavers who continued to be employed
were artificially and forcibly reduced in a man-
ner which literally led to starvation. The manu-
facturers deliberately increased the misery into
which the workingmen had been thrown by the
scarcity of cotton, hoping thus to drive them to
despair and to demand the Government's inter-
vention in the American troubles. For, as the
middle-class organs declared, the intervention of
England would put an end to their misery.
And this misery of the workingmen, espe-
cially in the textile districts of Lancashire, was
indeed alarming. In 1863, when conditions had
already somewhat improved, the weekly wages
of weavers and spinners amounted to 3s. 4d. and
5s. Id. Despite this low rate, these Wages were
still further reduced, particularly by fines. In
1862 weavers' wages ranged from 2s. 6d. per
week up.
"No wonder that, in some parts of Lancashire,
a kind of famine fever broke out.* .... But
the working-people had to suffer not only from
the experiments of the manufacturers inside the
mills, and of the municipalities outside; not only
from reduced wages and absence of work, from
* Marx: Capital, I., p. 283.
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 149
want and from charity, and from the eulogistic
speeches of Lords and Commons. Unfortunate
females who, in consequence of the cotton fam-
ine, were at its commencement thrown out of em-
ployment, and have thereby become outcasts of
society, and now, though trade has revived and
work is plentiful, continue members of that un-
fortunate class, and are likely to continue so.
There are also in the borough more youthful
prostitutes than I have known for the last 25
j j-4-
years. '
The workingmen of England were starving
with exemplary patience. They saw their
daughters drift into a life of shame while hunger-
typhus decimated their own ranks, but they would
not yield to the demands of the brutal factory
lords. Not only did they refuse to fall into line
with the wishes of their masters and declare
themselves in favor of the South, but on the
contrary they declared themselves as distinctly
against such a policy. The workingmen of Eng-
land never had better leaders than at this period,
and on these leaders' advice they espoused the
tause of the abolition of Negro slavery and pro-
tested against the intervention of the Govern-
ment in favor of the South.
Hardly had Lincoln, after more than a year
of cautious dealing with the slavery question,
* Report on Factories. October 31, 1865. Quoted by
Marx : Capital, L, p. 283.
150 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
intimated that the War of Secession might be
transformed into a war of Negro emancipation,
than the workingmen of England, in hundreds
of public meetings all over the country, in all
industrial sections and large cities, hailed this
move with enthusiasm and demanded the initia-
tion of energetic measures against slavery and
the slaveholders. In vain were the sneers with
which the English ruling class commented on the
early defeats of the Union army, in vain was the
hypocritical attitude of Gladstone and his col-
leagues in the Government who sought to dis-
guise their secret desire for intervention by the
declaration that the Union could never suppress
the Rebellion and that the Civil War meant only
useless and aimless bloodshed. Cheerfully, even
enthusiastically, the English workingmen bore
starvation and misery, and protested more and
more loudly against Negro slavery and against
the intervention of their Government in favor of
the Southern rebels.
In the north of the country, in the cotton
districts, where the manufacturers attempted to
coerce their employees by starvation, one of the
active agitators in favor of the Union was Ernest
Jones, the champion and poet of the Chartist
movement. His eloquence was irresistible, and
his speeches against the slaveholders were so
impressive that the towns of Ashton and Rock-
dale had them printed and circulated at their
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 151
own expense. When Jones, before a crowded
mass meeting at Blackburn, surrounded by the
hostile local manufacturers on the platform, ex-
claimed, "Why did the South secede?" one of
the latter replied, "For free trade," whereupon
the speaker instantly retorted, "Free trade in
what? Free trade in the lash — free trade in
the branding iron — free trade in chains."*
The applause which broke forth from the as-
sembled workingmen need not be described. The
glowing eloquence of Jones contributed its share
in inspiring the starving textile workers of Lan-
cashire to persist in their position.
Let us compare now with the heroism of the
workingmen of England the contemptible hy-
pocrisy of the middle class and its leaders. The
same Gladstone who declared the attempts of
the North to suppress the rebellion of the slave-
holders to be futile, and who only waited for an
opportunity to bring about an intervention of
England in favor of the Southern States, this
same Gladstone declared in a speech that the
whole history of the Christian church could not
furnish so brilliant an example of Christian
resignation as that of the workingmen of Lan-
cashire.! Of course, this "Christian resignation"
and the exemplary patience of these working-
men were easily explained. Mr. Gladstone him-
* Frederick Leary : Ernest Jones. London, 1887, p. 72.
f Bucher, pp. 156-57.
152 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
self would have them, had they become impa-
tient, imprisoned and shot to pieces amid the ap-
plause of the manufacturers, who were respon-
sible for all the misery.
In New York a committee was formed for the
purpose of collecting money for the starving
spinners and weavers in the north of England
and thus alleviating their misery. The "suf-
fering factory workers" of Blackburn addressed
a letter to this committee and "to the inhabitants
of the United States" beseeching them to furnish
the means for their emigration to the United
States. But the starving workingmen of the
north of England were of far greater use to the
Northern capitalists by remaining where they
were and continuing to starve and heroically to
protest against the machinations of their mas-
ters than by coming to the United States. So
money was indeed sent to relieve their immediate
distress, but Brother Jonathan lent a deaf ear to
their entreaties for emigration on a large scale.
The workingmen of England could count even
less upon the encouragement of the ruling class
of their own country in their plans for emigra-
tion. The great mass of the textile workers was
indeed without employment at the time, but the
manufacturers desired to retain the skilled la-
borers until they should need them again. On
March 24, 1863, a manufacturer declared in 'the
London Times:
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 153
"Encourage or allow the working-power to
emigrate, and what of the capitalists? .... Take
away the cream of the workers, and fixed capital
will depreciate in a great degree, and the floating
will not subject itself to a struggle with the short
supply of inferior labor We are told the
workers wish it [emigration]. Very natural it
is that they should do so Reduce, compress
the cotton trade by taking away its working-
power and reducing their wages expenditure, say
one fifth, or five millions, and what then would
happen to the class above, the small store-keepers,
and what of the rents — the cottage rents? ....
Trace out the effects upward to the small farmer,
the better householder, and .... the land-owner,
and say if there could be any suggestion more
suicidal, to all classes of the country, than by en-
feebling a nation by exporting the best of its
manufacturing population, and destroying the
value of some of its most productive capital and
enrichment ."*
The manufacturers' cry of despair found will-
ing ears. The emigration of the workingmen
was prevented. "Parliament did not vote a single
farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed
some acts empowering the municipal corpora-
tions to keep the operatives in a half -starved state
* Marx : Capital, I., pp. 362-363.
154 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
— i. e., to exploit them at less than the normal
wages." *
The municipalities ordered public works. The
unemployed were set to work on drainage, roads,
stone cutting, paving, etc., and drew relief from
the local authorities. This action virtually
amounted to a relief of the manufacturers, whose
skilled hands were kept in the country. Thus
"the manufacturer, in secret understanding with
the Government, prevented emigration as far as
possible, partly in order to have instantly avail-
able their capital which consisted in the flesh and
blood of these workmen, and partly in order to
be sure of the rent which these workmen paid
them."f
Many of the manufacturers owned the houses
in which the workingmen employed by them were
living. Rent could not be paid during the time
there was no work. The unpaid rent would have
been a pure loss if the workingmen had succeeded
in realizing their plan for emigration. Another
reason which induced the manufacturers to op-
pose the scheme with all the means at their dis-
posal was the fact that it offered the workingmen
an opportunity of escape from their wretched
conditions.
The heroic attitude of the textile workers of
England during the Civil War in America con-
* Marx : Capital, I, p. 364.
fMarx: Ka'pital, III., I., pp. 111-115.
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 155
stitutes one of the most glorious pages in the
history of the working class and must therefore
be emphasized here. They suffered, starved and
even died for the cause of Negro emancipation in
America. And yet a little less patience would
in this case have made the workingmen even more
heroic. But the spirit of the Chartists had
passed, and the workingmen of England were
now great only in passive resistance. The per-
fidy of the ruling class never challenged instant
active resistance more than did the conduct of
the English manufacturers and the English gov-
ernment at the time of the Civil War.
The meetings protesting against a war in
favor of the Southern States had in the meantime
been continued. It was especially during the
late winter of 1862 and of 1863 that one such
meeting followed another. Above all others the
workingmen of London began to be aroused.
The trade unions of the metropolis called a meet-
ing at St. James Hall for March 26th which was
of special importance, and the declarations of
which were recognized as the expression of Eng-
lish working class opinion. At this meeting a
prominent part was played by W. R. Cremer,
then a cabinet-maker, subsequently a member of
the General Council of the International Work-
ingmen's Association, and still later one of the
champions of the international peace movement.
John Bright was in the chair, and among the
156 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
speakers were John Stuart Mill and Prof. E. S.
Beesly. In an address to Abraham Lincoln which
was drawn up by this monster meeting this pas-
sage occurs:
"Though we have felt proud of our country
.... yet have we ever turned with glowing ad-
miration to your great Republic, where a higher
political and social freedom has been estab-
lished."
And John Bright declared:
"I am persuaded .... that the more perfect
the friendship that is established between the
people of England and the free people of Amer-
ica, the more you will find your path of progress
here made easy for you, and the more will so-
cial and political liberty advance among us."*
Lord Palmerston, then at the head of the Eng-
lish Government, was about to declare war
against the Union. According to the testimony
of Karl Marx it was this monster meeting of
the English trade unions, together with the gen-
eral attitude of the English working class in the
matter, that prevented him from carrying out
his intention. The Northern States of America
have to thank the working class of England that
at that trying period in their conflict with the
South they were not involved in an additional
war with England, and perhaps also with France,
* Henry Bryan Binns : Abraham Lincoln. London, 1907.
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 157
which would have seriously imperilled the ex-
istence of the Union.
2. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WORKINGMEN
OF ENGLAND.
Near the end of September, 1862, Lincoln is-
sued a proclamation to the effect that on Janu-
ary 1, 1863, he would declare free all slaves in
those States which should then be in rebellion
against the United States and refuse to lay down
their arms.
It was natural for the ruling classes of the
South to ignore this proclamation. The South-
ern States had been enabled to maintain a few
good privateers for injuring Northern commerce,
aided and encouraged therein mainly by Eng-
land, its nobility, shipbuilders and merchants,
with the Government's tacit approval. The slave-
holders had every reason to expect that the Eng-
lish ruling classes would lend the Confederacy
still further assistance.
But as we have seen, the English working class
put in its veto here. The proclamation by Lin-
coln of his intention to abolish slavery 'by Janu-
ary 1st called forth great rejoicing;" and although
there was heard here and there a note of disap-
pointment because the abolition of slavery was
put forth as a war measure and not as an un-
conditional condemnation of slavery on principle,
great demonstrations of workingmen took place,
158 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
alike in the north and the south of England. In
meetings at London and at Manchester it
was resolved to send an address to President
Lincoln expressing the thanks of the English
workingmen for the Emancipation Proclamation
and encouraging him in taking still more decisive
steps. Both meetings took place December 31,
1862.
The address adopted by the London meeting
read as follows :
"The Workingmen of London to the President
of the United States of America.
"To His Excellency, Abraham Lincoln, President
of the United States of America.
"Sir : We who offer this address are English-
men and workingmen. We prize as our dearest
inheritance, bought for us by the blood of our
fathers, the liberty we enjoy — the liberty of free
labor on a free soil. We have, therefore, been
accustomed to regard with veneration and grati-
tude the founders of the great republic in which
the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race have been
widened beyond all the precedents of the old
world, and in which there was nothing to con-
demn or to lament but the slavery and degrada-
tion of men guilty only of a colored skin or an
African parentage. We have looked with ad-
miration and sympathy upon the brave, generous
and untiring efforts of a large party in the North-
ern States to deliver the Union from this curse
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 159
and shame. We rejoiced, sir, in your election
to the Presidency, as a splendid proof that the
principles of universal freedom and equality
were rising to the ascendant. We regarded with
abhorrence the conspiracy and rebellion by which
it was sought at once to overthrow the supremacy
of a government based upon the most popular
suffrage in the world, and to perpetuate the hate-
ful inequalities of race. We have ever heard
with indignation the slander that ascribed to Eng-
land sympathy with a rebellion of slaveholders,
and all proposals to recognize in friendship a
confederacy that boasts of slavery as its corner-
stone. We have watched with the warmest in-
terest the steady advance of your policy along
the path of emancipation; and on this eve of the
day on which your proclamation of freedom takes
effect, we pray God to strengthen your hands,
to confirm your noble purpose, and to hasten the
restoration of that lawful authority which en-
gages, in peace or war, by compensation or by
force of arms, to realize the glorious principle
on which your constitution is founded — the
brotherhood, freedom, and equality of all men."*
On the same day when the workingmen of
London in mass meeting assembled framed the
above address, the workingmen of Manchester
held a meeting for the same purpose. No less
than 6,000 persons were present in the hall, the
* Senate Documents. Washington, 1863.
160 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
largest of the city. The address adopted here
was sent by the Mayor of Manchester by special
messenger to the American Minister at London,
Charles Francis Adams. The importance which
the American Minister attached to this manifesta-
tion of the workingmen may be gathered from
the letter with which he forwarded the address
to Secretary of State Seward, in Washington.
This letter declared:
"This meeting is in every respect a most re-
markable indication of the state of popular senti-
ment in Great Britain. It will doubtless make
a strong impression elsewhere, and, if duly fol-
lowed up, may have the effect of restoring, in a
degree, the amicable feeling between the two
countries."*
The address, whose significance was truly set
forth by this letter of the minister, read as
follows :
"Address from the Workingmen of Manchester
to His Excellency,
''Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States of America.
"As citizens of Manchester, assembled at the
Free Trade Hall, we beg to express our fraternal
sentiments towards you and your country.
"We rejoice in your greatness, as an outgrowth
of England, whose blood and language you share,
whose orderly and legal freedom you have ap-
* Senate Documents. Washington, 1863.
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 161
plied to new circumstances, over a region im-
measurably greater than our own. We honor
your free States as a singularly happy abode for
the working millions where industry is honored.
One thing alone has, in the past, lessened our
sympathy with your country and our confidence
in it ; we mean the ascendancy of politicians who
not merely maintained Negro slavery, but desired
to extend and root it more deeply. Since we have
discerned, however, that the victory of the free
North in the war which has so sorely distressed
us as well as afflicted you, will shake off the fet-
ters of the slave, you have attracted our warm
and earnest sympathy.
"We joyfully honor you, as the President, and
the Congress with you, for the many decisive
steps towards practically exemplifying your be-
lief in the words of your great founders: 'All
men are created free and equal.'
"You have procured the liberation of the
slaves in the district around Washington, and
thereby made the centre of your federation vis-
ibly free. You have enforced the laws against
the slave trade and kept up your fleet against it,
even while every ship was wanted for service in
your terrible war. You have nobly decided to
receive ambassadors from the Negro republics of
Hayti and Liberia, thus forever removing that
unworthy prejudice which refuses the rights of
humanity to men and women on account of their
162 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
color. In order more effectually to stop the slave
trade, you have made with our Queen a treaty,
which your Senate has ratified, for the right of
mutual search. Your Congress has decreed free-
dom as the law forever in the vast unoccupied
or half-settled territories which are directly sub-
ject to its legislative power: It has offered pe-
cuniary aid to all the Stated which will enact
emancipation locally, and has forbidden your
generals to restore fugitive slaves who seek their
protection. You have entreated the slave mas-
ters to accept these moderate offers; and, after
long and patient waiting, you, as commander-in-
chief of the army, have appointed to-morrow, the
first of January, 1863, as the day of unconditional
freedom for the slaves of the rebel States.
Heartily do we congratulate you and your coun-
try on this humane and righteous course.
"We assume that you cannot now stop short
of a complete uprooting of slavery. It would not
become us to dictate any details, but there are
broad principles of humanity which must guide
you. If complete emancipation in some States be
deferred, though only to a predetermined day,
still, in the interval, human beings should not be
counted chattels. Women must have rights of
chastity and maternity, men the rights of hus-
bands; masters the liberty of manumission. Jus-
tice demands for the black, no less than for the
white, the protection of the law — that his voice
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 163
may be heard in your courts. Nor must any such
abomination be tolerated as slave-breeding States
and a slave market — if you are to earn the high
reward of all your sacrifices in the approval of
the universal brotherhood and of the Divine
Father. It is for your free country to decide
whether anything but immediate and total eman-
cipation can secure the most indispensable rights
of humanity, against the inveterate wickedness
of local laws and local executives.
"We implore you, for your own honor and wel-
fare, not to faint in your providential mission.
While your enthusiasm is aflame, and the tide
of events runs high, let the work be finished
effectually. Leave no root of bitterness to spring
up and work fresh misery to your children. It
is a mighty task, indeed, to reorganize the indus-
try, not only of four millions of the colored race,
but of five millions of whites. Nevertheless, the
vast progress you have made in the short space
of twenty months fills us with hope that every
stain on your freedom will shortly be removed,
and that the erasure of that foul blot upon civil-
ization and Christianity — chattel slavery — dur-
ing your Presidency, will cause the name of
Abraham Lincoln to be honored and revered by
posterity. We are certain that such a glorious
consummation will cement Great Britain to the
United States in close and enduring regards.
Our interests, moreover, are identified with yours.
164 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
We are truly one people, though locally separate.
And if you have any ill wishers here, be assured
that they are chiefly those who oppose liberty at
home, and that they will be powerless to stir up
quarrels between us, from the very day in which
your country becomes, undeniably and without
exception, the home of the free.
"Accept our high admiration of your firmness
in upholding the proclamation of freedom."
On February 2, 1863, Lincoln sent the follow-
ing letter in answer to the address of the London
workingmen :
"To the workingmen of London: I have re-
ceived the New Year's address which you have
sent me, with a sincere appreciation of the ex-
alted and humane sentiments by which it was in-
spired.
"As these sentiments are manifestly the endur-
ing support of the free institutions of England, so
I am sure also that they constitute the only reliable
basis for free institutions throughout the world.
"The resources, advantages and powers of the
American people are very great, and they have
consequently succeeded to equally great respon-
sibilities. It seems to have developed upon them
to test whether a government established on the
principles of human freedom can be maintained
against an effort to build one upon the exclusive
foundation of human bondage. They will re-
joice with me in the new evidences which your
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 165
proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they
are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true
friends of freedom and humanity in foreign
countries.
"Accept my best wishes for your individual
welfare, and for the welfare and happiness of the
whole British people."
"Abraham Lincoln."*
Previous to this, on January 19th, President
Lincoln had sent a more comprehensive reply to
the address of the workingmen of Manchester.
This reply read as follows :
"Washington, January 19, 1863.
"To the Workingmen of Manchester, England :
"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt
of the address and resolutions which you sent me
on the eve of the new year. When I came, on
the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and con-
stitutional election to preside in the Government
of the United States, the country was found at
the verge of civil war. Whatever might have
been the cause or whose ever the fault, one duty,
paramount to all others, was before me, namely,
to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution
and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A con-
scientious purpose to perform this duty is the key
to all the measures of administration which have
been and to all which will hereafter be pursued.
* Senate Documents. Third Session, 37th Congress,
1862-1863.
166 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
Under our frame of Government and my official
oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I
would. It is not always in the power of govern-
ment to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral re-
sults which follow the policies that they may
deem it necessary for the public safety from time
to time to adopt. I have understood well that
the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the
American people; but I have at the same time
been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign na-
tions might have a material influence in enlarging
or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in
which the country is engaged. A fair examina-
tion of history has served to authorize a belief
that the past actions and influences of the United
States were generally regarded as having been
beneficial toward mankind. I have, therefore,
reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Cir-
cumstances to which you kindly allude induce me
especially to expect that if justice and good faith
should be practised by the United States, they
would encounter no hostile influence on the part
of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to
acknowledge the demonstration you have given
of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace
toward this country may prevail in the councils
of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in
your own country only more than she is by the
kindred nation which has its home on this side
of the Atlantic. I know and deeply deplore the
LINCOLN AND ENGLISH WORKINGMEN 167
sufferings which the workingmen at Manchester,
and in all Europe, are called to endure in this
crisis. It has been often and studiously repre-
sented that the attempt to overthrow this Gov-
ernment, which was built upon the foundation of
human rights, and to substitute for it one which
should rest exclusively on the basis of human
slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe.
Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the
workingmen of Europe have been subjected to
severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their
sanction to that attempt. Under the circum-
stances, I cannot but regard your decisive utter-
ances upon the question as an instance of sublime
Christian heroism which has not been surpassed
in any age or in any country. It is indeed an
energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inher-
ent power of truth, and of the ultimate and uni-
versal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom.
I do not doubt that the sentiments you have ex-
pressed will be sustained by your great nation;
and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in
assuring you that they will excite admiration,
esteem and the most reciprocal feelings of friend-
ship among the American people. I hail this
interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury
that whatever else may happen, whatever misfor-
tune may befall your country or my own, the
peace and friendship which now exist between the
168 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to
make them, perpetual.
"Abraham Lincoln."*
On the 26th of February the Senate adopted
a resolutionf requesting that the correspondence
between President Lincoln and the workingmen
of England be laid before it. This was done, and
on March 2d the Senate ordered it sent to the
printer and incorporated in the Senate Docu-
ments^*
President Lincoln's letter to the workingmen
of Manchester recognizes the sacrifices which the
workingmen of England made in behalf of the
Union, and mentions the sublime heroism shown
by them, "unsurpassed in any age or land." The
polite phrases in regard to the persons at the head
of the English Government were probably in-
serted for diplomatic reasons. It was really the
English working class alone that merited the
gratitude of the Union.
3. LINCOLN'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE WORK-
ING CLASS.
Next to Washington, of all the Presidents,
Lincoln ranks highest in the esteem of the Amer-
ican people. It is not only his relation to Negro
* Senate Documents. 1863.
f Congressional Globe. February 26. 1863.
** Senate Documents. Third Session, 37th Congress,
1862-63.
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 169
emancipation and his tragic death that have made
him the national hero of his country. Mythical
tradition also has so glorified him that he is now
celebrated for views which he did not hold.
Mythical tradition has especially transfigured
Lincoln's attitude towards the working class. He
has been credited with prophetic expressions
favoring the inference that he foresaw the do-
minion of capitalist corporations and entertained
the fear that all wealth would become concen-
trated in a few hands, to the great peril of the
Republic. Utterances have been ascribed to him
counselling the working class to guard well the
political rights which they possess and not to al-
low such rights to be wrested from them. He is
even said to have had the economic wisdom to
declare that every government should strive to
secure for every workingman, as far as possible,
the entire product of his labor. In short, Lincoln
was represented as a man who had excogitated
for himself a clear view of the economic evolu-
tion of society, alike in the present and the future,
who distinctly recognized the part which the
working class would play in this evolution, whose
sympathies were entirely with the working class,
and who raised a warning voice against the
"money power."
Lincoln did not possess this knowledge of
economic evolution; he had no idea of the his-
toric part the working class is called to play; he
170 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
had no idea even of the special significance of
the labor movement, and his sympathies were not
with the workingmen, in so far as they voiced
the demands of a separate class. Lincoln has
been extolled as a friend of the workingmen, as
almost a Socialist, the Socialist press of the
United States even joining in the chorus of
praise. This praise has been possible only be-
cause sentiments have been ascribed to him which
he never uttered, and because certain expressions
used by him have been distorted or falsified into
their direct opposite.*
Apart from his sentiments in regard to slavery,
there are but few among Lincoln's numerous
spoken and written utterances which deal with
the labor question. In none of these utterances
did he declare himself in favor of the working
* An ingenious fabrication of utterances on labor pur-
porting to be Lincoln's has been printed and circulated by
the thousand in every part of the United States. It con-
sists of five paragraphs, the last four of which are more
or less genuine, but are distorted out of their meaning.
The first paragraph begins, "I see in the near future a
crisis approaching that unnerves me." The whole fabri-
cation was analyzed by W. J. Ghent in Collier's Weekly
for April 1, 1905. Of the first paragraph Mr. Ghent writes :
"[It] is almost certainly a forgery. The style is not
Lincoln's, nor in so far as any one can now say, are the
sentiments. Nowhere among his authenticated utter-
ances is there to be found anything resembling either the
form or the substance of this paragraph. No one has ever
been able to show the original in Lincoln's hand, and re-
peated demands for its production have met only vague
assertions of its existence in some other and generally
remote place."
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 171
class and its special demands as antagonistic to
the other classes of the population. On the con-
trary, he always avoided recognizing such an-
tagonisms. At Cincinnati, on February 12, 1861,
he addressed a meeting of German workingmen.
When the chairman declared it as the sense of
those present that the working class must be the
foundation of all government, Lincoln cautiously
remarked :
"I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the
workingmen are the basis of all government, for
the plain reason that they are the more numerous,
and as you added, that those were the sentiments
of the gentlemen present, representing not only
the working class, but citizens of other callings
than those of the mechanic, I am happy to con-
cur with you in these sentiments."
Even before this, in March, 1860, Lincoln had
expressed himself in regard to the labor move-
ment. The campaign had taken him to New Eng-
land, where the struggles of the workingmen pre-
sented themselves to him more forcibly than else-
where. In Massachusetts there was in progress
a strike of the shoemakers which Senator Doug-
las had represented as a consequence "of this un-
fortunate sectional warfare" between the North
and the South. In a speech at Hartford, Conn.,
on March 5, 1860, Lincoln challenged the ridicu-
lous statement of Douglas, saying he "thanked
God that we have a system of labor where there
172 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
can be a strike. Whatever the pressure, there is
a point where the workingman may stop." Here,
too. Lincoln added cautiously that he did not pre-
tend to be familiar with the subject of the shoe
strike. "If you give up your convictions and call
slavery right, as they do, you let slavery in upon
you — instead of white laborers who can strike,
you'll soon have black laborers who can't strike."*
In a speech at New Haven, Conn., on the fol-
lowing day, Lincoln returned to the subject, say-
ing:
"I am glad to see that a system of labor pre-
vails in New England under which laborers can
strike when they want to, where they are not
obliged to work under all circumstances, and are
not tied down and obliged to labor whether you
pay them or not. I like the system which lets
a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might
prevail everywhere. One of the reasons why I
am opposed to slavery is just here. What is the
true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is
the best for all to leave each man free to acquire
property as fast as he can. Some will get
wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a
man from getting rich; it would do more harm
than good. So while we do not propose any war
upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest
man an equal chance to get rich with everybody
*J. G. Nicolay and J. Hay: Abraham Lincoln, I., pp.
615-616.
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 173
else. When one starts poor, as most do in the
race of life, free society is such that he knows
he can better his condition, — he knows that there
is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.
I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five
years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails,
at work on a flatboat — just what might happen
to any poor man's son. I want every man to
have his chance — and I believe a black man is
entitled to it — in which he can better his condition
— when he may look forward and hope to be a
hired laborer this year and the next, work for
himself afterward, and finally to hire men to
work for him. That is the true system."*
One may gather from this speech that Lincoln
regarded the strike as a rightful weapon in the
struggles of the workingmen, but the cautious
reserve with which he discusses the matter leaves
uncertain his attitude towards labor organiza-
tions and particularly towards trade unions.
The two speeches merely show that Lincoln
preferred the system of "free labor" to the sys-
tem of slave labor. For the rest, it is to be seen
from his observations that he had no compre-
hension of the aims and ends of the labor move-
ment or of the special interests of the working
class. The labor movement was to him a phe-
nomenon for which he had no understanding and
* Nicolay and Hay, I., pp. 625-626.
174 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
to which he probably never paid any particular
attention.
After his election to the Presidency, Lincoln
discussed the question of capital and labor more
thoroughly in his message to Congress of Decem-
ber, 1861. He took the same position in this
document which he had set forth in his speeches
in Hartford and New Haven, and even earlier
in an address at Milwaukee, and defended it in
almost the same language. This message pre-
cisely defined Lincoln's position in relation to
economic questions, and it must never be left out
of consideration if one wishes to form a true view
of the opinions of the man in regard to these mat-
ters.
Later, in the year preceding his death, Lincoln
made special reference to the propositions in this
message, as to a sort of programme to be sub-
mitted to workingmen for their consideration,
thereby making it plain that he never discarded
the views there laid down.
In New York, in 1863, a workingmen's or-
ganization had been formed under the name of
the Republican Workingmen's Association of
New York. This association resolved to
make President Lincoln an honorary member.
A committee was appointed and sent to
Washington for the purpose of apprising the
President of his election to an honorary member-
ship in the association and of submitting to him
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 175
an address. Lincoln received this committee on
March 21, 1864, and addressed them as follows:
"Gentlemen of the Committee: The honorary
membership in your association, as generously
tendered, is gratefully accepted.
"You comprehend, as your address shows, that
the existing rebellion means more, and tends to
more, than the perpetuation of African slavery —
that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all
working people. Partly to show that this view
has not escaped my attention, and partly that I
cannot better express myself, I read a passage
from the message to Congress in December,
1861:
" 'It continues to develop that the insurrec-
tion is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the
first principle of popular government — the rights
of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found
in the most grave and maturely considered public
documents as well as in the general tone of the
insurgents. Tn those documents we find the
abridgement of the existing right of suffrage, and
the denial to the people of all right to participate
in the selection of public officers, except the legis-
lative, boldly advocated, with labored arguments
to prove that large control of the people in gov-
ernment is the source of all political evil. Mon-
archy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible
refuge from the power of the people.
" 'In my present position I could scarcely be
176 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
justified were I to omit raising a warning voice
against this approach of returning despotism.
' 'It is not needed, nor fitting here, that a gen-
eral argument should be made in favor of popu-
lar institutions; but there is one point, with its
connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to
which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort, to
place capital on an equal footing with, if not
above, labor, in the structure of government. It
is assumed that labor is available only in connec-
tion with capital, that nobody labors unless some-
body else, owning capital, somehow by the use of
it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next
considered whether it is best, that capital shall
hire laborers and thus induce them to work by
their own consent, or buy them and drive them to
it without their consent. Having proceeded so
far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are
either hired laborers or what we call slaves, and,
further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired
laborer, is fixed in that condition for life.
" 'Now, there is no such relation between capi-
tal and labor as assumed; nor is there any such
thing as a free man being fixed for life in the con-
dition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions
are false, and all inferences from them are
groundless.
" 'Labor is prior to, and independent of, capi-
tal. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could
never have existed if labor had not first existed
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 177
Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration. Capital has its
rights, which are as worthy of protection as any
other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and
probably always will be. a relation between capi-
tal and labor, producing mutual benefits. The
error is in assuming that the whole labor of the
community exists within that relation. A few men
own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves,
and, with their capital, hire or buy another few to
labor for them. A large majority belong to
neither class — neither work for others, nor have
others working for them. In most of the South-
ern States a majority of the whole people, of all
colors, are neither slaves nor masters; while in
the Northern, a large majority are neither hirers
nor hired. Men with their families — wives, sons,
and daughters — work for themselves, on their
farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking
the whole product to themselves, and asking no
favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired
laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgot-
ten that a considerable number of persons mingle
their own labor with capital, that is: they labor
with their own hands, and also buy or hire others
to labor for them, but this is only a mixed and
not a distinct class. No principle stated is dis-
turbed by the existence of the mixed class.
l< 'Again, as has already been said, there is
not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired
178 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
laborer being fixed to that condition for life.
Many independent men everywhere in those
States, a few years back in their lives, were hired
laborers. The prudent penniless beginner in the
world labors for wages a while, saves a surplus
with which to buy tools or land for himself, then
labors on his own account another while, and at
length hires another new beginner to help him.
This is the just and generous and prosperous sys-
tem, which opens the way to all — gives hope to
all and consequent energy and progress and im-
provement of condition to all. No men living
are more worthy to be trusted than those who
toil up from poverty — none less inclined to take
or touch that which they have not honestly
earned. Let them beware of surrendering a poli-
tical power which they already possess, and
which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close
the door of advancement against such as they,
and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them,
till all of liberty shall be lost.'
"The views then expressed remain unchanged,
nor have I much to add. None are so deeply in-
terested to resist the present rebellion as the work-
ing people. Let them beware of prejudice, work-
ing division and hostility among themselves. The
most notable feature of a disturbance in your
city last summer was the hanging of some work-
ing people by other working people. It should
never be so. The strongest bond of human sym-
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 179
pathy, outside of the family relation, should be
one uniting all working people, of all nations, and
tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to
a war upon property, or the owners of property.
Property is the fruit of labor; property is de-
sirable; is a positive good in the world. That
some should be rich shows that others may be-
come rich, and hence is just encouragement to
industry and enterprise. Let not him who is
houseless pull down the house of another, but let
him work diligently and build one for himself,
thus by example assuring that his own shall be
safe from violence when built."*
It is evident from this address that Lincoln
considered himself as belonging to the lower
middle class (petty bourgeoisie) and that he was
imbued by its ideals. Nothing is more natural,
considering the state of social evolution in Amer-
ica at that time and Lincoln's individual de-
velopment. Lincoln denies the existence of an
industrial proletariat, "fixed to that condition for
life." In the light of his lower middle-class ex-
periences and ideals he still saw for every one
the possibility of advancement from wage worker
to proprietor. His observations are a glorifica-
tion of the lower middle class, the men who are
neither capitalists nor wage-workers. The for-
mer wage worker who advances by his own ef-
forts and then hires another beginner as a wage
* Nicolay and Hay, pp. 501-502.
180 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
worker, thus becoming a small employer — such
is Lincoln's ideal. That is to him "the just and
generous and prosperous system." He warns this
stratum of the population, who "toil up from
poverty," to beware of surrendering their politi-
cal rights and their political power. It is not the
working men whom Lincoln counsels to vigilance
over their political rights, but the lower middle
class. And whoever might still entertain the
slightest doubt concerning Lincoln's position
among the classes constituting society, and the
distance by which he was still separated from
the Socialist point of view, will be set right by
the close of his address to the New York labor
committee, by his glorification of property and
its owners, and by his warning to workingmen not
to "make war upon property." If he was at all
aware of Socialist views and had formed an
opinion concerning them, it must have been a
hostile one. This was quite natural ! The labor
question and its implications were foreign to him.
He represented the farmer and the lower middle
class with whom his strength lay, and who at that
period constituted the most powerful stratum of
the population of the Northern States of the
Union.
The passage in Lincoln's address to the New
York labor committee, "the strongest bond of
human sympathy, outside of the family rela-
tion, should be one uniting all working people, of
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 181
all nations and tongues and kindreds," has led
some to conclude that its author must have had
an understanding of the international solidarity
of the working class and of the special class
solidarity which is peculiar to the labor move-
ment on a higher plane. It is possible that the
heroic attitude in favor of the Union assumed
by the working class of England during the war
had awakened in him a slight understanding of
the class solidarity of workingmen, but it is not
probable, and we must consider that beautiful
passage as a mere mode of expression without
any deeper significance. If one were to draw
inferences from a single passage of this kind as
to Lincoln's general way of thinking in regard
to the labor movement, one would have to con-
cede the right of other classes to derive precisely
contrary conclusions from his remarks in the
speech at New Haven: "I take it that it is the
best for all to leave each man free to acquire
property as fast as he can," and "I don't believe
in a law to prevent a man from getting rich."
But there is still another document on the
strength of which a claim has been made for Lin-
coln's approach to Socialism. In 1847 Lincoln
had outlined a speech on the protective tariff and
free trade which he intended to deliver in Con-
gress. In this outline occur the following state-
ments :
"In the early days of our race the Almighty said
182 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
to the first of our race, 'In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread,' and since then, if we ex-
cept the light and the air of heaven, no good
thing has been or can be enjoyed by us without
having first cost labor. And inasmuch as most
good things are produced by labor, it follows that
all such things of right belong to those whose
labor has produced them. But it has so happened,
in all ages of the world, that some have labored,
and others have without labor enjoyed a large
proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and
should not continue. To secure to each laborer
the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as
possible, is a worthy object of any good govern-
ment.
"But then the question arises, how can a gov-
ernment best effect this? In our own country,
in its present condition, will the protective prin-
ciple advance or retard this object? Upon this
subject the habits of our whole species fall into
three great classes — useful labor, useless labor
and idleness. Of these, the first only is meri-
torious, and to it all the products of labor right-
fully belong; but the two latter, while they ex-
ist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing
it of a large portion of its just rights. The only
remedy for this is to, so far as possible, drive
useless labor and idleness out of existence. And,
first, as to useless labor. Before making war
upon this we must learn to distinguish it from
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 183
useful. It appears to me that all labor done directly
and indirectly in carrying articles to the place
of consumption, which could have been produced
in sufficient abundance, with as little labor, at the
place of consumption as at the place they were
carried from, is useless labor."*
On the basis of these considerations Lincoln
attempted to demonstrate that it would be use-
ful labor to inaugurate and develop in the South,
where cotton is indigenous, the cotton spinning
and weaving industry. To this end he demanded
the maintenance of the protective tariff.
He writes literally :
"I try to show that the abandonment of the
protective policy by the American Government
must result in the increase of both useless labor
and idleness, and so, in proportion, must produce
want and ruin among the people."
Considered out of their context, Lincoln's in-
troductory remarks in this outline might pro-
duce the impression that he indeed inclined to-
wards certain Socialist views according to which
the product of labor should belong to him who
created it. It is even not impossible that Lincoln,
at the high tide of the Fourierist movement, at
the time when he wrote his outline, had become
acquainted with newspapers and pamphlets con-
taining similar propositions and that he drew his
* Nicolay and Hay, I., p. 92 ff.
184 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
inspiration from these. It is certain that he was
a reader of Greeley's Tribune. But in the con-
nection where we find it, the sentence "to secure
to each laborer the whole product of his labor,
or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of
any good government," cannot mean that the
wage worker is to receive the product of his
labor. That labor alone produces values was by
no means clear to Lincoln. In his view the manu-
facturer who exploited a number of men was
also doing useful work, and he, too, was there-
fore entitled to the product of his labor. The
transport of merchandise he did not consider as
useful labor, and the workingmen engaged in the
transportation of merchandise were therefore not
entitled to a share of the product. Lincoln's So-
cialist-sounding phrases of 1847 by no means
bore a Socialist meaning, they could not bear
such a meaning, because their author had no con-
ception of the working class as a well-defined
stratum of the population, with economic inter-
ests of its own and with definite historical aims.
Abraham Lincoln was not a Socialist, nor was
he particularly friendly to workingmen as the
components of a class. The ideas of the modern
working-class movement were to him foreign
ideas and remained so even in his later years. He
stood on the ground of the lower middle class
and the farmer element, to which he himself be-
LINCOLN AND THE WORKING CLASS 185
longed. He was a man of his age, with whose
ideas he was imbued. He was not a man of the
future, and he knew nothing of the ideas of the
future. And the ideas which have been developed
by the labor movement were to him the ideas of a
future time.
CHAPTER VI.
THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSO-
CIATION AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.
1. ADDRESS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL TO
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
On September 28, 1864, in St. Martin's Hall
in London, there took place that famous meeting
of workingmen which gave birth to the Interna-
tional Workingmen's Association, an organiza-
tion which powerfully stimulated and promoted
the labor movement of all countries in the six-
ties. This meeting appointed a provisional cen-
tral committee for the management of the af-
fairs of the new organization, which came later
to be called the General Council, and which was
composed of representatives of different nation-
alities.
Even before the foundation of the Interna-
tional Workingmen's Association, it was above
all others the men who became the members of
the General Council who had worked for the
cause of the American North in their circles, and
who had encouraged and inspired the English
working class in their heroic stand against the
manufacturers and the Government.
ADDRESS TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 187
On November 27, 1864, Karl Marx, the lead-
ing spirit of the General Council, wrote thus
about the elements composing this committee to
his friend Joseph Weydemeyer, then in the
United States :
"Its English member^ are mostly chiefs of the
local trades unions, hence the real labor kings
of London, the same people who gave Garibaldi
such a rousing welcome, and who by their mon-
ster meeting in St. James' Hall (Bright in the
chair) prevented Palmerston from declaring war
against the United States when he was on the
point of doing it."*
Previous to the organization of the Interna-
tional Workingmen's Association Marx also had
thrown his influence to the leaders of the Eng-
lish workingmen in favor of the Union cause.
The General Council of the International con-
tinued the agitation in this direction which its
members had previously begun.
In the beginning of November, 1864, Lincoln
was elected for the second time to the Presidency
of the United States. Under the direct influence
and upon the suggestion of the General Council
of the International Workingmen's Association,
the workingmen of London arranged a new series
of meetings to protest against the anti-Union at-
titude of the manufacturers and the Government
*F. Mehring, Neue Beitrdge zur Biographic -von K.
Marx und F. Engels, Neue Zeii, 1906-07, Vol. II, p. 224.
188 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
of their country. It was Marx who furnished the
initiative for this renewal of agitation.*
In one of the following meetings of the Gen-
eral Council, one of its members, Dick, made a
motion, which was seconded by G. Howell, to
draft an address to the American people con-
gratulating them upon their struggles and sac-
rifices in behalf of the principles of freedom and
upon their re-election of Lincoln to the Presi-
dency of the United States. A committee was
appointed to formulate this address, and this
committee submitted its draft, the author of
which was Marx, to the General Council at its
meeting on November 29th. The draft was ac-
cepted, and a resolution was adopted to forward
it by a committee to Charles Francis Adams, thj
American Minister at London, for transmis-
sion to his Government. The following is the
text of the address :
"To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States of America.
"Sir: — We congratulate the American people
upon your re-election by a large majority. If
resistance to the Slave Power was the watchword
of your first election, the triumphal war-cry of
your re-election is Death to Slavery.
"From the commencement of the titanic Amer-
* According to letters to the author by Friedrich Less-
ner, of London, at the time a member of the General
Council of the International Workingmen's Association.
ADDRESS TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 189
ican strife the workingmen of Europe felt dis-
tinctively that the Star Spangled Banner carried
the destiny of their class. The contest for the
territories which opened the dire epopte, was it
not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense
tracts should be wedded to the labor of the immi-
grant or be prostituted by the tramp of the slave-
driver?
"When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders
dared to inscribe for the first time in the annals
of the world 'Slavery' on the banner of armed
revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a
century ago the idea of one great Democratic Re-
public had first sprung up, whence the first
declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and
the first impulse given to the European Revolu-
tion of the eighteenth century, when on those very
spots counter-revolution, with systematic thor-
oughness, gloried in rescinding 'the ideas enter-
tained at the time of the formation of the old
constitution' and maintained 'slavery to be a bene-
ficial institution,' indeed, the only solution of the
great problem of the 'relation of capital to labor,'
and cynically proclaimed property in man 'the
cornerstone of the new edifice,' — then the work-
ing classes of Europe understood at once, even
before the fanatic partisanship of the upper
classes, for the Confederate gentry had given its
dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion
was to sound the tocsin for a general holy war
190 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
cf property against labor, and that for the men
of labor, with their hopes for the future, even
their past conquests were at stake in that tremen-
dous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic.
Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the
hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis,
opposed enthusiastically the pro-slavery interven-
tion— importunities of their betters — and from
most parts of Europe contributed their quota of
blood to the good of the cause.
| "While the workingmen, the true political
power of the North, allowed slavery to defile their
own republic, while before the Negro, mastered
and sold without his concurrence, they boasted
it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned
laborer to sell himself and choose his own master,
they were unable to attain the true freedom of
labor, or to support their European brethren in
their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier
to progress has been swept off by the red sea of
civil war.
"The workingmen of Europe felt sure that,
as the American War of Independence initiated
a new era of ascendency for the middle class, so
the American Anti-slavery War will do for the
working classes. They consider it an earnest sign
of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of
Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the
working class, to lead his country through the
ADDRESS TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 191
matchless struggle for the rescue of the enchained
race and the reconstruction of a social world. *
"Signed on behalf of the International Work-
ingmen's Association, the Central Council:
"Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Blackmore,
Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell,
Nicars, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osborn, Howell,
Carter, Wheeler, Starnsby, Morgan, Grossmith,
Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morissot, Leroux, Bor-
dage, Bosquet, Talandier, Dupont, L. Wolf, Al-
drovandi, Lama, Solustri, Nuspert, Eccarius,
Wolf, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Taub, Balliter,
Rypcrynski, Hansen, Schantzenbeck, Smales,
Cornelius, Peterson, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setocri;
George Odgers, President of the Council; P. V.
Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France;
Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Ger-
many; C. P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary
for Italy; J. E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secre-
tary for Poland; H. F. Jung, Corresponding
Secretary for Switzerland; William Cremer,
Hon. General Secretary, 18 Greek Street, Soho,
London W." *
At the meeting of the General Council on
Tuesday, February 2, 1865, the General Secretary
read a reply, written by the United States Min-
ister in London, which was as follows :
* Beehive. London, Jan. 7, 1865.
192 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
"Legation of the United States of America.
"London, Jan. 28, 1865.
"Sir: — I am directed to inform you that the
address of the Central Council of your Associa-
tion, which was duly transmitted through this
legation to the President of the United States of
America, has been received by him. So far as
the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they
are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious
desire that he may be able to prove himself not
unworthy of the confidence which has been re-
cently extended to him by his fellow-citizens, and
by so many friends of humanity and progress
throughout the world. The Government of the
United States of America has a clear conscious-
ness that its policy neither is, nor could be, reac-
tionary; but at the same time it adheres to the
course which it adopted at the beginning of ab-
staining everywhere from propagandism and un-
lawful intervention. It strives to do equal jus-
tice to all states and to all men, and it relies upon
the beneficent results of that effort for support
at home> and for respect and good will through-
out the world. Nations do not exist for them-
selves alone, but to promote the welfare and hap-
piness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and
example. It is in this relation that the United
States regard their cause in the present conflict
with slavery-maintaining insurgents as the cause
of human nature, and they derive new encourage-
ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON 193
ment to persevere from the testimony of the
workingmen of Europe that the National Alli-
ance is favored with the enlightened approval and
earnest sympathies.
"I have the honor to be, Sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"Charles Francis Adams."
The attitude of the General Council of the In-
ternational Workingmen's Association, as re-
flected in the address to President Lincoln, did
not, however, meet with the approval of all its
sympathizers in the United States. Among those
who protested against it were especially the mem-
bers of the Communist Club of New York, who
held that Lincoln's policy did not deserve to be
thus honored.
2. ADDRESS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE
INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION
TO PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was fatally
wounded in Ford's Theatre in Washington by a
shot in the head fired by the actor, John Wilkes
Booth. He died the next morning. At the same
time Southern fanatics attempted to kill Secretary
of State Seward in his bed and dangerously
wounded him and his son. Vice-President John-
son succeeded Lincoln as President of the Union.
It was characteristic of the feeling towards the
United States in the dominant circles of England
194 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
that one of their mouthpieces in the press, on the
arrival of the news of Lincoln's assassination,
should publish the following significant sugges-
tion: "The dagger or the pistol in the hands of
the weakest worm that crawls in human shape
upon the earth can change the destinies of nations
or divert the current opinion into a new channel."
And immediately following this sentence, with-
out any transition, the paper described Lincoln's
successor, Andrew Johnson, as a "bloodthirsty
scoundrel," as the scum and outcast of mankind,
as a most dangerous tyrant.*
It was of course only the most rabid element
among the English public that extolled the as-
sassin Booth as a champion of liberty, as a worthy
successor of Brutus and of Tell, while on the
other hand a large portion of those who had
hitherto been hostile to Lincoln condemned
Booth's deed.
On the report of Lincoln's death, the General
Council of the International Workingmen's As-
sociation resolved to send another address to
America, this time to the successor of the mur-
dered President, Andrew Johnson. The address
was adopted May 13th, and read as follows:*
* Der Deutsche Eidgenosse. London and Hamburg.
1865, p. 42.
* The address was published in the London Beehive of
May 20, 1865. It has been impossible to procure a copy
of this issue of the Beehive, and the author of the present
treatise has therefore been compelled to retranslate the
ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON 195
"Address of the International Workingmen's
Association to President Johnson.
"To Andrew Johnson, President of the United
States.
"Dear Sir :
"The demon of the 'peculiar institution,' for
whose preservation the South rose in arms, did
not permit its devotees to suffer honorable de-
feat on the open battlefield. What had been con-
ceived in treason, must necessarily end in infamy.
As Philip II. 's war in behalf of the Inquisition
produced a Gerard, so Jefferson Davis's rebellion
a Booth.
"We shall not seek for words of mourning and
of horror when the heart of two continents is
throbbing with emotion. Even the sycophants
who year after year and day after day were busily
engaged in morally stabbing Abraham Lincoln
and the great republic of which he was the head
— even they are dismayed in the presence of this
universal outburst of popular feeling and vie with
one another in strewing flowers of rhetoric upon
nis open grave. They have at last come to rec-
ognize that he was a man whom defeat could not
dishearten, nor success intoxicate, who imper-
turbably pressed on towards his great goal with-
address into English from a German translation of it to
which he has had access. The wording which he here
submits is therefore certain not to correspond with the
original in every particular, but he feels that he can vouch
for the essential accuracy of the message it conveyed.
196 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
out ever imperilling .it by blind haste, wh~> ad-
vanced deliberately and never retraced a step, who
was never carried away by popular favor and
never discouraged by the subsidence of popular
enthusiasm, who answered acts of severity with
the sunbeams of a loving heart, who brightened
gloomy exhibitions of passion by the smile of
humor, and who accomplished his titanic task as
simply and as modestly as rulers by divine right
are wont to do trifling things with great pomp
and circumstance ; in a word, he was one of those
rare men who succeed in becoming great with-
out ceasing to be good. So great, indeed, was
the modesty of this great and good man that the
world discovered that he was a hero only when
he had died as a martyr.
"To be chosen at the side of such a leader a^
the second victim by the hellish demons of slavery
was an honor of which Mr. Seward was worthy.
Was he not in a period of general indecision so
perspicacious as to foresee the 'irrepressible con-
flict' and so unterrified as to foretell it? Did he
not in the gloomiest moments of this conflict
prove himself true to the duty of the Roman
never to despair of the republic and its destiny?
We hope with all our heart that he and his son
will be, in less than ninety days, restored to
health, to public activity, and to the well-deserved
honors which await them.
"After a gigantic Civil War which, if we con-
ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON 197
sider its colossal extension and its vast scene of
action, seems in comparison with the Hundred
Years' War and the Thirty Years' War and the
Twenty-three Years' War of the Old World
scarcely to have lasted ninety days, the task, Sir,
devolves upon you to uproot by law what the
sword has felled, and to preside over the more
difficult work of political reconstruction and so-
cial regeneration. The profound consciousness
of your great mission will preserve you from all
weakness in the execution of your stern duties.
You will never forget that the American people
at the inauguration of the new era of the eman-
cipation of labor placed the burden of leadership
on the shoulders of two men of labor — Abraham
Lincoln the one, and the other Andrew Johnson.
"Signed in the name of the International
Workingmen's Association by the General Coun-
cil, May 13, 1865 :
"Charles Kaub, L. Delle, H. Klimrosch, M.
Salbasella, Edward Coulson, G. Lochner, I. Wes-
ton, G. Howell, F. Lessner, G. Eccarius, H. Boll-
ster, Bordage, C. Pfander, I. Osborne, B. Luirass,
A. Valtien, N. P. Stansen, P. Peterson, I. Buck-
ley, R. Shaw, K. Schapper, A. Janks, P. Fox, I.
H. Longmaid, M. Morgan, G. L. Wheeler, I. D.
Nicass, L. C. Vorley, Dr. Stainsby, F. Carter.
E. Holtorp, Secretary for Poland ; K. Marx, Sec-
retary for Germany; H. Jung, Secretary for
Switzerland; E. Dupont, Secretary for France;
198 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
E. Whitlock, Financial Secretary; G. Odgers,
President; W. R. Cremer, General Secretary."
3. ADDRESS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL TO THE
PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
In September, 1865, the International met in
conference in London, as the first congress of
the Association which was to have taken place at
this time in Brussels had been made impossible
by the action of the Belgian Government. This
London conference once more returned to a dis-
cussion of the question of slavery and resolved
to send an address to the American people. The
following was the address :
"Address of the Conference of the International
Workingmen's Association of September
25, 1865.
"To the People of the United States of America.
"Citizens of the Great Republic, once more we
address you, not in sympathetic condolence, but
in words of congratulation.
"Had we not most profoundly sympathized
with you in your times of trouble, when foes with-
in and without were eagerly bent on destroy-
ing your Government and the principles of uni-
versal justice upon which it is based, we should
not now venture to congratulate you upon your
success.
"But we have never swerved in our loyalty to
ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. 199
your cause, which is the cause of all mankind;
nor did we ever despair of its final triumph, not
even in the darkest shadows of its mishaps.
"In firm devotion to, and unfaltering faith in,
those principles of equality and fraternal com-
munion for which you drew the sword, we were
convinced that as soon as the conflict should be
over and victory won, you would return it to its
scabbard, and peace would once more come to
your country and joy to your people.
"Success has justified our expectations. Your
war is the only example known of a government
fighting against a fraction of its own citizens for
the freedom of the people.
"Above all we congratulate you upon the term-
ination of the war and the preservation of the
Union. The Stars and the Stripes, which your
own sons had brutally trampled in the dust, once
more flutter in the breeze from the Atlantic to
the Pacific Ocean, never again, we trust, to be in-
sulted by your own children and never again to
wave over bloody battlefields, whether those of
domestic insurrection or those of foreign war.
"And may those misguided citizens who dis-
played so much valor on the battlefield in a
wicked cause now display as much zeal in helping
to heal the wounds which they struck and in re-
storing peace to the common country.
"Again we felicitate you upon the removal of
the cause of these years of affliction — upon the
200 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
abolition of slavery. This stain upon your other-
wise so shining escutcheon is forever wiped out.
Never again shall the hammer of the auctioneer
announce in your market-places sales of human
flesh and blood and make mankind shudder at the
cruel barbarism.
"Your noblest blood was shed in washing away
these stains, and desolation has spread its black
shroud over your country in penance for the past.
"To-day you are free, purified through your
sufferings. A brighter future is dawning upon
your glorious republic, proclaiming to the old
world that a government of the people and by
the people is a government for the people and not
for a privileged minority.
"We had the honor to express to you our
sympathy in your affliction, to send you a word
of encouragement in your struggles, and to con-
gratulate you upon your success. Permit us to
add a word of counsel for the future.
"Injustice against a fraction of your people
having been followed by such dire consequences,
put an end to it. Declare your fellow citizens
from this day forth free and equal, without any
reserve. If you refuse them citizens' rights while
you exact from them citizens' duties, you will
sooner or later face a new struggle which will
once more drench your country in blood.
"The eyes of Europe and of the whole world
are on your attempts at reconstruction, and foes
ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. 201
are ever ready to sound the death-knell of re-
publican institutions as soon as they see their
opportunity.
"We therefore admonish you, as brothers in
a common cause, to sunder all the chains of free-
dom, and your victory will be complete."
The policy of conciliation initiated by the
American Government in regard to the South,
and the adoption of the constitutional amend-
ments affirming the political equality of the Ne-
groes, were steps in accordance with the ad-
dress which the conference of the International
Workingmen's Association directed to the people
of the United States.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LABOR MOVEMENT DURING THE CIVIL
WAR.
1. THE DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK.
As we have seen, the outbreak of the Civil
War had the immediate effect of destroying the
labor movement in the United States. But what
it had destroyed, it soon called to life again. The
rise in the price of all food products, the coinci-
dent lowering of the workingmen's standard of
life, the scarcity of labor, the rapid development
of industry and capitalism accompanying the war,
furnished so many factors favorable to a revival
and rapid rise of the labor movement. For the
war and everything connected with it roused the
class consciousness of the American workingmen
and the feeling of class division in society to a
degree unequalled in the later history of the
American labor movement.
The revival of the labor movement during the
war, and the intensified struggle of the working-
men for the betterment of their lot, challenged
the opposition of the capitalists, who resisted with
all their might the demand of the workingmen for
THE DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 203
shorter hours and for an increase in their wages
to meet the enhanced prices of their necessities.
While the Northern armies, largely recruited
from among the wage earners all over the coun-
try, were waging the war that was destined to
abolish Negro slavery, and while the Northern
capitalists were enriching themselves at the ex-
pense of this war, the latter on their part were
conducting a campaign in the North against the
white workingmen in an endeavor to force them
into an economic condition which, from a purely
economic point of view, did not materially differ
from the condition of the Negroes in the South.
It was the capitalists' aim during the war against
black slavery to fortify, by all possible means,
white slavery.
To achieve this end, they undertook to destroy
the trade unions which the workingmen had or-
ganized. They sought to do this partly through
their economic power, partly by passing laws
against labor organizations in the legislatures,
and parti}', also, as we shall see, by availing
themselves of the forces which had been called
to arms for the destruction of Negro slavery and
the preservation of the Union, for the purpose
of fortifying wage slavery and turning these
forces against the workingmen and their unions.
The class antagonisms between capitalists and
workingmen during the war found expression
not only in the direct struggles for higher wages
204
and shorter hours, but they manifested themselves
on all other occasions. As is always the case,
the ruling class, through the legislatures, sought
to unload all burdens from their own shoulders
upon those of the great mass of the people. This
was true not only in regard to the financial
burdens, but also in regard to the burdens of
blood.
Early in the year 1863, when, after harj
struggles, the end of the war seemed still far off,
and some difficulty was found in securing the
necessary volunteers for the army, a law was
passed in Congress which authorized the draft-
ing of citizens for the army. The attempted en-
forcement of this law led to disturbances in the
city of New York which cost hundreds of lives
and for days provoked bloody encounters be-
tween the police and military and the insurgent
masses of workingmen. In New York political
opponents of the war and secret friends of the
slaveholders were especially active. They took
the draft as a pretext for inflaming the mass of
their followers, consisting principally of Irish
unskilled laborers, against the war and later
also against the cause of the Union itself. The
execution of the draft was entrusted to Federal
provosts, an act which was represented by the
Democrats as a violation of State rights. The
majority of the metropolitan newspapers op-
posed the enforcement of the draft. When its
THE DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 205
execution was undertaken, on July 13, 1863, it
met everywhere with resistance. Workmen who
were engaged in tearing down a building were
requested by Federal provosts to give their names
for the draft. They refused and drove away
the officers by force. The movement spread over
the whole city. Everywhere there was a congre-
gation of excited crowds. The mobs visited the
workshops and factories and compelled the men
to stop work and join them. Prominent police
officers were attacked by force and barely es-
caped with their lives. Offices where the draft-
ing officers were at work were stormed, the lists
of names were destroyed, and the houses set
on fire. Firemen were forcibly prevented from
putting out the flames. Telegraph wires were
cut. Incendiarism was followed by plunder.
Numerous houses were sacked, street cars and
omnibuses ceased running, stores on Broadway,
the avenues and throughout the greater portion
of the city were closed.
These disturbances, which were at first di-
rected only against the enforcement of the draft,
were within a few days turned against the un-
fortunate Negroes. The cause of the war, and
hence of the draft, they incurred the hatred of
the masses, and it seems as if there had been a
deliberate deflection of the mob's fury against
them. The Negroes were disliked by the un-
skilled workmen of New York, also for the rea-
206 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
son that on various occasions they had been em-
ployed by the capitalists as strike-breakers in
putting down the labor troubles. They had made
themselves especially offensive in a strike of the
longshoremen in New York harbor, who were
mostly Irishmen. The Negroes' dwellings were
set on fire, and a number of them were killed.
The disturbances assumed a hostile attitude to
the Union. Attempts were made to storm the
buildings of Abolitionist newspapers, especially
the Tribune, and the private residence of Horace
Greeley. Cheers were heard for Jefferson Davis,
the President of the Southern Confederacy.
From the start the police had met the riotous
masses with terrible brutality, using their clubs
indiscriminately. The rage of the people would
certainly not have reached the proportions it did
if they had not been so fiendishly treated by the
police. In the beginning "the mob simply de-
sired to break up the draft in some of the upper
districts of the city and destroy the registers in
which certain names were enrolled," according
to a contemporary pamphlet* written in praise
of the police. But the terrible treatment of the
masses, and the frightful bloodshed, first by the
police, then by the military summoned from Fort
Hamilton, West Point and other outlying gar-
risons, drove the masses far beyond the original
scope of the movement. On the west side barri-
* S. F. Headley : The Great Riots of New York. 1873.
207
cades were erected, whereupon the soldiers fired
volleys into the crowds and dispersed them by
shells. The police ordered to attack the people
were told to make no arrests; the military were
under like instructions. Whoever came in their
way was clubbed or shot down. The soldiers
fired so recklessly that they even hit policemen.
The disturbances lasted from Monday until
Friday. More than fifty buildings were burned.
The loss in property was estimated at $1,200,000.
The number of persons killed by the police and
the military was variously estimated at from 400
or 500 to 1,200 (Headley). As the bodies of
the dead were in most cases removed by their
relatives, the exact number could not be ascer-
tained. Eleven Negroes and seven other men
were killed by the rioters. Only three policemen
came to their death, but many were wounded by
stones and other missiles. The enormous differ-
ence in the number of killed among the masses
and among the armed forces shows what little
justification there was for this terrible slaughter
in the ranks of the workingmen. How small
was the number of prisoners is shown by the
fact that only nineteen persons were sentenced
by the courts for participation in this riot, which
had been accompanied by bloodshed, incendiar-
ism and plunder.
Now the cause of this Draft Riot in Ne.w
York was exclusively social. It arose from the
208 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
fact that the propertied class, with all the force
of its economic and political prestige, attempted
to unload the blood-tax which the war demanded
from its own shoulders on to those of the work-
ing class. The draft law as passed by Congress
provided that anyone could secure exemption
from military service by the payment of $300.
In this way the rich man, to whom this small sum
meant nothing, was virtually exempt from mili-
tary duty, a discrimination between the classes
which was deeply resented as an injustice by
those who could not raise the money. According
to Headley:
"Most of those drawn were laboring men or
poor mechanics, who were unable to hire a sub-
stitute If a well-known name, that of a
man of wealth, was among the number, it only
increased the exasperation, for the law exempted
everyone drawn who would pay three hundred
dollars towards a substitute. This was taking
practically the whole number of soldiers called
for out of the laboring classes. A great propor-
tion of these being Irish, it naturally became an
Irish question and eventually an Irish riot."*
The social and class character of the Draft
Riot is here most clearly presented. The muni-
cipal authorities seem to have recognized this
too, although political motives may also have
entered into it. On the fourth day of the riot
* Headley, p. 149.
it was announced that the draft had been sus-
pended, and the City Council had passed an or-
dinance appropriating $2,500,000 toward pay-
ing $300 exemption money to the poor who
might be drafted. But as in the meantime
10,000 soldiers had been concentrated in New
York, and the force of the riot had been spent,
the process of drafting continued nevertheless.
As already stated, the principal participants in
these encounters were Irish workingmen. This
fact was due to their affiliation with the Demo-
cratic party, which favored slavery. The nu-
merous German workingmen in the city took no
part in the disturbances. They rather held them-
selves aloof, because in the main they sided with
the opponents of slavery.
The riots were followed by a number of large
mass meetings in New York which, in the name
of the working class, protested against the senti-
ments and expressions hostile to the Union on
the part of a fraction of workingmen during the
disturbances. It was fortunate for the Union's
cause that the majority of the workingmen of
New York, in those July days of 1863, did not
make common cause with the Irishmen who had
been driven to riot and revolt by the injustice
done them by the property holders and the legis-
lature. For though the crisis of the war had just
been passed by the victories of Gettysburg and
Vicksburg, the South was at the time exerting
210 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
its utmost strength, and the Union was still in
a dangerous position. A successful revolt in
New York might in those days have been fol-
lowed by consequences which one trembles to
contemplate, especially if the menacing attitude
of the foreign powers, and particularly of Eng-
land, is considered. The Union would have
fallen on evil days had not the American and the
German workingmen of the city of New York
at that time exalted its cause above that of their
own class.
2. LAWS AGAINST LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.
It took a long time before the standard of life,
which at the outbreak of the Civil War had been
lowered by the depreciation of the paper cur-
rency and the high prices of the necessaries of
life, was again raised by the struggles and the
organized efforts of the workingmen. Even in
January, 1864, three years after the outbreak of
the war, Sylvis referred to the impaired con-
dition of the workingmen incident to the war
in the following words :
"Go with me to the magnificent cotton mills
of the Eastern States, and I will show you a
picture such as you have never seen. A few
years ago men received fair wages in these mills,
and were able to live comfortably from their
earnings, and to raise and educate their children
well ; but now, by this downward tendency of the
LAWS AGAINST LABOR UNIONS 211
price of labor, by this gradual reduction of
wages, it requires the combined labor of the hus-
band, wife and every child old enough to walk
to the factory, for from twelve to fifteen hours
a day, to earn sufficient to keep body and soul to-
gether."*
The year 1864 witnessed redoubled efforts on
the part of the American working class to re-
gain the position it had occiipied previous to the
outbreak of the war. New organizations and
workingmen's demonstrations of various kinds
were daily occurrences. The capitalists of the
North, made haughty by the enormous power
which had come to them in the last few years,
combined to hold down the labor movement and
to depress wages to a starvation level. It was
the fixed purpose of the capitalists of the coun-
try to destroy all labor organizations. One of
these capitalists, more honest than the rest, said
to Sylvis :
"The day is not far distant when the condi-
tion of the workingmen will be far worse than
ever before. The day will come when men who
are now active in the labor union movement will
be forced upon their bended knees to beg for
work A spirit of retaliation has been
aroused in the bosom of every employer, the
fruits of which are being manifested in the wide-
spread and universal organization of capitalists
* Sylvis, pp. 104-105.
212 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
for the avowed and publicly proclaimed purpose
of destroying your unions."*
In the youthful exuberance of their class rule
the attitude of the capitalists towards their
workingmen was so arrogant that even Amer-
ican judges, not yet completely corrupted by
capitalism, as in later years, raised their voice
in rebuke of it. It was at this time that a certain
Judge Til ford, while denouncing an attempt at
a reduction of wages, said:
"It cannot and must not be. By the laws of
ancient Rome, a convicted traitor was hurled
from the Tarpeian Rock. Let the man who, in
this crisis, advocates the reduction of wages, 'or
the subjugation of labor to the whims and
caprices of the wealthy, by denying to labor the
right to regulate its own affairs,' be girdled and
encircled with burning fagots, and receive the
fate of the Roman felon. "f
But neither the opposition of the workingmen
nor voices from their own ranks, such as that
of Judge Tilford, could shake the capitalists in
their resolution to destroy the organizations of
the workingmen. They were not satisfied with
their own activity in this direction, but invoked
the assistance of the State. In the spring of
1864 laws were introduced in the Legislatures in
New York, Massachusetts and other States,
* Sylvis, pp. 132-133. '
f Sylvis, p. 131.
LAWS AGAINST LABOR UNIONS 213
termed laws against intimidation, but really so
drawn as practically to destroy all trade-union
organizations. The bill presented in the New
York Assembly read as follows :
"An Act to Punish Unlawful Interference With
Employers and Employees.
"The People of the State of New York, rep-
resented in the Senate and Assembly, do enact as
follows :
"Section I. Any person who shall himself,
or in combination with any other person or per-
sons, by force or threats of any kind, either
"1. Prevent or deter, or attempt to prevent
or deter, any other person or persons from en-
gaging or continuing in any lawful employment,
labor or undertaking, in such manner and upon
such terms as he or they may choose or accept;
"2. Prevent or deter, or attempt to prevent or
deter, any other person or persons from employ-
ing such workmen, laborers or employees that he
or they desire to employ, and in such manner and
on such terms as he or they may choose or ac-
cept, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
"Section II. Any person who shall himself,
or in combination with any other person or per-
sons, commit either of the offences described in
the first section of this act, shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor.
"Section III. [This provides a punishment for
persons convicted under the above sections
214 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
by imprisonment in the county jail, not exceeding
one year, or by fine not exceeding $250, or by
both such fine and imprisonment.]
"Section IV. This act shall take effect im-
mediately."
The primary object of the introduction of this
bill was the breaking up of the Moulders' and
Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union in New
York State, but its provisions were such that, had
it become a law, every trade organization in New
York would have been crushed out of existence.
But the workingmen of New York recognized
the danger that threatened them. The introduc-
tion of that bill in the Legislature provoked
among the entire working class of the State such
widespread resentment as had seldom been seen.
In countless meetings all over the State they pro-
tested so resolutely against this bill that the
legislators did not dare to pass it and declined to
entertain it.
A similar bill was introduced in the Legisla-
ture of Massachusetts and passed by one of its
houses. But, as in New York, the workingmen
of Massachusetts were aroused. In a great
demonstration the workingmen of Boston op-
posed the bill, with the result that it was buried
in one of the legislative committees. That the
laws of the State should impede or paralyze all
attempts to improve their lot was frustrated by
the vigilance of the workingmen.
3. MILITARY INTERFERENCE IN LABOR
TROUBLES.
The young American bourgeoisie were not
satisfied with enlisting in its fight against the
rising labor movement, their own economic
power and that of the legislature, but they also
pressed into their service the military forces and
employed the army which had lately been fight-
ing Negro slavery to fortify the slavery of the
white workingmen.
On the tenth day of March, 1864, a strike took
place among the laborers at Cold Springs, N. Y.
These men were in the employ of R. P. Parrott,
who was engaged in the manufacture of shot,
shell, etc., for the Government. The men were
receiving from a dollar to a dollar and a quarter
a day. Owing to the very large advance in the
prices of all the necessaries of life, they made
the request that their wages should be advanced
to a dollar and a half a day. This was refused,
and a strike was the consequence. Two days
after the strike took place, four of the strikers
were arrested and sent to Fort Lafayette, where
they remained for seven weeks, when they were
liberated without a trial, although a trial was de-
manded. Two companies of United States
soldiers were ordered to Cold Springs and mar-
tial law was proclaimed, and the men forced to
resume work at the old prices. Three of these
poor men, who were robbed of seven weeks of
216 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
their time, and confined in prison for no offence
other than exercising their right to refuse to work
at a lower price than they were pleased to ask —
were not permitted to return to their homes,
were driven from their abiding places, exiled in
a free land, and their families forced from the
town.*
Even worse than in the North was the state
of things towards the Southern border line,
where martial law had superseded civil law. In
St. Louis, in April, 1864, two strikes occurred,
one by the tailors, the other by the machinists
and blacksmiths. As, in part at least, the produc-
tion of articles used in equipping the army was
involved in this strike, the capitalists of the city
saw in it a good chance to bring the working-
men to terms. On the strength of martial law
they demanded military interference in the strike
on the part of the commanding general of the
district, and their request was but too readily
complied with. On the twenty-ninth day of
April, 1864, the following order was issued:
"General Order No. 65.
"Headquarters Department of the State of
Missouri,
"St. Louis, April 26, 1864.
"It having come to the knowledge of the Com-
manding General that combinations exist in the
* Sylvis, pp. 137-138.
INTERFERENCE IN LABOR TROUBLES 217
city of St. Louis, having for their object to pre-
vent journeymen mechanics, apprentices and la-
borers, from working in manufacturing estab-
lishments, except on terms prescribed to the pro-
prietors thereof by parties not interested therein,
which terms have no relation to the matter of
wages to be paid to employees, but to the internal
management of such establishments; and it ap-
pearing that, in consequence of such combina-
tions and the practices of those concerned in
them, the operations of some establishments
where articles are produced which are required
for use in the navigation of the Western waters,
and in the military, naval and transport service
of the United States, have been broken up, and
the production of such articles stopped or sus-
pended; the following order is promulgated.
Any violation thereof will be punished as a mili-
tary offence :
"I. No person shall, directly or indirectly, at-
tempt to deter or prevent any other person from
working on such terms as he may agree upon in
any maunfacturing establishment where any ar-
ticle is ordinarily made which may be required
for use in the navigation of the Western waters,
or in the military, naval or transport service of
the United States.
"II. No person shall watch around or hang
about any such establishment for the purpose of
218 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
annoying employees thereof, or learning who are
employed therein.
"III. No association or combination shall be
formed or continued, or meeting be held, having
for its object to prescribe to the proprietors of
any such establishment whom they shall employ
therein, or how they shall conduct the operation
thereof.
"IV. All employees in such establishment
will be protected by military authority against all
attempts by any person to interfere with or an-
noy them in their work, or in consequence of
their being engaged in it.
"V. The proprietors of every such establish-
ment in the county of St. Louis will forthwith
transmit to the office of the Provost-Marshal
General the names of all persons who have, since
the 15th day of March, 1864, left their employ to
engage in any such combination or association as
that above referred to; or have been induced to
leave by the operations of any such combination
or association, or by the individual efforts con-
cerned therein. The places of residence of such
persons, as far as known, will be stated, together
with a list, by name, of all who have taken an ac-
tive part in any combination or effort to control
the conduct of any such establishment, or to pre-
vent persons from working therein.
"VI. The port commander, Colonel J. H.
Baker, 10th Minnesota Volunteers, is charged
INTERFERENCE IN LABOR TROUBLES 219
under the direction of the district commander
with the execution of this order. All persons ap-
plying for the aid of the military forces in this
connection will report direct to Colonel Baker.
"VII. In putting down this attack upon priv-
ate rights and the military power of the nation
by organizations led by bad men, the General
confidently relies upon the support and aid of the
city authorities, and of all right-minded men.
"By command of Major-General Rosecrans.
"0. D. Greene,
Assistant Adjutant General.
"Frank Eno,
Assistant Adjutant General."
Several members of the two unions concerned
were arrested, and an intense excitement of the
workers of St. Louis, silent, to be sure, but none
the less intense on that account, was the result.
A demonstration by the workingmen against this
invasion of their rights could not be made, be-
cause the city was ruled by martial law. A peti-
tion, numerously signed, asking for a modifica-
tion of the order, was presented to the General,
but without effect.*
A month later exactly similar occurrences took
place in Louisville, Ky. Here, too, there was a
strike, and Brigadier-General Burbridge issued
an order literally identical with the one in St.
Louis, making an end to the efforts of the work-
* Sylvis, p. 135.
220 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
ingmen to better their condition. It was openly
charged against General Burbridge that he "was
in the confidence of the employers, aware of their
plans and objects, and that he was actuated by
the most selfish and dishonorable motives."*
Sylvis, who discussed all these cases in a
speech, in January, 1865, at the convention of his
trade organization, concluded with the remark
that he had "selected these cases from among
many, such as the breaking up of the Miners'
Association, in the Eastern coal fields, by govern-
ment interference; the defeat of the Reading
Railroad engineers by the same means; the con-
fiscation of the back pay of the moulders in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, who struck for higher
wages, "f
From out of the midst of the working class
only scattered voices were raised in protest
against this exhibition of violence on the part
of the Government. The organization of labor
was still in its infancy and far too weak and
vague to take a determined stand against these
abuses of authority. It was but natural that in
the course of the Civil War every step which had
the appearance of being against the Government
in Washington was interpreted as a step hostile
to the Union, as a menace to its preservation, as
an encouragement of the rebellious South.
* Sylvis, p. 137.
f Sylvis, p. 140.
INTERFERENCE IN LABOR TROUBLES 221
Every move of the workingmen which in any
way discommoded the Government was branded
by the ruling class of the North as treason against
the country; and as every attempt of the work-
ingmen was regarded by this class as a molesta-
tion of the Government, they denounced every
independent act, especially every attempt to
secure higher wages and shorter hours, which
threatened to disturb the customary course of
things, as an act of hostility against the Union.
This state of things had to be carefully con-
sidered by the workingmen in their organization,
their struggles and their demands. It was prob-
ably owing to these circumstances that Sylvis,
among others, was willing to exculpate the Ad-
ministration, as most likely not well informed in
the matter, from responsibility for the abuse of
military power in regard to labor troubles.
Sylvis, moreover, pointed to the fact that the
working class of the country had proved their
loyalty to the Union during the entire course of
the war. He said:
"I presume it is hardly necessary for me to
enter into any arguments to prove that the work-
ingmen, the great body of the people, the bone
and muscle of the nation, the very pillars of our
temple of liberty, are loyal ; that, I take it, would
be sheer mockery, would be adding insult to in-
jury: for the evidences of our loyalty we need
only point to the history of the war; to the fact,
222 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
that while armed treason and rebellion threatened
our institutions with destruction, while the proud
and opulent of the land were plotting the down-
fall of our Government, the toiling millions stood
like a wall of adamant between it and the destruc-
tive element of revolution, between the country
and all its foes."*
But while Sylvis emphasized the loyalty of the
working class of the North towards the Union,
his remarks left no doubt that the invasions of
the capitalists and their Government upon the
workingmen had bred a profound irritation in
their ranks. He declared:
"These outrages upon the rights of the people
have created a profound sensation, have made
impressions that can never be erased. It is true
that the muttering thunders of the confined vol-
cano were scarcely audible above the surface, but
they were none the less deep because in secret."f
The workingmen had not hitherto resented the
haughty treatment to which the ruling classes
were subjecting them, and Sylvis showed beyond
a doubt that this was due exclusively to the ex-
ceptional circumstances then prevailing. "Let
those," he explained, "who would trample under
foot the rights of the working people of this na-
tion, beware. I have wished to show to the
country, and especially to those in authority, how
* Sylvis, p. 140.
f Sylvis, pp. 140-141.
INTERFERENCE IN LABOR TROUBLES 223
near we have been to scenes that would appall
the stoutest heart. In ordinary times a collision
would have been inevitable; nothing but the pa-
triotism of the people, and their desire in no way
to embarrass the Government, prevented it. But
'there is a point where forbearance ceases to be
a virtue/ — that point may be reached."*
And in another place Sylvis declares :
"If the doctrines and principles promulgated
and taught by the advocates of union among
workingmen, and the efforts of those engaged in
this movement to secure to labor the fruits of its
toil, and the full enjoyment of all the blessings of
an enlightened civilization, will produce a colli-
sion, let it cpme."f
We note that the conflict between the interests
of the working class and the interests of the agi-
tation in behalf of Negro emancipation which
made itself felt at the inception of the Abolition-
ist movement, and which is traceable throughout
the entire course of the movement for the aboli-
tion of Negro slavery, was still in evidence when
force took command of things, and the bloody
struggle filled the last page of the history of this
movement. And as it is a glorious page in the
history of American workingmen that notwith-
standing this conflict of interests they neverthe-
less on the whole always supported the demand
* Sylvis, p. 141.
f Sylvis, p. 131.
224 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
for the abolition of Negro slavery, and that al-
though they lacked the insight of the historic
necessity of the abolition of Negro slavery as
a condition precedent to their own emancipation,
they never failed to regard slavery as a blot on
their country; so it is also a glorious page in their
history that notwithstanding the most outrageous
provocation on the part of the ruling class and
the Government during the Civil War, they never
wavered in exalting the cause of the Union over
their own cause and their class interests. The
United States owes it in a large measure to the
attitude of the working class that it passed the
crisis in those dark days with comparative ease.
4. WHITE SLAVERY.
The war closed after Lincoln had died by the
assassin's hand. Negro slavery had ceased to
exist. But the close of the war for Negro eman-
cipation was followed by a state of things which
the white workingmen of the North could not
feel otherwise than as a state of aggravated white
slavery.
After the close of the war more than a million
men returned to the labor market. Wages were
still paid in paper currency, while the price of
commodities was fixed by the gold standard.
With a gold rate of 153 at the end of the war,
$3 in wages was equivalent to only $2 before the
war. Despite the apparent increase in wages the
WHITE SLAVERY 225
workingman was comparatively worse off in 1865
than in 1860. The price of flour, which in 1860
was from $6 to $8 per barrel, had risen in 1865
from $16 to $20 per barrel. Meat had risen
from three to four times its price before the war.
Previous to 1860 one could buy more with $1
than with $3 six years later.*
During the war at least there had been no
dearth of work, because the labor market was not
overcrowded. But now that the army of soldiers
had largely again changed into an army of work-
ers, the labor market became so glutted
that large numbers of workingmen were unable
to secure employment. Notwithstanding the pre-
vailing high prices, wages were reduced, so that
in the labor world the need of a stronger organ-
ization and of new weapons in the impending
struggle began to make itself felt.
The attempt was made to establish new con-
nections between the workingmen of the North
and those of the South. The national organiza-
tions of the printers, the iron founders, the
blacksmiths and machinists, had had branches in
the Southern States before the war, which were
to be revived. Richard F. Trevellick, of Detroit,
President of the Shipbuilders' Union, was sent
to organize new unions. But for the time being
his efforts were futile; for the moment no labor
* National Workman. New York, 1866.
226 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
movement was to be thought of in the land of the
emancipated slaves.
In August, 1866, Northern workingmen met
at a convention in Baltimore which gave a new
impulse to the eight-hour movement and which
witnessed the foundation of the National Labor
Union. A lively agitation was inaugurated for
shorter hours, which in 1868 led to the passage
in Congress of an eight-hour law, signed by
President Johnson.
The American workingmen of the North had
not hitherto entered into any relations with the
International Workingmen's Association, whose
General Council in London, during the Civil War,
had so powerfully championed the interests of
the Union and persuaded the working class of
Europe, and especially of England, to oppose all
plots on the part of the ruling class in behalf of
the Southern rebels. In the first years of its ex-
istence the International met with scant attention
on the part of the American workingmen. The
war absorbed all their energies, and the labor
movement of the country was as yet too loosely
rooted to feel a desire of getting into touch with
foreign workingmen.
But immediately after the Baltimore conven-
tion the leaders of the American labor movement
turned their eyes towards London, intent on es-
tablishing closer relations between the American
and the English labor movements. On October
WHITE SLAVERY 227
13, 1866, there appeared in New York the first
issue of a weekly labor paper, called The National
Workman and devoted "to the interests of the
working classes." This paper, which was pub-
lished by a man named Jones, contained good re-
ports of the state of the current labor movement.
Its platform consisted of the resolutions adopted
by the Baltimore convention ; it went even beyond
them by forcibly impressing the workingmen
with the need of independent political action.
With its twelfth issue the paper was made the
official organ of the central labor body of New
York. It was also the organ of the Working-
men's Assembly, the annual meeting of all labor
organizations of the State. Unfortunately The
National Workman lived but a short time. Its
last issue appeared on March 2, 1867.
This paper was the first in America to direct
the attention of its readers to the International
Workingmen's Association. The National
Workman reported not only the proceedings of
the Association at the Geneva Congress, but oc-
casionally it also published reports of the meet-
ings of the General Council in London and the
resolutions passed there. W. I. Jessup, a ship
carpenter, who had been exceedingly active dur-
ing the Civil War in his trade union, was con-
nected with it. Immediately after the Baltimore
convention, Jessup appealed to the general sec-
retary of the Society of Carpenters and Joiners
228 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
in London to assist in establishing regular com-
munication between the American and the Eng-
lish carpenters' and joiners' organizations. In
a letter dated October 14, 1866, the general
secretary of the joiners of London, Robert
Applegarth,* gladly agreed to the proposition and
at the same time sent Jessup a number of docu-
ments, adding the words:
"I have to ask: is it not possible to amalga-
mate your body with ours? The Amalgamated
Society of Engineers have set us the example.
Why not follow it? They have branches at
Bloomington, 111., Buffalo and Dunkirk, N. Y..
vSusquehanna, Pa., and in New York City."
Robert Applegarth was a member of the Gen-
eral Council of the International Workingmen's
Association, and we may assume that his rela-
tions with Jessup, who in turn was in communi-
cation with Sylvis, gave rise to the epistolary ex-
change of ideas which now followed between
Sylvis and the General Council of the Interna-
tional.
At the second convention of the National La-
bor Union in Chicago in 1867 Jessup and Sylvis
advocated an official alliance between this Amer-
ican workingmen's organization and the Interna-
tional Workingmen's Association. They did not
* In The National Workman which published this letter
the name is erroneously spelled Applegate.
WHITE SLAVERY 229
succeed in effecting it, but the following resolu-
tion was passed:
'"Whereas, The efforts of the working classes
of Europe to secure the political power in order
to improve their social and other conditions, and
to throw off the bondage in which they have been
and are still held, furnish satisfactory testimony
of the progress of justice, culture and humanity;
"Be it resolved, That the National Labor
Union in convention assembled, hereby assure
the organized workingmen of Europe of their
sympathy and co-operation in the struggle against
political and social injustice."
Although the National Labor Union of Amer-
ica did not officially join the International Work-
ingmen's Association, Sylvis continued to, com-
municate with the General Council.
In the spring of 1869 the tension between the
United States and England, which had been pro-
duced by the latter's unfriendly attitude during
the Civil War, reached such a degree as to make
imminent a war between the two countries. The
General Council of the International resolved to
oppose the prevailing war sentiment, and to this
end sent an address to Sylvis, as the president of
the National Labor Union, in which the working
class of America was exhorted by its attitude to
counteract the war cry of the ruling classes and
to stand for the preservation of peace. This ad-
230 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
dress, which was dated May 12, 1869, read as
follows :
'''Fellow Workmen :
"In the inaugural address of our Association
we said: 'It was not the wisdom of the ruling
classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal
folly by the working classes of England that
saved the West of Europe from plunging head-
long into an infamous crusade for the perpetua-
tion and propagation of slavery on the other side
of the Atlantic.' It is now your turn to prevent
a war whose direct result would be to throw
back, for an indefinite period, the rising labor
movement on both sides of the Atlantic.
"We need hardly tell you that there are
European powers anxiously engaged in foment-
ing a war between the United States and Eng-
land. A glance at the statistics of commerce
shows that the Russian export of raw products
— and Russia has nothing else to export — was
giving way to American competition when the
Civil War tipped the scales. To turn the Amer-
ican ploughshare into a sword would at this time
save from impending bankruptcy a power whom
your republican statesmen in their wisdom had
chosen for their confidential adviser. But dis-
regarding the particular interests of this or that
government, is it not in the general interest of
our oppressors to disturb by a war the move-
WHITE SLAVERY 231
ment of rapidly extending international co-opera-
tion?
"In our congratulatory address to Mr. Lincoln
on the occasion of his re-election to the Presi-
dency we expressed it as our conviction that the
Civil War would prove to be as important to
the progress of the working class as the War of
Independence has been to the elevation of the
middle class. And the successful close of the war
against slavery has indeed inaugurated a new era
in the annals of the working class. In the United
States itself an independent labor movement has
since arisen which the old parties and the pro-
fessional politicians view with distrust. But to
bear fruit it needs years of peace. To suppress
it, a war between the United States and England
would be the sure means.
''The immediate tangible result of the Civil
War was of course a deterioration of the con-
dition of American workingmen. Both in the
United States and in Europe the colossal burden
of a public debt was shifted from hand to hand
in order to settle it upon the shoulders of the
working class. The prices of necessaries, re-
marks one of your statesmen, have risen 78 per
cent, since 1860, while the wages of simple man-
ual labor have risen 50 and those of skilled labor
60 per cent. 'Pauperism/ he complains, 'is in-
creasing in America more rapidly than popula-
tion.' Moreover the sufferings of the working
232 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
class are in glaring contrast to the new-fangled
luxury of financial aristocrats, shoddy aristocrats
and other vermin bred by war. Still the Civil
War offered a compensation in the liberation of
the slaves and the impulse which it thereby gave
to your own class movement. Another war, not
sanctified by a sublime aim or a social necessity,
but like the wars of the Old World, would forge
chains for the free workingmen instead of sun-
dering those of the slave. The accumulated
misery which it would leave in its wake would
furnish your capitalists at once with the motive
and the means of separating the working class
from their courageous and just aspirations by the
soulless sword of a standing army. Yours, then,
is the glorious task of seeing to it that at last
the working class shall enter upon the scene of
history, no longer as a servile following, but as
an independent power, as a power imbued with
a sense of its responsibility and capable of com-
manding peace where their would-be masters
cry war.
"In the name of the International Working-
men's Association.
"For Great Britain: R. Applegarth, carpenter;
M. D. Brown, mechanic; J. Buckley, painter; J.
Hales, rubber weaver ; Harriet Law ; B. Lucraf t,
chairmaker; J. Milner, tailor; G. Odger, shoe-
maker ; J. Ross, bootlegmaker ; R. Shaw, painter ;
WHITE SLAVERY 233
Cowell Stepney; J. Warren, satchelmaker ; J.
Weston, bannistermaker.
"For France: E. Dupont, instrument maker;
Jules Johannard, Paul La f argue.
"For Germany : J. G. Eccarius, tailor ; F. Less-
ner, tailor; W. Limburg, shoemaker; Karl Marx.
"For Switzerland: H. Jung, watchmaker; A.
Miiller, watchmaker.
"For Belgium: P. Bernard, painter.
"For Denmark: I. Cohn, cigarmaker.
"For Poland : A. Idbricki, compositor.
"BENJAMIN LUCRAFT, President.
"COWELL STEPNEY, Treasurer.
"J. GEORG ECCARIUS,
General Secretary.
"London, May 12th, 1869."
Sylvis, as president of the National Labor
Union, made the following acknowledgment of
the receipt of this Address to the General
Council of the International Workingmen's As-
sociation :
"Philadelphia, May 26, 1869.
"Your letter of the 12th instant, together with
the Address, came to hand yesterday; I am
pleased to get such kind words from fellow-work-
men on the other side of the ocean. We have
a common cause. It is the war of poverty against
wealth. In all parts of the world labor occupies
the same lowly position, capital is everywhere the
same tyrant. Therefore I say we have a com-
234 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
mon cause. In the name of the workingmen of
the United States, I extend to you, and through
you to all those whom you represent, and to all
the downtrodden and oppressed sons and daugh-
ters of labor in Europe the right hand of
fellowship. Continue in the good work that
you have undertaken, until /a glorious suc-
cess shall crown your efforts! Such is our re-
solve. Our recent war has led to the foundation
of the most infamous money aristocracy of the
earth. This money power saps the very life of
the people. We have declared war against it and
we are determined to conquer — by means of the
ballot, if possible — if not, we shall resort to more
serious means. A little blood-letting is neces-
sary in desperate cases."
The Address of the General Council of the In-
ternational to the American workingmen urging
them to oppose a war with England was the last
manifestation of this body relating to the North
American struggles and their consequences grow-
ing out of Negro slavery.
The economic disadvantage which the Civil
War imposed upon the American workingmen
caused the latter for many years yet to ponder
the subject of slavery, and to institute com-
parisons between the prevailing white slavery and
the black slavery that had been abolished. In a
speech delivered by Sylvis in September, 1868,
WHITE SLAVERY 235
at Sunbury, Pa., these two kinds of slavery were
referred to in the following comments :
"Within the last seven years we have passed
through the most gigantic war the world ever
saw — a rebellion such as no other government
could have successfully combated. Whatever our
opinions may be as to immediate causes of the
war, we can all agree that human slavery (prop-
erty in man) was the first great cause; and from
the day that the first gun was fired, it was my
earnest hope that the war might not end until
slavery ended with it. No man in America re-
joiced more than I at the downfall of Negro
slavery. But when the shackles fell from the
limbs of those four millions of blacks, it did not
make them free men; it simply transferred them
from one condition of slavery to another; it
placed them upon the platform of the white
workingmen, and made all slaves together. I do
not mean that freeing the Negro enslaved the
white ; I mean that we were slaves before, always
have been, and that the abolition of the right of
property in man added four millions of black
slaves to the white slaves of the country. We are
now all one family of slaves together, and the
labor reform movement is a second emancipation
proclamation."*
And shortly thereafter, on November 16, 1868,
Sylvis declared in a circular published by him :
* Sylvis, p. 232 ff.
236 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY
"Our people are being divided into two classes
— the rich and the poor, the producers and the
non-producers; the busy bees in the industrial
hive, and the idle drones who fatten upon what
they steal. The working-people of our nation,
white and black, male and female, are sinking to
a condition of serfdom. Even now a slavery
exists in our land worse than ever existed under
the old slave system."*
Negro slavery was put down on the bloody
battlefields of the South, in no small degree, as
we have seen, by the assistance of the very work-
ingmen who had reason to complain of the white
slavery under which they groaned. But their
own slavery they have not yet been able to put
down. History does not proceed by leaps and
bounds, and as the time had to be ripe and the
way had to be cleared by economic development
for the abolition of Negro slavery, so the time
will have to be ripe and the way will have to be
cleared by economic development for the
abolition of wage slavery.
Will the bloody spectacle be repeated on a
larger scale — the bloody spectacle of the
struggles for the emancipation of the slaves and
the restoration of the Union in the years from
* Sylvis, p. 82.
WHITE SLAVERY 237
1861 to 1865? Will the peaceful and orderly
victory of the working class at the polls — an
event as sure to occur as was the victory of the
Republican party in 1860 — be followed by armed
revolt on the part of the industrial overlords and
their conscripts? Will they, as did the slave-
holders of 1860, strive to disrupt the Union and
to overthrow popular government? One is al-
most tempted to believe it when one considers the
bearing of the ruling classes who, stubborn and
haughty as the Southern oligarchy in the past,
oppose all change in the constitution of society
and refuse to yield even the least of their priv-
ileges. But then a nation which has lived through
one such crisis may be expected to guard against
its repetition.
THE CO-OPERATIVE PRESS
1 5 SPRUCE STREET, NEW YORK
J
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