Was Lincoln a Marxist?

[Brian4Liberty]

Was Lincoln a Marxist?

Now, let me start this out by saying that re-visiting Lincoln and the Civil War is a losing political strategy. For that reason, I have never looked very deeply into the questions of Lincoln. I have not read any of DiLorenzo's books, although I catch the occasional short Youtube speech by him. My preference has been to see the issue as a battle of big government (Taxes and Lincoln maintaining the Union), vs. the South wanting to be free from the central Federal government. The end of slavery was a positive result, but was probably not the actual cause of the Civil War. Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus and setting a precedent for ignoring the Constitution was a negative side-effect. No doubt many who believe in "the ends justify the means" philosophy embrace both of those side effects, i.e. the rule of law had to be sacrificed for the goal of eliminating slavery.

It must be clear, this is all a losing and divisive issue in politics, and should take a back seat to current political debate. And there is no doubt in the world that the end of slavery was an extremely positive step in the evolution of society.

But then they had to continue the push of Lincoln. Movies, articles, etc. And at the same time, they demonize Jefferson. Obviously they want to bring this battle to the forefront, as it applies today to big government vs. small government. Was Obamacare Constitutional? Did it pass through the Congress in the appropriate way? Did the Supreme Court make the correct ruling? They want to say it doesn't matter. The ends justify the means. Obamacare is good, and nothing should stand in the way of a "benevolent" big brother, even if the Constitution and the rule of law must be ignored.

The issue is being forced, so some outstanding questions needed to be answered:

- Why do so many pundits, politicians and media go apoplectic when there is any criticism of Lincoln? Does it just spoil their agenda of an all powerful big government? Or are they just as ignorant as most of us, and associate Lincoln with nothing more and nothing less than slavery?
- What is the origin of subtle hints in the media and movies that Lincoln is somehow a hero of communists?
- Neo-conservatives and leftists both have in common this hysteria about Lincoln. They also share a Marxist philosophical heritage. Coincidence?

Thus, the question is posed: was Lincoln a Marxist? The answer is quite surprising.

Let's start with a quick timeline of Lincoln and Marx. Americans are so ignorant of history that they often do not realize that Marx and Lincoln were contemporaries.

- Lincoln born: February 12, 1809
- Marx born: May 5, 1818
- Marx publishes a book about Emancipation: 1843
- Marx expelled from France as a radical: 1845
- Lincoln elected to US House: 1846
- Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto: February 1848
- Marx is a contributor to the New York Tribune (Lincoln's favorite newspaper), 1851-1861
- Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate vs. Douglas, famous Lincoln-Douglas debates occur: 1858
- Lincoln becomes US President: 1860
- Civil War Starts: 1861
- Emancipation Proclamation: January 1, 1863


A quick Google search of Lincoln and Marx points to a relevant article. Who better to describe the connections of Lincoln and Marx than the International Socialist?

Unless, of course, we bother to examine the tattered copies of the American outlet for Marx’s revolutionary preachments during the period when Lincoln was preparing to leave the political wilderness and make his march to the presidency. That journal, the New York Tribune, was the most consistently influential of nineteenth-century American newspapers. Indeed, this was the newspaper that engineered the unexpected and in many ways counterintuitive delivery of the Republican nomination for president, in that most critical year of 1860, to an Illinoisan who just two years earlier had lost the competition for a home-state U.S. Senate seat...
...
Lincoln’s involvement was not just with Greeley but with his sub-editors and writers, so much so that the first Republican president appointed one of Greeley’s most radical lieutenants—the Fourier- and Proudhon-inspired socialist and longtime editor of Marx’s European correspondence, Charles Dana—as his assistant secretary of war.
...
Long before 1848, German radicals had begun to arrive in Illinois, where they quickly entered into the legal and political circles in which Lincoln traveled. One of them, Gustav Korner, was a student revolutionary at the University of Munich who had been imprisoned by German authorities...
...
Within a decade, Korner would pass the Illinois bar, win election to the legislature and be appointed to the state Supreme Court. Korner and Lincoln formed an alliance that would become so close that the student revolutionary from Frankfurt would eventually be one of seven personal delegates-at-large named by Lincoln to serve at the critical Republican State Convention in May 1860, which propelled the Springfield lawyer into that year’s presidential race. Through Korner, Lincoln met and befriended many of the German radicals who, after the failure of the 1848 revolution, fled to Illinois and neighboring Wisconsin. Along with Korner on Lincoln’s list of personal delegates-at-large to the 1860 convention was Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker, a lawyer from Mannheim who had served as a liberal legislator in the lower chamber of the Baden State Assembly before leading an April 1848 uprising in the region—an uprising cheered on by the newspaper Marx briefly edited during that turbulent period, Neue Rheinische Zeitung—Organ der Demokratie.
...
The failure of the 1848 revolts, and the brutal crackdowns that followed, led many leading European radicals to take refuge in the United States, and Lincoln’s circle of supporters would eventually include some of Karl Marx’s closest associates and intellectual sparring partners, including Joseph Weydemeyer and August Willich.
...
http://www.isreview.org/issues/79/feature-marx-lincoln.shtml

So it seems that there is a connection between Lincoln and Marx, albeit with a single degree of separation, where Lincoln and Marx were not personal friends, but shared some acquaintances. The ideas and philosophies of Marx and his associates was no doubt well known to Lincoln, as Lincoln was an avid reader of everything, including newspapers which supported him such as the New York Tribune. It seems that Lincoln was as attached to the New York Tribune as John McCain is today attached to the Weekly Standard.

In all fairness to Lincoln, this was a new philosophy, with the good intention of helping the common man. Hindsight is 20/20, and Lincoln did not live to see the road to hell that eventually resulted, best represented by Lenin and Stalin. In Lincoln's time, the philosophy was about good intentions. That being said, we can never lose sight of the fact that the Civil War was the result of many converging and diverging agendas, not just one or another.

Now back to the original questions:

- Why do so many pundits, politicians and media go apoplectic when there is any criticism of Lincoln? Does it just spoil their agenda of an all powerful big government? Or are they just as ignorant as most of us, and associate Lincoln with nothing more and nothing less than slavery?

Probably all of the above. They believe in a big, activist government, and they also believe that the ends justify the means. All good intentions, never any thought about slippery slopes or the road to hell that often results. For those who are completely in the know, the venom is probably a way to divert from the Marxist roots. Any question of Lincoln is blasphemy. They want to leverage that into attacking any questioning of an enormous and all-powerful, central, activist government. They want to equate it with Lincoln, and therefore stifle any criticism.

- What is the origin of subtle hints in the media and movies that Lincoln is somehow a hero of communists?

Solved. They were contemporaries, and had shared associations. Those in the know will hint at it just for fun (or bragging as the International Socialist might do).

- Neo-conservatives and leftists both have in common this hysteria about Lincoln. They also share a Marxist philosophical heritage. Coincidence?

Once again, keeping a lid on the Marxist connections is probably a shared motive for those who truly know the history. For others, who just have a surface knowledge, they have been conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to recoil in horror at any criticism or "non-approved" discussion of Lincoln.

- Thus, the question is posed: was Lincoln a Marxist?

How could Lincoln be a Marxist if the label of "Marxism" was probably not in common usage yet? They were contemporaries who could influence each other, with shared connections. Hindsight is 20/20, and the dangers that evolved from Marxism later had not even occurred yet. It was a time of evolving philosophy. Are there knowledgeable socialists and Marxists (or those who have roots in those philosophies) today that know the connection, and relish it? Probably a few.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Has anyone read any of the DiLorenzo books on Lincoln? Is the Lincoln connection to Marx discussed?

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I wish I had something to contribute to the thread, but thanks for writing. It was interesting.

 

[erowe1]

Some of his cohorts were.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Republicans-Lincolns-Marxists-Marxism/dp/0595446981/

 

[Brian4Liberty]

I wish I had something to contribute to the thread, but thanks for writing. It was interesting.

Thanks. I wouldn't have had anything to contribute to this thread a week ago.

 

[Sola_Fide]

Gary North thinks so:
http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/212a_47e.htm

 

[KCIndy]

There's an interesting fictional work titled How Few Remain by Alternate History novelist Harry Turtledove. In How Few Remain, Turtledove writes an alternate history in which the South wins the Civil War. Lincoln is not assassinated, and instead goes on to become a leader in a growing Marxist movement in the northern states.

The first time I read it, years ago, my reaction was very skeptical. But now, after a lot more reading on Lincoln, it seems like a pretty convincing storyline.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Some of his cohorts were.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Republicans-Lincolns-Marxists-Marxism/dp/0595446981/

Thanks, that book certainly examines the topic!

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2007

Was Abraham Lincoln influenced by communism when the Union condemned the rights of Southern states to express their independence? It’s shocking to think so.

But that’s precisely what Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson Jr. assert in Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists. The pair completely reassess this tumultuous time in American history, exposing the “politically correct” view of the War for Southern Independence as nothing less than the same observation announced by Marx himself. During the American Civil War, Marx wrote about his support of the Union Army, the Republican Party, and Lincoln himself. In fact, he named the president as “the single-minded son of the working class.” In addition to shedding light on this little-known part of our history, Kennedy and Benson also ask pertinent questions about the validity of today’s federal government and why its role seems so much larger than the liberty found in the states it represents.

Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists is a bold undertaking, but it’s one that needs our immediate and absolute attention.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Certainly he engaged in much of the mental gymnastics that Marxists must do.

Bottom line, he was an authoritarian and anti-individualist.

His goal was to save the government.

And if everybody, save one lone man to boss around and lord over, had to die to do that, by God, he was going to do so.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Certainly he engaged in much of the mental gymnastics that Marxists must do.

Bottom line, he was an authoritarian and anti-individualist.

The slippery slope that led to Stalin.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Some of his cohorts were.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Republicans-Lincolns-Marxists-Marxism/dp/0595446981/

Some interesting reviews for that book:

...In 1848 there were 18 socialist/communist uprisings throughout Europe, uprisings that had the sympathy of a young lawyer in Illinois. These revolutions all failed, so their leaders fled Europe for the refuge of the United States, settling primarily in the northeast and Midwest, taking occupations in journalism, education and politics - the same professions still dominated by leftwing radicals today. Google the names Friedrich Anneke, Carl Schurz, Franz Sigel or Joseph Weydemeyer, and see what information you get.

These socialists/communists had no love for the U.S. Constitution and only venomous loathing for the Holy Bible, but they made this country their home and the new Republican Party their party. Many of these "Forty-Eighters" were protégés of Fredrick Engels and Karl Marx himself, who wrote at least two letters to Comrade Lincoln and even wrote a eulogy for him upon his assassination.
...

 

[Brian4Liberty]

From another review:

As an author, it is refreshing to come across a book that addresses the topic of socialist involved in the War Between the States. In researching for my other books, I had often come across mentions of Union Generals and staff that had socialists connections. This book sheds light on those connections and elaborates on how influential those socialist leaders were. Many Americans are unaware of how the events of 1848 Europe have impacted their nation.

And another:

Most of us, when confronted with the idea of communism or marxism or socialism in the United States automatically think of the Cold War or Joseph McCarthy or the 1960s. Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War is a book that shows how these flawed philosophies began to infect America a hundred years (or more) before the Cold War.

Diligent research by the authors shows the spotlight not only on the marxist/socialists who entered the United States after the failed Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, but also digs up evidence of home-grown experiments in American socialism in the early 1800s.

Readers may be surprised to find out that just how many connections existed between the Republican Party of the Civil War era and the failed revolutionaries (the "48ers") who came to the United States either by choice or by exile. And while the authors do not label Lincoln himself as an avowed marxist, he certainly enjoyed the support of the vast majority of socialist exiles, both politically and militarily.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Has anyone read any of the DiLorenzo books on Lincoln? Is the Lincoln connection to Marx discussed?

Bump for question for any DiLorenzo readers.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Bump for question for any DiLorenzo readers.

I am love DiLorenzo.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

I am love DiLorenzo.

Found an article by DiLorenzo on the subject of Marx and Lincoln. Interesting stuff.

...
"Under the spurious slogan of Union," wrote Meyer, Lincoln "moved at every point . . . to consolidate central power and render nugatory the autonomy of the states. . . . It is on his shoulders that the responsibility for the war must be placed." "We all know his gentle words, ‘with malice toward none, with charity toward all," Meyer said, "but his actions belie this rhetoric." Here Meyer referred to Lincoln's win-at-any-cost strategy, his refusal to consider a negotiated peace, his imposition of a "repressive dictatorship" in the North and the "brigand campaigns waged against civilians by Sherman" in the South.

"Were it not for the wounds that Lincoln inflicted upon the Constitution, it would have been infinitely more difficult for Franklin Roosevelt to carry through his revolution [and] for the coercive welfare state to come into being . . . . Lincoln, I would maintain, undermined the constitutional safeguards of freedom as he opened the way to centralized government with all its attendant political evils."

This of course is precisely why totalitarians of all stripes have always lionized Lincoln. In Mein Kampf (1996 Houghton-Mifflin edition, p. 566) Adolf Hitler paraphrased the (false) theory that Lincoln introduced in his first inaugural address that no such thing as states' rights ever existed in America to make his case for the abolition of states' rights in Germany.

When some 3,000 Americans, most of whom were members of the Communist Party U.S.A., went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of communists, they thought it quite natural to call themselves the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade." Indeed, in his book Lincoln Reconsidered, Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald wrote that the Communist Party U.S.A. adorned its office walls with huge portraits of Abe, and held annual "Lincoln-Lenin Day" parades in New York City.

Karl Marx himself wrote Lincoln on January 28, 1865 to say, "Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority." In the same letter Marx assured Lincoln that the European communist movement was with him: "From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class," the father of totalitarian communism wrote. (This and other of Marx's writings can be found at www.marxists.org.)

Many of the dubious theories of the causes of the War to Prevent Southern Independence that have become accepted dogma among modern "Lincoln scholars" were dreamed up by Karl Marx. For example, despite the fact that in his first inaugural address Lincoln promised to invade any state that refused to collect the newly-doubled Morrill Tariff, and kept his promise, Lincoln scholars adamantly — and sometimes violently — deny that tariffs had anything at all to do with the war. In a recent issue of North and South magazine, historian William C. Davis threw a fit over my suggestion that the tariff was important and smugly denounced the idea as an "old chestnut." This was Karl Marx's position as well.
...
One of the best-known contemporary "Civil War" historians is Eric Foner of Columbia University, a past president of the American Historical Association and a self-described Marxist. Foner is such a devoted Marxist that he has criticized some of his own earlier publications for not being sufficiently Marxist in their methodology. For decades, he was an apologist for the Soviet Union.
...
Indeed, Foner is such an apologist for Soviet communism that he opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union and, naturally, invoked Abraham Lincoln as his reason. He railed against the secession movements in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia in the early 1990s and urged Gorbachev to deal with them in the same manner that Lincoln dealt with the Southern secessionists.
...
He concluded that "The Civil War was a central step in the consolidation of national authority in the United States," which he of course views as a great event. One cannot adopt socialism — in the United States or anywhere else — without a highly centralized, monopolistic government. "The Union, Lincoln passionately believed, was a permanent government . . . and . . . Gorbachev would surely agree."
...
Many people are fooled by the pretenses of Jaffa and his fellow Lincoln idolaters who call themselves "conservatives" by mistakenly believing that they therefore must favor limited government. But Jaffa has long been a part of the "conservative" establishment that was re-created by William F. Buckley, Jr. in the 1950s that essentially purged the genuine, limited government conservatives, and adopted Big Government Conservatism, known today as neoconservatism.
...
Thus, the Lincoln fable has been instrumental to the political aspirations of both left-wing and right-wing totalitarians, just as Edmund Wilson predicted back in 1962. They both advocate the consolidated, monopolistic, Lincolnian state despite their occasional lip service to states' rights and limited government. Consolidated or monopolistic government is always and everywhere the enemy of freedom and the Lincoln myth, above all else, serves to prop it up, just as Frank Meyer wrote back in 1965.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo77.html

 

[Brian4Liberty]

May Day bump.

 

[oyarde]

Certainly he engaged in much of the mental gymnastics that Marxists must do.

Bottom line, he was an authoritarian and anti-individualist.

His goal was to save the government.

And if everybody, save one lone man to boss around and lord over, had to die to do that, by God, he was going to do so.

Well , he was a lawyer .....

 

[RonZeplin]

REPUBLICAN PARTY, RED FROM THE START​

by Alan Stang
February 1, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

Many patriots these days lament that the Republican Party has "lost its way" and "gone wrong." It has "diverged" from the fiscally responsible, small government philosophy of Republican heroes like Robert Taft whom Eisenhower's handlers finagled out of the nomination for President in 1952. We are told that is why today's Republican Establishment hates Dr. Ron Paul with such a passion; that they hate him because, like Taft, he is the quintessential Republican. Patriots who say that are mistaken, of course. The reason the Republican Establishment hates Dr. Paul is precisely that he is not a traditional, mainstream Republican, that his platform of freedom is an aberration. The Republican Party didn't "go wrong," didn't "go left."

It has been wrong from the beginning, from the day it was founded. From the beginning, the Republican Party has worked without deviation for bigger, more imperial government, for higher taxes, for more wars, for more totalitarianism. From the beginning, the Republican Party has been Red.

Why? In 1848, Communists rose in revolution across Europe, united by a document prepared for the purpose, entitled Manifesto of the Communist Party. Its author was a degenerate parasite named Karl Marx, whom a small gang of wealthy Communists "the League of Just Men" hired for the purpose. The Manifesto told its adherents and its victims what the Communists would do.

But the Revolution of 1848 failed. The perpetrators escaped, just ahead of the police. And they went, of course, to the united States. In 1856, the Republican Party ran its first candidate for President. By that time, these Communists from Europe had thoroughly infiltrated this country, especially the North. Many became high ranking officers in the Union Army and top government officials.

Down through the decades, Americans have wondered about Yankee brutality in that war. Lee invaded the North, but that sublime Christian hero forbade any forays against civilians. Military genius Stonewall Jackson stood like a stone wall and routed the Yankees at Manassas, but when Barbara Frietchie insisted on flying the Yankee flag in Frederick, Maryland, rather than the Stars and Bars, that sublime Christian hero commanded, according to John Greenleaf Whittier, 'Who touches a hair of yon gray head/Dies like a dog! "March on" he said.'

But the Yankees, invading the South, were monsters, killing, raping and destroying civilian property. In one Georgia town, some 400 women were penned in the town square in the July heat for almost a week without access to female facilities. It got worse when the Yankee slime got into the liquor. Some two thousand Southern women and children were shipped north to labor as slaves. Didn't you learn that in school?

Sherman's scorched earth March to the Sea was a horror the later Nazis could not equal. Why? Because the Yankees hated Negro slavery so much? There can be no doubt that the already strong Communist influence in the North, combined with that of the maniacal abolitionists, was at least one of the main reasons. Slavery was a tardy excuse, an afterthought they introduced to gain propaganda traction.

In retrospect, it appears that because nothing like this had ever happened here, Lee and Jackson did not fully comprehend what they were fighting. Had this really been a "Civil" War, rather than a secession, they would and could easily have seized Washington after Manassas and hanged our first Communist President and the other war criminals. Instead they went home, in the mistaken belief that the defeated Yankees would leave them alone. Lee did come to understand -- too late. He said after the war that had he known at the beginning what he had since found out, he would have fought to the last man.

What was the South fighting? Alexander Hamilton was the nation�s first big government politician. Hamilton wanted a strong central government and a national bank. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. The problem was that Burr didn�t kill him soon enough. Henry Clay inherited and expanded Hamilton's ideas in something called the "American System," which advocated big government subsidies for favored industries and high, ruinous tariffs, what we today call "socialism for the rich." Clay inspired smooth talking railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who inherited the Red escapees from the Revolution of 1848 and became our first Communist President.

All of this comes again to mind with the recent publication of Red Republicans: Marxism in the Civil War and Lincoln's Marxists (Universe, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2007) by Southern historians Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson, Jr. You must read this book, because it irrefutably nails down everything I have said above and then some. Let's browse through Red Republicans, and, as we do so, remember that the reason most Americans have never heard of all this is that the winner writes the history.

For instance, August Willich was a member of the London Communist League with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Needless to say, Willich became a major general in the Union Army. Robert Rosa belonged to the New York Communist Club and was a major in the 45th New York Infantry. Brigadier general Louis Blenker of New York was a "convinced Marxist." His 10,000 man division looted people in Virginia, inspiring the term "Blenkered." Many of his men were fresh from European prisons. Our first Communist President knew this, but turned them loose on the people of the South.

In Red Republicans we learn of nine European revolutionaries convicted of treason and banished to Australia. They escaped to the united States and Canada. Three or four of them, with no military experience, became Union generals, joining at least three other Marx confidants who already held that rank. "Every man of the nine became a member of the Canadian Parliament, a governor of a territory or state in the Union, party leader, prime minister or attorney general."

Many of these men, not all, were Germans, some four thousand of whom escaped to this country. Known as Forty-Eighters, they quickly added violent abolitionism and feminism to their Communist beliefs. In Missouri, Forty-Eighter Franz Sigel became a Union general and had uniforms made for his Third Infantry Regiment that closely resembled the uniforms worn by socialist revolutionaries in Germany in 1849.

Forty-Eighters who became high ranking Union commanders included Colonel Friedrich Salomon, Ninth Wisconsin, Colonel Fritz Anneke, Thirty Fourth Wisconsin and Colonel Konrad Krez, Twenty Seventh Wisconsin. Communist journalist Karl Heinzen wrote: "If you have to blow up half a continent and cause a bloodbath to destroy the party of barbarism, you should have no scruples of conscience. Anyone who would not joyously sacrifice his life for the satisfaction of exterminating a million barbarians is not a true republican." Heinzen came to this country and supported Lincoln.

Joseph Weydemeyer had to flee Germany when the Communist Revolution failed. In London he belonged to the Communist League and was a close friend of Marx and Engels. He came to this country in 1851, supported Lincoln, maintained his close friendship with Marx and became a Brigadier General in the Union Army.

Dedicated socialist Richard Hinton had to leave England. In this country he became a Union colonel, a Radical Republican and an associate of maniac John Brown's. So was Allan Pinkerton, who financed him. At one meeting with Brown, Pinkerton told his son: "Look well upon that man. He is greater than Napoleon and just as great as George Washington." Yes, Pinkerton was the great detective who founded the agency that bears his name. Why didn't you know that? In Kansas, mass murderer Brown enjoyed the support of wealthy Yankees (the Secret Six). August Bondi and Charles Kaiser, who worked with Brown there, were Forty Eighters.

What about Marx himself? Marx fled to England, where he is buried. He became the European correspondent for socialist Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, whose Managing Editor, Charles Dana, was a Communist. Dana hired Marx as a foreign correspondent. Marx wrote often of his kinship with the new Republican Party. Dana's generosity to Marx kept that scumbag alive.

Remember that Marx never worked a day to support his family, but did find time to impregnate their maid. Dana later became Assistant Secretary of War. All these people were in place when our first Communist President was elected on the Republican ticket in 1860 and provoked Lincoln�s Communist War to Destroy the Union.

The GOP Convention of 1860 took place in Chicago, a flaming center of German Communism. Many such Reds were delegates, including Johann Bernhard Stallo and Frederick Hassaurek from Ohio and Heinrich Bornstein from Missouri, a friend of Marx. Socialist Carl Schurz was a delegate from Wisconsin. To guarantee German support in Illinois, Lincoln secretly bought the Illinois Staats Anzieger. After the election he awarded the editor a consular post.

Socialist Friedrich Kapp was editor of the New Yorker-Abendzeitung. He wrote propaganda for the new Republican Party and helped mightily to deliver the German-American vote to Lincoln. With other Forty-Eighters, he was an elector for Lincoln in 1860. Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. Call, toll-free 1 (800) 288-4677 to order.

Remember that slavery, for these Communists, was just an afterthought, a tool. Before the War for Independence, it was the Southern colonies that petitioned the King to stop importing slaves into the South. Did you know that Jefferson tried to include in the Declaration of Independence a complaint against the King because his government had forbidden the colonies to end the slave trade? Jefferson's language was deleted to avoid giving offense to New England, which was making buckets of money trading slaves.

Indeed, did you also know that if slavery was what the South fought to defend, all it had to do was stay in the Union? Lincoln made clear that he would defend slavery and would not free slaves owned by a man in a state within the Union: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation came well into the war. It was a propaganda stunt that freed only the slaves in areas controlled by the Confederacy; in other words, none. Meanwhile, prominent abolitionist Robert E. Lee, the first man Lincoln offered command of the Union Army, had freed his family's slaves long before the war. So, what were the Communists who came here after?

Republican Senator John Sherman, brother of the monster who Marched to the Sea, advised his fellow senators to "nationalize as much as possible [making] men love their country before their states. All private interests, all local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals, everything, should be subordinate now to the interests of the Government."

Germany was a decentralized collection of independent states. The goal of the Forty Eighters there was a "united, indivisible republic," in which those states would be dissolved. Land and private industry would be confiscated. The government would be transformed into a Socialist dictatorship. These are the ideas the Forty Eighters came to implement here. By the way, that is what Hitler did in the 1930s. That is what the fleeing Communists found so attractive in Lincoln.

So, again, the Republican Party did not "go wrong." It was rotten from the start. It has never been anything else but red. The characterization of Republican states as �red states� is quite appropriate. What do these revelations mean to us? Again, Dr. Paul is an aberration. He is not a "traditional Republican." A "traditional Republican" stands for high taxes, imperial government and perpetual war.
​

Dr. Paul is much more a traditional Democrat. I refer of course to the Democrat Party before the Communist takeover, which began with the election of Woodrow Federal Reserve-Income Tax-World War I Wilson and was consummated with the election of liar, swindler, thief, traitor and mass murderer Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I am talking about the Democrat Party of Thomas Jefferson.

So of course the Republican Party will do everything it can to sandbag Dr. Paul. Expect that. It rightly considers him an interloper who doesn't belong there. Yes, because of decades of perversion of popular opinion about the Republican Party, he must run as a Republican. But no patriot loyalty, and certainly no trust, should be forthcoming, because the Party is a sidewinder that will betray him in a Ghouliani minute.
​

Dr. No is on one side. The Republicrat Party is on the other.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan30.htm
​

 

[timosman]

Well, at least we won the cold war.

 

[1stvermont]

Was Lincoln a Marxist?

Now, let me start this out by saying that re-visiting Lincoln and the Civil War is a losing political strategy. For that reason, I have never looked very deeply into the questions of Lincoln. I have not read any of DiLorenzo's books, although I catch the occasional short Youtube speech by him. My preference has been to see the issue as a battle of big government (Taxes and Lincoln maintaining the Union), vs. the South wanting to be free from the central Federal government. The end of slavery was a positive result, but was probably not the actual cause of the Civil War. Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus and setting a precedent for ignoring the Constitution was a negative side-effect. No doubt many who believe in "the ends justify the means" philosophy embrace both of those side effects, i.e. the rule of law had to be sacrificed for the goal of eliminating slavery.

It must be clear, this is all a losing and divisive issue in politics, and should take a back seat to current political debate. And there is no doubt in the world that the end of slavery was an extremely positive step in the evolution of society.

But then they had to continue the push of Lincoln. Movies, articles, etc. And at the same time, they demonize Jefferson. Obviously they want to bring this battle to the forefront, as it applies today to big government vs. small government. Was Obamacare Constitutional? Did it pass through the Congress in the appropriate way? Did the Supreme Court make the correct ruling? They want to say it doesn't matter. The ends justify the means. Obamacare is good, and nothing should stand in the way of a "benevolent" big brother, even if the Constitution and the rule of law must be ignored.

The issue is being forced, so some outstanding questions needed to be answered:

- Why do so many pundits, politicians and media go apoplectic when there is any criticism of Lincoln? Does it just spoil their agenda of an all powerful big government? Or are they just as ignorant as most of us, and associate Lincoln with nothing more and nothing less than slavery?
- What is the origin of subtle hints in the media and movies that Lincoln is somehow a hero of communists?
- Neo-conservatives and leftists both have in common this hysteria about Lincoln. They also share a Marxist philosophical heritage. Coincidence?

Thus, the question is posed: was Lincoln a Marxist? The answer is quite surprising.

Let's start with a quick timeline of Lincoln and Marx. Americans are so ignorant of history that they often do not realize that Marx and Lincoln were contemporaries.

- Lincoln born: February 12, 1809
- Marx born: May 5, 1818
- Marx publishes a book about Emancipation: 1843
- Marx expelled from France as a radical: 1845
- Lincoln elected to US House: 1846
- Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto: February 1848
- Marx is a contributor to the New York Tribune (Lincoln's favorite newspaper), 1851-1861
- Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate vs. Douglas, famous Lincoln-Douglas debates occur: 1858
- Lincoln becomes US President: 1860
- Civil War Starts: 1861
- Emancipation Proclamation: January 1, 1863


A quick Google search of Lincoln and Marx points to a relevant article. Who better to describe the connections of Lincoln and Marx than the International Socialist?



So it seems that there is a connection between Lincoln and Marx, albeit with a single degree of separation, where Lincoln and Marx were not personal friends, but shared some acquaintances. The ideas and philosophies of Marx and his associates was no doubt well known to Lincoln, as Lincoln was an avid reader of everything, including newspapers which supported him such as the New York Tribune. It seems that Lincoln was as attached to the New York Tribune as John McCain is today attached to the Weekly Standard.

In all fairness to Lincoln, this was a new philosophy, with the good intention of helping the common man. Hindsight is 20/20, and Lincoln did not live to see the road to hell that eventually resulted, best represented by Lenin and Stalin. In Lincoln's time, the philosophy was about good intentions. That being said, we can never lose sight of the fact that the Civil War was the result of many converging and diverging agendas, not just one or another.

Now back to the original questions:

- Why do so many pundits, politicians and media go apoplectic when there is any criticism of Lincoln? Does it just spoil their agenda of an all powerful big government? Or are they just as ignorant as most of us, and associate Lincoln with nothing more and nothing less than slavery?

Probably all of the above. They believe in a big, activist government, and they also believe that the ends justify the means. All good intentions, never any thought about slippery slopes or the road to hell that often results. For those who are completely in the know, the venom is probably a way to divert from the Marxist roots. Any question of Lincoln is blasphemy. They want to leverage that into attacking any questioning of an enormous and all-powerful, central, activist government. They want to equate it with Lincoln, and therefore stifle any criticism.

- What is the origin of subtle hints in the media and movies that Lincoln is somehow a hero of communists?

Solved. They were contemporaries, and had shared associations. Those in the know will hint at it just for fun (or bragging as the International Socialist might do).

- Neo-conservatives and leftists both have in common this hysteria about Lincoln. They also share a Marxist philosophical heritage. Coincidence?

Once again, keeping a lid on the Marxist connections is probably a shared motive for those who truly know the history. For others, who just have a surface knowledge, they have been conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to recoil in horror at any criticism or "non-approved" discussion of Lincoln.

- Thus, the question is posed: was Lincoln a Marxist?

How could Lincoln be a Marxist if the label of "Marxism" was probably not in common usage yet? They were contemporaries who could influence each other, with shared connections. Hindsight is 20/20, and the dangers that evolved from Marxism later had not even occurred yet. It was a time of evolving philosophy. Are there knowledgeable socialists and Marxists (or those who have roots in those philosophies) today that know the connection, and relish it? Probably a few.

Lincoln was not Marxists but many republicans [usually recent immigrants from germany] were.

[h=1]Lincoln's Marxists[/h]https://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Marxists-Al-Benson-Jr/dp/158980905X