LINCOLN, LABOR 
 
 AND 
 
 SLAVERY 
 
 A CHAPTER 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 SOCIAL HISTORY OF AMERICA 
 By 
 
 HERMAN SCHLUTER 
 
 .:-. :: . . 
 
 1913 
 
 SOCIALIST LITERATURE CO. 
 NEW YORK 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 
 By 
 
 HERMAN SCHLOTER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 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 of 
 
 the International Workingmen's 
 Association to President Andrew 
 Johnson 193 
 
 3. Address of the General Council to 
 
 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 
 throw light upon the position taken by the work- 
 ing class and the international labor movement 
 regarding chattel slavery; secondly, to indicate 
 the attitude 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 various 
 phases of historical development struggles from 
 which modern bourgeois society is not exempt. 
 
 f~~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 
 
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- J 
 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 
 j overthrow of chattel slavery, if the working 
 ! classes of all countries, and the young interna- 
 tional labor movement, at that time only begin- 
 jiing, 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 
 in favor of the seceding Southern States against 
 the Northern 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, 
 
 fSecause the continuance of unfree labor was an 
 obstacle in the path of the development of free 
 
 . labor. 
 
 v 
 
 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 not 
 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, 
 
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 
 class (known in Europe as the petit bourgeoisie), 
 which 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. 
 
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 
 and economic history can be understood only by 
 a 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 their 
 employers for wages. The struggles resulting 
 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 
 
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. 
 And although with the advent of peace the Eng- 
 lish commodity regained its former advantage, in- 
 dustry continued to develop in New England, en- 
 tailing antagonisms of various s6rts 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 mar- 
 ket for Negro slaves, the demands of which could 
 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 
 societies. These societies originated in the be- 
 ginning 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 supplies 
 to the lowest possible level. We thus observe in 
 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 
 a position to produce enough cotton for export. 
 The 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 suc- 
 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 
 
*Jjr 
 
 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 
 South 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 of 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 
 
 J\frkan slave trgjs, under the cover of our na- 
 tional flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, 
 as 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 
 he fiee. 
 
 "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 slave r y. 
 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 none 
 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 Coruscation 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- r 
 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 oi 
 New England became early enlightened with re- 
 gard to slavery, and they took position accord- 
 
38 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY 
 
 ingly. / Their attitude 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 an,ti-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 
 
 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 
 
 i 
 
 ing of the rising movement of the workingmeu 
 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 convention 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 words : 
 
 "'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, the)' 
 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." ^x 
 
 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 
 
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 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 tw r o 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 
 i""rmation 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 ovm 
 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 them. 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 oi that period a certain natural suspicion v/ 
 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's 
 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, 18%. 
 
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 7 
 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? 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. 
 
 "I understand by slavery, that condition in 
 which one human being exists mainly as a con- 
 venience for other hitman 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 will readily understand, therefore, that, 
 if I regard your enterprise with less absorbing 
 interest than vou 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 women, 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 
 
 vent ion 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 
 
THE WORKERS OF THE NORTH 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."* 
 
 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 power 
 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 profounder 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, en- 
 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 
 
 . /V 
 
 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 defmiteness 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 >t 
 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 Sodden 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 seceded 
 from the Arbeiterbund in 1857, and was under 
 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." 
 
 Tn 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 Arbeit er- 
 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 tjie 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 Arbeit crbund 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 oi 
 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 to 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 Pintos, 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 w r hen 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. LLajiegrojiies, 
 JHs^ajcxMisj^rableJoss, you jcnow." .... "Slaves 
 are, on the soutfiwestern^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 onl^ 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 
 
 f 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 Curnberland 
 IroaJVorks of JTennessee,~the largesFlndustrial 
 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 to 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, li 
 Their economic interests would have forced them a 
 into a union with the black slave population if f 
 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, TABOR 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." 
 
 I 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 world 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 manner 
 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 more 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, 5 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 trades 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 Essavs <>f Win. H. Syh>is, 
 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 
 of 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 
 l:<viid, 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 tad 
 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- 
 
WORKINGMEN AND WAR 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 
 which 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 seekersyf . . . 
 
 ". . . . 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 135 
 
 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 r 
 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 workingtnen 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, 18tH. 
 
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 
 
 * Katharine 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." 
 
ENGLISH WORKINGMEN AND THE WAR 147 
 
 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 
 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 
 :ause 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, I, 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, f 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- 
 sijrie 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 comrriittee 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."t 
 
 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, L, p. 364. 
 fMarx: Kapital, 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. 
 
 meetngs protestng aganst a war n 
 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 
 v/ith 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. 
 
 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 
 \jcountries."* 
 
 le 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 
 tin worthy 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 States 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." fHer 
 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 j 
 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.* 
 
 " '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 
 
 pa thy, 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.' 5 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, L, 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 I 
 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 WORKWOMEN'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 members 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 sur Biographic von K. 
 Marx und F. Engels, Neue Zeit, 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, thi 
 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 epopee, 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. 5 ' 
 
 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, win 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 as 
 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 
 
 sicler 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. Ho well, 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 partly, 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 LINCOLN, LABOR AND SLAVERY 
 
 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. 
 
THE DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 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 New 
 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 hloQ^-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. 
 
THE DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 209 
 
 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 occupied 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 
 world ngmen 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 Til ford, 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 
 J 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. 
 t 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 maun factur ing 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. 
 "O. 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. 
 t 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. 
 
 t 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 come."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. 
 t 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 
 
i 
 
 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.. 
 Susquehanna, 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. Lucraft, 
 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 Lafargue. 
 
 "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. 
 
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