Comments on: Karl Marx and the American Civil War

By: francesco

francesco — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:04:32 +0000

Marx’s articles show a connection between U.S. and British, or World History. He notices that the British ruling class supports the South, and their own power, while the British working class supports the North, and their own rights. He sees the U.S. as a “colony” of the British Empire at that time still. From an economic point of view, that probably makes sense.

By: Michael Eissinger

Michael Eissinger — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:40:19 +0000

Since the US Citizenship test will take either “Slavery” or “States Rights” as the answer to why the south seceded, this point is important. For years, the importance of slavery as the root cause of the war has been buried under the rhetoric of “states rights,” even though it was the right of the states of allow slavery to which they refer.

That said, one of the best books I’ve used in freshmen US history classes is Charles Dew’s “Apostles of Disunion” in which Dews clearly demonstrates that, throughout the South, every southern knew that slavery was the issue before the states broke their ties with the Union. The articles by Marx (and others) demonstrate that this was well known, as the cause of the war, around the world. Marx is writing in England to a European paper about the causes of the war. There’s even a better, more clearly stated article that Marx wrote, at about the same time, for the New York Daily Tribune (it’s included in the Penguin “Dispatches” compilation). So, should you include this evidence in an AP history class — definitely because it addresses the attempt by some to rewrite history to cloud the real reasons behind this war. This was only about states’ rights as those rights pertained to slavery, and that the “peculiar institution” of slavery and it’s continuation, into the future, was the sole reason for the South’s attempt to dissolve the union.

You can then tie this to the expunged material of the Declaration of Independence, the provisions institutionalizing slavery in the Constitution, the various “compromises,” the role slavery played when a bunch of Mexican citizens (southern immigrants to Mexico) committed treason rather than free their slaves, thus creating the republic of Texas as a slaveholding nation (because the US couldn’t bring it in as a slave state until there was another free state with which to balance it). In fact, there is so much in US History prior to 1877 that can ONLY make sense if you keep slavery at the heart of the question.

By: Nothing

Nothing — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:58:25 +0000

The American civil war was the true bourgeois revolution in this part of the world. *The party of the northern capitalist class broke the domination of the southern landed aristocracy in the elections of 1860; *the Confederacy was a last-ditch attempt to save an old ruling class from destruction.

All the rhetoric you may have seen about “the union”, “anti-slavery”, “self-determination”. “the peculiar institution”, etc. was window dressing. * Not that some of the abolitionists were not brave and sincere fighters; *but you can readily see just how “sincere” most of them really were by looking at what happened to black people AFTER the civil war.

Not to even mention the fact that very few slave-owners were deprived of their property at the conclusion of the war (except their human property). *The plantations were not broken up and distributed to the former slaves; *instead northern capitalists came in and bought up a fair amount of land themselves (“the carpetbaggers”). * For the most part, the old southern aristocracy were permitted to survive and even prosper…on the understanding that they were permanently subordinate to the new ruling class in New York (“Wall Street”).

By: Bill schietroma

Bill schietroma — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:56:00 +0000

I adgree with Marx this civil war is much more than slavery, I think Marx was hinting upon weather this was a revolution of the plantation owner of the south or the industrialist of the North.But the offensive was the south taking over fort sumter.Therefore if Marx says if a black person joined the union it would be a revolution.In my view yes there was a power or class war sort of like the Russian revolution of 1917 it was first labled as a civil war,then a russian revolution. Look at rome it was a democrary first a dictatorship and had a civil war

By: matt mckeon

matt mckeon — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:52:11 +0000

I believe, without being scholar enough to look it up, that Marx remarked that the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union army turned the war from a “constitutional” struggle to a “revolutionary” struggle.

I don’t know about the AP(literally), but that’s a worthwhile question for students generally, do you agree with this statement or disagree, explain why.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:52:47 +0000

Ben, I have not thought it through yet. Maybe you’re absolutely correct and there will be no good way to present it. Obviously I can’t just throw it at them without a reason for comparison. I’ll have to give it more thought. I just found it fascinating that he could see the conflict with clarity.
Chris

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:32:32 +0000

Interesting article, Chris. Do you really think that Marx’s opinion on the U.S. Civil War is historically significant enough to include in an AP U.S. History class?