"It was that way when the great Civil War broke out in America. Karl
was mad at the way in which Gladstone and the middle class in general
sided with the slave-holders of the South. You see, he not only took
the side of the slaves, but he loved President Lincoln. He seemed
never to get tired of praising Lincoln. One day he came to me and said
with that quiet manner he had when he was most in earnest, 'Hans, we
must do something to offset Gladstone's damned infernal support of
the slave-traders. We must show President Lincoln that the working
class in this country feel and know that he is in the right. And
Abraham Lincoln belongs to us, Hans; he's a son of the working class.'
"He said a lot more in praise of Lincoln, and told me how proud he was
that the German Socialists had gone to the war, all enlisted in the
Northern army; said he'd like to join with Weydemeyer, his old friend,
who was fighting under Fremont. So earnest he was about it! Nobody
could have guessed that the war meant ruin to him by cutting off his
only regular income, the five dollars a week he got for writing for
the _New York Tribune_--I think that was the name of the paper.
"Well, he begged me to get resolutions passed at our union condemning
Gladstone and supporting President Lincoln, and I believe that our
union was the first body of workingmen in England to pass such
resolutions. But Karl didn't stop at that. He got the International to
take the matter up with the different workingmen's societies, and
meetings were held all over the country. And he kept so much in the
background that very few people ever knew that it was Karl Marx who
turned the tide of opinion in England to the side of Lincoln. And when
Lincoln was murdered by that crazy actor, Booth, Karl actually cried.
He made a beautiful speech, and wrote resolutions which were adopted
at meetings all over the country. Ah, boy, Lincoln appreciated the
support we gave him in those awful days of the war, and Karl showed me
the reply Lincoln sent to the General Council thanking them for it.
"Karl was always like that; always guiding the working people to do
the right thing, and always letting other people get the credit and
the glory. He planned and directed all the meetings of the workers
demanding manhood suffrage, in 1866, but he never got the credit of
it. All for the cause, he was, and never cared for personal glory. For
years he gave all his time to the International and never got a penny
for all he did, though his enemies used to say that he was 'getting
rich out of the movement.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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