19. President Lincoln Corresponded With Karl Marx
It is most likely that Abraham Lincoln’s Marxist views came directly from Karl Marx himself. The author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital had been a prolific contributor to the New York Daily Tribune. It was the most influential Republican newspaper of the 1850s when the GOP was founded. In 1848, the Tribune’s publisher had invited Marx to become a correspondent, and over the decade that followed, Marx, sometimes with the help of Friedrich Engels, wrote over 500 articles for the Republican newspaper.
Unsurprisingly, since Marx detested labor exploitation, he became a huge Lincoln fan, and cheered him on as he wrecked slavery, the era’s most exploitative labor system. In 1864, Marx wrote a letter on behalf of the International Working Men’s Association, to congratulate Lincoln on his reelection and wish him success in the US Civil War. The president instructed the American ambassador in Britain, where Marx lived, to thank him and let him know that the United States: “derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies”.
