Status Updates From An Unfinished Revolution: K...

“When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe…slavery on the banner of armed revolt…and maintained "slavery to be a beneficent institution, indeed the only solution of the great problem of the relation of labor to capital" … then the working classes of Europe understood at once…that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor…” -Karl Marx

“I, too, like Mr. Johnson's policy less and less. His hatred of Negroes comes out more and more violently, while as against the old lords of the South he lets all power go out of his hands. If things go on like this, in six months all the old villains of secession will be sitting in Congress at Washington. Without colored suffrage nothing whatever can be done there...” -Engels

“the Confederate government has overreached itself in its violent efforts to fill the ranks of the army; That the states are asserting their "state rights" against the separatist Confederacy, just as the latter made them its pretext against the Union.”

“it is mortifying that a lousy oligarchy with only half the number of inhabitants proves itself just as strong as an unwieldly, helpless democracy” -Friedrich Engels

“even in America the bourgeois republic exposes itself in thoroughgoing fashion so that in the future in can never again be preached on its own merits but solely as a means and a transition to a social revolution...” -Friedrich Engels

“I must say I cannot work up any enthusiasm for a people which on such a colossal issue allows itself to be continually beaten by a fourth of its own population…” -Friedrich Engels

“Despite all the screams of the Yankees, there is still no sign whatever available that the people regard this business as a real question of national existence.” -Friedrich Engels

“It will take years for Lincoln to learn to combine his legal scruples as an attorney with the demands of the Civil War. This is the appalling condition of a democratic government and its greatest evil. In France a hundred men, convinced for good reasons, would carry the nation with them, but in order that our government may take a step, nineteen millions must previously put themselves in motion.”

“Hence [Lincoln's] appeal to the border states to renounce the institution of slavery voluntarily and under the conditions of a favorable contract. He knows that it is only the continuance of slavery in the border states that has so far left slavery untouched in the South and prohibited the North from applying its great radical remedy. He errs only if he imagines that the...slaveholders are to be moved by...speeches”

“Anxiety to keep the "loyal" slaveholders of the border states in good humor and fear of driving them into the arms of the secession—in a word, a tender regard for the interests, prejudices, and sensibilities of these ambiguous allies have afflicted the Union government with incurable paralysis since the beginning of the war, driven it to take half measures, forced it to hypocritically disavow the principle at issue”

“The present struggle between South and North is thus nothing less than a struggle between two social systems: the system of slavery and the system of free labor. The struggle has broken out because the two systems can no longer peacefully coexist on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or the other.”

“The Union would thus not in fact be dissolved, but rather reorganized, a reorganization on the basis of slavery, under the acknowledged control of the slaveholding oligarchy. The plan for such a reorganization was openly proclaimed by the leading Southern spokesmen at the Montgomery Congress…which leaves open the possibility of each state of the old Union joining the new Confederacy.”

“The oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders used the Montgomery Congress not only to proclaim the separation of the South from the North; it also exploited the Congress to overturn the internal system of government of the slave states, to completely subjugate that part of the white population which had still maintained some degree of independence under the protection of the democratic Constitution of the Union.”

“Roselius...declared the Montgomery constitution is not a constitution, but a conspiracy. It does not inaugurate a government by the people, but a detestable and unrestricted oligarchy. ”

”Even between 1856 and 1860 the political spokesmen, lawyers, moralists, and theologians of the slaveholders' party had tried to prove not so much that Negro slavery is justified but rather that color is immaterial and that slavery is the lot of the working class everywhere."

“The oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders used the Montgomery Congress not only to proclaim the separation of the South from the North; it also exploited the Congress to overturn the internal system of government of the slave states, to completely subjugate that part of the white population which had still maintained some degree of independence under the protection of the democratic Constitution of the Union.”

“At the Louisiana state convention in New Orleans, which met on March 21, 1861, Christian Roselius, the states political veteran declared "the Montgomery constitution is not a constitution, but a conspiracy. It does not inaugurate a government by the people, but a detestable and unrestricted oligarchy. The people were not permitted to play any part in this matter." ”

“"Let him go, he is not worth thine ire!" This advice from Leporello to Don Juan's deserted love is now the repeated call of English statesmanship to the North of the United States–recently voiced anew by Lord John Russell. If the North lets the South go, it will free itself from any complicity in slavery–its historical original sin and it will create the basis for a new and higher stage of development.”

“Quite apart from the economical law which makes the diffusion of slavery a vital condition for its maintenance within its constitutional areas, the leaders of the South had never deceived themselves as to its necessity for keeping up their political sway over the United States." ”

“American slavery was doomed to gradual extinction from the moment it should be deprived of its power of expansion. That "economical law" was perfectly understood by the slaveocracy. "In 15 years more," said Toombs, "without a great increase in Slave territory, either the slaves must be permitted to flee from the whites, or the whites must flee from the slaves." ”

“Anti-slavery England cannot sympathize with the North breaking down the withering influence of slaveocracy because she cannot forget that the North, while bound by that influence, supported the slave trade, mobbed the Abolitionists, and had its Democratic institutions tainted by the slave driver's prejudices.” -Karl Marx

“At the same time none of the successive victories of the South was carried but after a hot contest with an antagonistic force in the North, appearing under different party names… If the positive and final result of each single contest told in favor of the South, the attentive observer of history could not but see that every new advance of the slave power was a step forward to its ultimate defeat.”

“Mrs. Stowe says: "The slave party, finding they could no longer use the Union for their purposes, resolved to destroy it." There is here an admission that up to that time the slave party had used the Union for their purposes, and it would have been well if Mrs. Stowe could have distinctly shown where it was that the North began to make its stand against slavery.”

“If it be true that the North, after long hesitation and an exhibition of forbearance unknown in the annals of European history, drew at last the sword not for crushing slavery, but for saving the Union, the South, on its part, inaugurated the war by loudly proclaiming "the peculiar institution" as the only and main end of the rebellion. It confessed to fighting for the liberty of enslaving other people…”