As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side- The Hard Years Of War- A Sketch- Wilhelm Sorge’s War-Take Four

As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side- The  Hard Years Of War- A Sketch- Wilhelm Sorge’s War-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I would not expect any average American citizen today to be familiar with the positions of the communist intellectuals and international working-class party organizers (First International) Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels on the events of the American Civil War. There is only so much one can expect of people to know off the top of their heads about what for several generations now has been ancient history.  I am, however, always amazed when I run into some younger leftists and socialists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. I, in the past, have placed a number of the Marx-Engels newspaper articles from the period in this space to show the avidity of their interest and partisanship in order to refresh some memories and enlighten others. As is my wont I like to supplement such efforts with little fictional sketches to illustrate points that I try to make and do so below with my take on a Union soldier from Boston, a rank and file soldier, Wilhelm Sorge.  

Since Marx and Engels have always been identified with a strong anti-capitalist bias for the unknowing it may seem counter-intuitive that the two men would have such a positive position on events that had as one of its outcomes an expanding unified American capitalist state. A unified capitalist state which ultimately led the vanguard political and military actions against the followers of Marx and Engels in the 20^th century in such places as Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. The pair were however driven in their views on revolutionary politics by a theory of historical materialism which placed support of any particular actions in the context of whether they drove the class struggle toward human emancipation forward. So while the task of a unified capitalist state was supportable alone on historical grounds in the United States of the 1860s (as was their qualified support for German unification later in the decade) the key to their support was the overthrow of the more backward slave labor system in one part of the country (aided by those who thrived on the results of that system like the Cotton Whigs in the North) in order to allow the new then progressive capitalist system to thrive.       

In the age of advanced imperialist society today, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we find that we are, unlike Marx and Engels, almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And we are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to be a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in the eyes of our forebears, and our eyes too.

Furthermore few know about the fact that the small number of Marxist supporters in the United States during that Civil period, and the greater German immigrant communities here that where spawned when radicals were force to flee Europe with the failure of the German revolutions of 1848 were mostly fervent supporters of the Union side in the conflict. Some of them called the “Red Republicans” and “Red 48ers” formed an early experienced military cadre in the then fledgling Union armies. Below is a short sketch drawn on the effect that these hardened foreign –born abolitionists had on some of the raw recruits who showed up in their regiments and brigades during those hard four years of fighting, the last year of which we are commemorating this month.

*****

Private Wilhelm Sorge looked once again at his now bullet-nicked heart-shaped locket stained sepia photograph of Miss Lucinda Mason heading back to his quarters after his third round of guard duty that night since old First Sergeant Winot had in for him. That bullet nick compliments of some Johnny Reb skirmisher as his regiment, the proud 20^th Massachusetts organized by the Harvards, headed south after Gettysburg victory.

Private Sorge began to tear up though, tear up in the privacy of his tent (really a lean-to but according to his platoon sergeant a stickler for army terminology a four-man tent, one like you could see an example if you wanted to know what they looked like of done by the painter Winslow Homer for Leslie’s Illustrated as he suggested in a letter to the lady in the picture) now that the Army of the Potomac had settled into winter quarters. He had been through a lot over the past several months since that same dear Lucinda had dragooned him into enlisting. Lucinda had declared that he had “no guts,” her actual wording, unlike her brothers and cousins now scattered over all the Eastern fronts fighting for “Old Abe” and glory, when he told her one night at a Union League dance that he was more a lover than a fighter. Said he didn’t give a fig about Old Abe and his slave brethren like Frederick Douglass, a friend of his father, Friedrich, who had been raising holy hell to get more black regiments into battle after they had acquitted themselves well in front of Fort Wagner down in the Carolinas a few weeks after he and the boys of the 20^th Massachusetts what men were made of. Was not going to lose life and limb either.  She had scowled at him, had immediately withdrawn her favors which he had come to expect when they were alone in her house on Commonwealth Avenue and would not to speak him again until several days later after he had seen the writing on the wall after their last fight and had gone the next day down to Tremont Street to enlist when he showed up wearing Union Blue. See Wilhelm, like many another young man then, and now, liked, liked very much to partake of his sweetheart’s favors.  

Wilhelm had seen hot action in the killing fields of Gettysburg with the remnants of the 20^th Massachusetts which had been chewed up along the way (the 20^th organized by the Harvard grandees over in Cambridge later built a memorial hall to commemorate their Civil War dead and Gettysburg has an inordinate list of Harvards who laid down their heads there) and lots of other small spot skirmishes on the way back south before the army went into winter quarters. That action had included a skirmish where he had been slightly wounded and where his beloved locket had been nicked by a stray bullet. No, the locket did not, like a lot of stories told around grizzled campfires about how this or that Bible or other cherished keepsake had deflected a fatal bullet, save his life since he had been carrying the locket in his pocket just then since his Union blue uniform jacket, his now faded, dirty, disheveled uniform had been “shoddy,” had fallen off at the touch one day.

Wilhelm had grown up a lot during that time as well seeing now that his fighting for President Lincoln’s plan to save the Union by crushing the illegal Confederacy was bigger than he had thought, meant more than in the early carefree days (his carefree to court that Miss Mason of the locket days) when he had urged that the southern brethren to go on their own without anger. Since then he had learned that “King Cotton” was not worth the price of disunion on this green-blazed continent.

Now a lot of what he had learned had been from sitting around camp fires with some of those fellow private Harvard boys and their hell-fire talk of turning the South back to the Stone Age if necessary in order to win (by the way he also learned that though there were many Harvards in the regiment the barriers between the enlisted men and the officers from that institution were as strong they were against his young German ass). Many a night there was nothing but talk, talk, talk about how Johnny Reb had to be shown a lesson, about how the South had to come into the nineteenth century. He breathed in that new air, slowly at first but something in what his old father had spoken of and that he had dismissed out of hand from that source began to sink in.

But the real forces behind the changes in young Wilhelm’s demeanor came about from two sources- an old grizzled sergeant from another platoon, Heinz Grosz, who knew his father, Friedrich, had fought on those hometown Cologne barricades with him, and had after serving a two- year sentence there exiled himself first to England and then to America. Many a night the old man would talk, endlessly talk, about what it meant to be free, what it meant to be your own man, and that if anything was evil then slavery was the thing. Grosz emphasized something to Wilhelm that he had heard while in a London meeting of like-minded types-as long as the black man was not free in America then the white working- man was doomed to fall under the wheel of the budding capitalist juggernaut that was building a full head of steam on this continent. The other source-the kindness without reward or favor of a Negro sutler in giving him water and some first aid when he had been wounded and the old black man had put himself at some risk to do so since Johnny was hell-bent on chewing up another Yankee blue shirt. Still he wished they did not sweat to high heaven when they were near him.