During The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War –In Honor Of The Union Side The Third Hard Year Of War-Wilhelm Sorge’s War

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 third year of which we are commemorating this month.

 

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Wilhelm Sorge’s father, Friedrich, was beside himself when, on opening the front page of his Boston Gazette that raw mid- April 1861 day, he read of the attacks on Massachusetts Sixth Volunteers down in secession-hungry, rebel-loving, negro-hating Baltimore. Friedrich had been a political partisan his whole life both in his native Germany and now here among the exiled German community and had been an active participant in the slave abolitionist movement in Boston. As early as 1859 he had known deep down in his bones that the reaction to the martyred Captain John Brown’s execution, North and South, could only lead to bloody conflict before long. And Republican Abraham Lincoln’s fractured election victory in 1860 only confirmed that suspicion. He had been among the first to argue that every young able-bodied man who had his same thoughts should organize themselves into militias, to prepare for the coming fight arms in hand.  
 

In early January 1861, as civil war approached, Friedrich was delighted when the men of Massachusetts began to form volunteer militia units. Many workers in the textile cities of Lowell and Lawrence, many German-American artisans and skilled workers among them some known to him, were the first to join a new infantry regiment, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, when it was formally organized on January 21, 1861. All through the winter and early spring, the men met regularly to drill. In March, they were issued uniforms and Springfield rifles and told to be ready to assemble at any time. When Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12th, the men of the Massachusetts Sixth knew their time had come.

Three days later, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months. They were ordered to Washington, D.C. to protect the capital and lead the effort to quash the "rebellion." The Sixth Massachusetts gathered with other regiments in Boston on April 16th. The Boston Gazette captured the feelings of many when it published one soldier's letter home: "We have been quartered since our arrival in this city at Faneuil Hall and the old cradle of liberty rocked to its foundation from the shouting patriotism of the gallant sixth. During all the heavy rain the streets, windows, and house tops have been filled with enthusiastic spectators, who loudly cheered our regiment . . . The city is completely filled with enthusiasm; gray-haired old men, young boys, old women and young, are alike wild with patriotism." Among them stood gray-haired Friedrich Sorge. And down in surly Maryland that fine regiment had tasted their first blood.   

 
 
 
Freidrich became solemn thinking of past skirmishes back home in Germany where friends and comrades had fallen under hails of bullets when he read of several soldiers, brave boys, killed and wounded when some pug-ugly crowd tried to block their passage further south. He thought again how just a few days before Boston had celebrated the departure of that regiment, as it would others later, going down to defend the capital in Washington. To defend against the threats of the insurrectionary separatists who were attempting to form their own country based on the slave trade, the slave economy, and the cotton trade that fueled the world’s increase in textile production.
 
Just then Friedrich thought about how if he had not been so old and the shop did not need to be run personally by him he would have gone with the boys south to show the rebels a thing or two about human worth. Friedrich had been in military action before, back in the days in Europe, in Germany, in 1848 when they, he and his fellow students were trying to get a democratic government installed in his native Cologne. They/he had failed and rather than face a long term jail sentence with three young children to feed, including his eldest Wilhelm, he and his wife had fled first to Paris and then when that spot became inhospitable to radical German immigrants to Boston (via New York) where he had set up his small print shop.   
 
After setting the newspaper down Friedrich resolved that he would talk to Wilhelm, now eighteen and strong, about joining up in one of the regiments that was being formed daily in the town on orders from the governor and legislature and do his part to save the republic which had provided a haven for his family. Moreover, and this was held closely among the German immigrant community of Boston and the now the far-flung other German communities out in the Midwest farmlands and Texas settler lands, Friedrich had been a “red republican,” a follower of the well-known (in Europe if not in America) communist thinkers and activists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Had been a sympathizer of their Communist League before everything got busted up. He therefore held “advanced” views about the way the downtrodden of the earth should and could be treated. Here in Boston, not always to his benefit or to his profit, he was known as a “high abolitionist” of the Wendell Phillips school and had (secretly) thrilled to the actions of Captain John Brown of blessed memory down in Harper’s Ferry. Yes he would speak to his son that evening at dinner.      
 
That evening the two Sorges, father and son, had their first serious household dispute. Like many a son Wilhelm wanted to distance himself from his father’s activities, no matter what those activities were. Wilhelm wanted to make a name for himself in the new land. So when Friedrich broached the subject of military service to Wilhelm he answered flatly “no.” No, he was not going to jeopardize his rising position in the firm of Sanborne and Son, the largest cotton merchants in Boston, to go save Mr. Lincoln’s bacon (he used another word but we will be kind here). He, moreover, considered himself like his employers a “Cotton Whig,” a person who stood to benefit from increased cotton production to feed that never-ending stream of textile goods the world was demanding. So no, no indeed, he was not going to try to save the old union as it was. Moreover while he was at it he did not care a whit about freeing “nigras,” about the need to get them out of servitude. He was not his father’s son getting all weepy about their plight down south. He, moreover, had to deal with them in the Sanborne warehouses every day as they moved the heavy bales of cotton every which way and their bodies  “stank” stank to high heaven and he was not going to risk getting shot up for some heathen stink. No, no thank you.