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

 

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.

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Corporal Wilhelm Sorge had started taken the measure of the day, the sunlit somewhat humid day as he stood in his new blue uniform, what did Sergeant Graff called them, yes, dress blues but to his eye the same as he had been wearing since induction except the quality was better, on the corner of 14^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Finally after defending the place from afar for the previous two years he had entered the city for the very first time. He, along with the other soon to be demobilized mass of blue before him, was giving one last demonstration of their prowess, the prowess of the Grand Army of the Republic as it was now being called, before heading home as all that had happened over the previous four years of bloody had only stopped earlier in the month when Lee had surrendered to Grant. Yes, one more parade for the civilians and then home to Lucinda who in her last letter said she was eager to get their lives together started the minute he got home. She had promised Wilhelm that she would marry him if he survived the war, he had, and he was about to collect on that promise, raise some kids, maybe take over his father’s print shop and grow old far from cannons, rifles and battlefield.

But just that moment he was waiting with the other new blue uniformed men of his unit, his now beloved regiment, the Massachusetts 20^th originally created out of the Harvards over in Cambridge across from his hometown Boston but which had been so decimated by the loss of men that replacements had come from many other also decimated units. As he stood he thought back to all that had happened, all the changes that had occurred over the previous four years. His initial reluctance to fight in Mr. Lincoln’s war since that interruption would put his budding career in the cotton transferring industry on hold. How he had argued with his father that the South should go in peace and that he hated the stink of the negroes who worked in the now deceased Mr. Sanborne’s bulging cotton warehouses on the wharves of  old Boston. Then Miss Lucinda Mason came along and one way or another browbeat him into enlisting. He had found out many things since that enlistment in late 1862. The main thing was that he was no coward and while he did not consider himself brave, or at least no braver than other men, he could face his own death, as had occurred many times on many battlefields, with equanimity. Had shown some valor, and had the medals to prove that fact.

He had also found out that even though others may have thought it was like pulling teeth that he was his father’s son, that whatever hatred he had against the black man, whatever else he harbored that, what did President Lincoln call it, yes, “the    better angels of our nature” had prevailed. He would remember that in the future. But most of all he knew through all the strife and hardships, the damn marches and the equally damn “hurry up and wait”  he loved Miss Lucinda Mason and had the battered heart-shaped locket with her picture she had given him when he left Boston still in his left shirt pocket.

But since he was taking the measure of the day he knew he felt a certain sadness now that the Captain, now that Mr. Lincoln was gone, gone assassinated by some vile Confederate supporters  who probably lost their best friend for the future by their stupid actions. Yes, he had come a long way from his mockery of Massa Limpkin, even of Old Abe. Now it was Mr. Lincoln, President who as Secretary of War Staunton said now belonged to the ages. As he heard Sergeant Graff call out for them to get into formation for that last march he thought that was probably true, that Lincoln would be remembered always.