282 THE CLASS STRUGGLE MARX AND THE INTERNATIONAL 283 make common cause with the Irish, but must even take the initiative in dissolving the union between Ireland and England, to put in its place a freer, more liberal relationship. He insisted that this solution alone is commensurate with the interests of the English proletariat. So long as the English land oligarchy can hold itself intrenched in Ireland, it will be impossible to overthrow it in England, and yet its overthrow is the foremost condition in the liberation of the English working class. In Ireland, however, the destruction of the landed aristocracy will be much more easily accomplished, once the solution of this problem has been placed into the hands of the Irish people themselves. For in Ireland the fight against landlordism is an economic and a national question as well.
In pursuance of this policy in the Irish question as outlined by Marx, the General Council of the International took its stand on the side of the revolutionary Irish movement. It protested, for instance, against the inhuman treatment accorded to Irish political prisoners in British prisons, and against the death sentence passed upon a number of Fenian conspirators.
It was upon a suggestion from Karl Marx that the General Council took its stand on the question of Negro slavery and the American Civil War. Again he was chiefly instrumental when the London workingmen, under the direct influence of the General Council, arranged protest meetings against the antiUnion attitude of their manufacturers and their government.
On the 22nd of November, 1864, the Council decided to send an address to the American people, congratulating them upon the recent re election of President Lincoln. The address, written by Marx, was presented to Lincoln through the American ambassador in London, and said, in part. Everywhere they (the European workmen) patiently bore the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the pro slavery intervention importunities of their betters and from most parts of Europe contributed their quota of blood to the good of the cause. While the workingmen, the true political power of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own Republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white skinned laborer to sell himself and to choose his own master, they were unable to attain true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war. The workingmen of Europe felt sure that as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Anti Slavery War will do for the working class.
This address to Lincoln was answered by Charles Francis Adams, then United States Minister in London. It seems that Lincoln also sent a personal answer to the General Council, for Marx wrote to gels: The fact that Lincoln answered us so politely, and was so blunt and formal in his communications to the Bourgeois Emancipation Society, has made the Daily News so indignant that it did not print our answer.
It is generally known that, beside this address to Lincoln, the International sent two other addresses to America, one to President Johnson on the assassination of Lincoln, and a second to the people of the United States. The latter rejoices in the end of the war, and congratulates the people of America for having preserved the Union. Both addresses were written by Marx.
But Marx was the spokesman of the International not only in foreign and general political questions. He was active, as well, in the inner work and clarification of the movement, and undertook the work that this entailed. Thus most of the preparatory work for the annual Congress of the Association was the work of his pen. His also were the wonderful memoranda that were presented by the General Council at these congresses. He was the author of the most important resolutions that were adopted by these congresses upon recommendation by the General Council.
The illuminating resolutions, on labor unions that were adopted at Genf at the Congress of 1866, were his. Today it is