Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed to.
The minutes continue:
A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was then proposed... and carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to consist of the members of the Central Council.
So rather than a personal letter to Lincoln from Marx as you insinuate, it is an address from the International Workers Association (IWA)General Counsel to the American people, delivered through our London embassy.
Nice try though...
"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestly the enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I sure that they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions throughout the world.... The resources, advantages, and power of the American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries."
A. Lincoln
The letter itself, which your excerpt shows to have been written by Marx, opens as follows:
"To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America
Sir:
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority."
In other words, the letter, which was written by Marx and signed onto by his commie club, went to Lincoln himself and not the general people as you claim.
It was indeed delivered to the American embassy as that was the means of transmitting it TO Lincoln at the time. The records further show that it was transmitted from the embassy to its intended recipient, Abe Lincoln, in January 1865. Charles Francis Adams, the ambassador at the time, sent a response to Marx and his commie club informing them that the letter to Lincoln "was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United States, has been received by him."
"It is not our part to call words of sorrow and horror, while the heart of two worlds heaves with emotion. Even the sycophants who, year after year, and day by day, stick to their Sisyphus work of morally assassinating Abraham Lincoln, and the great Republic he headed, stand now aghast at this universal outburst of popular feeling, and rival with each other to strew rhetorical flowers on his open grave. They have now at last found out that he was a man, neither to be browbeaten by adversity, nor intoxicated by success, inflexibly pressing on to his great goal, never compromising it by blind haste, slowly maturing his steps, never retracing them, carried away by no surge of popular favour, disheartened by no slackening of the popular pulse, tempering stern acts by the gleams of a kind heart, illuminating scenes dark with passion by the smile of humour, doing his titanic work as humbly and homely as Heaven-born rulers do little things with the grandiloquence of pomp and state; in one word, one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr."
Communists have always adored Lincoln. They were among his first cheerleaders during his own lifetime and remain so to this day through the likes of James McPherson.