I find Marx’ articles on the American Civil War fascinating! They were written for the New York Tribune and the Vienna Presse. He wrote private letters on the topic as well. Absolutely remarkable!
They are fascinating articles.
They are especially interesting when trying to assess the oddball attempt to equate the Confederacy with Marxism.
Compare this review of Marx and Engel's Civil War writings with the claim that there was something 'Marxist' about South:
The Civil War opened the road for the final triumph of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the United States. During the fight to the death with the slavocracy, Marx and Engels in their capacity as revolutionary labor leaders correctly stressed the positive, democratic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the struggle waged by the bourgeois republic. They based their practical political policy on the fact that the struggle of the working class for its own emancipation would be promoted by the victory of the North and thrown back by the triumph of the Confederacy. At the same time they never proclaimed their political confidence in the Republican bourgeoisie, freely criticized their conduct of the war, and maintained their independence vis-à-vis their temporary allies.
Well I suppose that it's possible that Marx and Engels simply weren't aware of what Marxism is, and so championed the North when they should have been cheering on the Confederate 'slavocracy'. Either that or the revisionists who are making the Confederacy = Marxism argument are fools.
More that might be of interest. The Revolutionaries of 1848 are an often overlooked influence on the American Civil War. The 48ers fled Europe after their failed revolutions (Marx and Engels going to England). Many went to the United States, and a number went on the be Union Army Generals: Wedemeyer, Dana, Schurz, Sigel, Willich being a few of them.
“Marx and Engels backed the Republican Party and its candidate Lincoln. Although it’s hard to fathom today, in 1860 the Republican Party had socialists, abolitionists, and other radicals in its membership. It was a new party that had emerged from the conflict in the Kansas territory prior to the Civil War. The Republican Party was perceived as a threat to the slave-owners and their allies. Abolitionists and other radicals debated joining the Republican Party. Could its leadership be trusted? Were the more prominent members of the party really serious in ending slavery? Many came to the conclusion that the party was at least moving, or could be moved, towards that end. European revolutionaries, political refugees from the failed 1848 revolutions, joined the Republican Party. These revolutionaries also took up arms and fought for the Union.”
“Revolutionaries such as former Prussian officer August Willich, Engels commander in 1849, exemplified this. Willich was also a leader of the Communist League with Karl Marx, until a falling out with Marx over Willich’s idea of sending an armed force back into the German lands to restart the revolution. Marx argued that this wild plan would fail. Willich later gave up his scheme and moved to the United States. He eventually resided in the large German émigré community of Cincinnati, where he edited a radical newspaper. He would train the all-German Ninth Ohio Infantry regiment, whose volunteer soldiers had belonged to the radical Turnverein in Germany. Before the war, many members of the Ninth Ohio fought against the anti-immigrant chauvinism of the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s. They came to the conclusion that fighting for the Union was participating in a revolutionary war. Gustav Kammerling, a colonel in the Ninth, had been elected in 1848 as leader of a revolutionary militia. He also later fought alongside Engels and Willich in the Palatinate. The Ninth Ohio’s regimental history, Die Neuner, contains many interesting anecdotes illustrating how the soldiers viewed the Civil War as a continuation of the 1848 Revolution. The Ninth and other German regiments would sing revolutionary songs into battle, demanded that they be allowed to speak in their native German, and also successfully fought against General Sherman’s ban on alcohol. They got to keep their kegs of beer.”
http://www.isreview.org/issues/80/feat-civilwar.shtml