Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx did not exchange letters, nor did they consider themselves to be friends.
It is claimed here and there, now and then, that Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx corresponded with each other — and even that they were friendly. Here is a prime example, at the Washington Post: You know who was into Karl Marx? No, not AOC. Abraham Lincoln., by Gillian Brockell, subtitled "The two men were friendly and influenced each other".
Whenever these claims appear, they are usually greeted with glee, seldom with skepticism, and rarely with refutation.
Refutation follows.
On the Alleged Correspondence
If Lincoln had written to Marx, surely those letters would be among the most famous letters in the history of the world. Lincoln enthusiasts would be able to quote from them by heart, and Marxists all over the world would proudly display them, with translations, on their websites. Moreover, college professors of history, economics, and sociology — and many other disciplines, too, perhaps — would talk about them every semester.
But nobody ever quotes from Lincoln’s letters to Marx! Why? Because no such letters exist, or ever existed: Abraham Lincoln did not write to Karl Marx.
In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, comprising eight volumes, no letters to Karl Marx are to be found.
In The Lincoln Log, a day-by-day chronology of Lincoln’s life — including his letter writing — no reference to Karl Marx is to be found.
In Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (1996), by Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher — a thorough reckoning of statements alleged to have been spoken by Lincoln to relatives, friends, and acquaintances — no mention of Karl Marx is to be found.
So, among Lincoln’s written and spoken words, no trace of Karl Marx can be found. But what do those who have taken a careful, thorough look at Lincoln’s life have to say about him and Karl Marx? Let’s see.
The followng are full biographies of Abraham Lincoln, works recounting his whole life from birth to death:
The publication of those biographies spans 13 decades: Karl Marx is not mentioned in any of them.
On the Alleged Friendship
As we can see from the article referenced above, claims that Lincoln and Marx corresponded are occasionally one-upped by the claim that they were "friendly" or even "friends". But this claim is, and must be, based on the notion that they exchanged letters: in the mid-19th Century, how else could they have become friends across the Atlantic? Since we have already seen that Abraham Lincoln never wrote to Karl Marx, and that reputable full biographies of Lincoln do not even mention Marx, this claim of friendship must be false.
The Source of These Bogus Claims
Where in the world does this idea come from, then, that Lincoln and Marx engaged in a friendly correspondence?
In November 1864, Karl Marx drafted a letter to President Lincoln on behalf of the Central Council of the International Workingmen’s Association, congratulating the American people on Lincoln’s re-election. The letter was delivered by a delegation of the Central Council to America’s ambassador in England, Charles Francis Adams (son of former American president John Quincy Adams, with whom Lincoln had sat in Congress). The letter was eventually published in The Bee-Hive, a short-lived British publication, on November 7, 1865.
Note well, the letter was written by Marx, but it was not a letter from Marx: it was a letter from the Central Council, signed by the following individuals:
Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;
George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.
Authorship cannot be determined from the letter itself: we only know Karl Marx wrote the letter from minutes of the Central Council’s meetings.
The ambassador replied, January 28, 1865:
Sir:
I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United States, has been received by him.
So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.
The Government of the United States has a clear consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.
Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams
The ambassador’s reply is largely diplomatic boilerplate. Whether Abraham Lincoln himself personally read the Central Council’s congratulatory message — among the thousands of such messages he received from all around the world — simply cannot be determined.
That’s it, that’s all: a letter to Pres. Lincoln, signed by Karl Marx among dozens of other signatories, and a reply from the American ambassador.
Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx did not exchange letters, nor did they consider themselves to be friends.
© 2020 E. L. Core.