Letter to Karl Marx, March 5, 1862

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 5 March 1862


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Manchester, 5 March 1862

Dear Moor,

Enclosed POST OFFICE ORDER for £2, Camden Town. The book went off long ago, i.e. on 9 October, in a parcel to our agent E. Schröder in Amsterdam, and was enclosed in bale no. 118 for B. ter Haar and Son of that city. I enclosed a note to Schröder at the time, asking him to see to the thing. Everything was correctly addressed to your cousin;[2] so all he can do, if he hasn't got it yet, is approach Schröder.

You shall have the article.[3] The braggarts of the South are now getting a splendid thrashing. Most cheering of all is the reception met with everywhere by the gunboats on the Tennessee river as far up as Florence, Alabama (here the mussel shoals begin, disrupting navigation). So in west Tennessee, in the plains, the majority is also decidedly pro-Union. 15,000 prisoners, including Johnston, the Confederates' best general, who decided Bull Run by his rapid concentration on the centre, is no laughing matter.[4]

I shall be seeing Lupus this evening. If he can advance me something until 1 July, I shall get it for you. I myself shall be au sec[5] until then. Should there be [no] peace or some other settlement in America, it may well be that my total income from 1 July 1861-62 will be reduced to £100 and I shall thus run into debt. We have a whole heap of goods and can't sell a thing and, if we are saddled with them until matters in America have been straightened out, we are likely to lose all the profit made up till the end of December.[6] However, I imagine the scrap will continue, for I don't see how the fellows can make peace.

What's this about a Russian island off Korea?[7] And what's this about occupations in Java? (QUERY Japan?) Je n'en sais rien. How about the Free Press?

By the way, according to your figures, trade with China has surely increased significantly. 10 years ago, if I remember rightly, it alternated between 1 and 3 millions.

How is little Jenny? Warm regards to her, your wife and Laura.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ An extract from this letter was first published in English in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, New York, 1937
  2. ↑ August Philips
  3. ↑ On 7 March Engels wrote the first part of the article requested by Marx, and on 18 March probably the second part (see p. 351). However, the Tribune did not publish this article. Engels made use of the first part for his article 'The War in America' (see present edition, Vol. 18) published in The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire on 14 March 1862. Marx translated the text intended for the Tribune into German, added more recent data and sent the text to Die Presse, which published it on 26 and 27 March 1862 (see 'The American Civil War', present edition, Vol. 19).
  4. ↑ Engels means the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and the Cumberland by the Federals under Grant in February 1862. For details see the article 'The American Civil War' by Marx and Engels (present edition, Vol. 19). There are two inaccuracies in Engels' letter here. In the fighting referred to, the Southern troops were commanded, not by J. E. Johnston, who had won the battle of Bull Run, but by A. S. Johnston. Moreover, the latter had not been taken prisoner, as reported in The Times of 5 March 1862, which Engels read, but had withdrawn. The Times had given Johnston's name without his initials, and this misled Engels.
    The battle fought on the Bull Run river near Manassas, Virginia, on 21 July 1861 was the first major engagement of the US Civil War. The Federal army was defeated by the Secessionist forces.
  5. ↑ without cash
  6. ↑ Engels means the cotton crisis produced by the interruption in the supply of American cotton during the US Civil War (1861-65) as a result of the blockade of the southern ports by the Union's navy. The cotton shortage came on the eve of, and interlocked with, a production glut.
  7. ↑ See this volume, p. 345.