Letter to Friedrich Engels, May 26, 1864

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 May 1864


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] Thursday, 26 May 1864

Dear Frederick,

It came as a very 'pleasant' surprise this morning (I had not been able to sleep the preceding night) to find my chest again adorned with two 'charming' FURUNCLES. Will you consult Gumpert as to what I should do? I don't want to take iron since I already have a tendency to cerebral congestion. Nor do I wish to go to Allen, there being nothing I dread so much as having to recommence a regular course of treatment, thus disrupting my present work, and I simply must get the thing done at long last.[2]

Despite all that people said about how well I looked, I have all the while felt there was SOMETHING WRONG and the tremendous resolution I have to summon up before I can tackle more difficult subjects also contributes to this sense of inadequacy. You EXCUSE THIS SPINOZISTIC TERM. Have OUR POOR Lupus's books been sent off to London? I am worried about their non-arrival because—or so I understood—your WAREHOUSEMEN were supposed to have sent them off on Thursday (last).

WHAT DO YOU SAY OF GRANTS OPERATIONS? All that The Times chooses to admire, OF COURSE, is Lee's strategy disguised as RETREATS.[3] Says Tussy this morning, 'IT CONSIDERS THIS VERY CANNY, I DARESAY.' There's nothing I would be happier to see than success for Butler. It would be of inestimable value, were he to enter Richmond first. It would be bad if Grant had to retreat, BUT I THINK THAT FELLOW KNOWS WHAT HE IS ABOUT. It is to him, at any rate, that credit is due for the first Kentucky campaign, Vicksburg and the drubbing Bragg received in Tennessee.

Enclosed a note from Jones, in view of which you will, no doubt, be able to invite him FOR ANOTHER DAY.[4]

The WHOLE FAMILY send you their regards.

Your

K. M.

  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. ↑ In late July or in August 1863 a new stage began in Marx's work on Capital, when he rewrote the 1861-63 manuscript (see Note 310) producing, by the beginning of 1866, a third rough draft of the theoretical part of Capital (three books). In the present letter Marx writes about his work on Book I.
  3. ↑ The Times, 25 and 26 May 1864, leading articles.
  4. ↑ Marx means his attempts to make the petty-bourgeois democrat Blind publicly admit that he, Blind, was the author of the anonymous flysheet Zur Warnung (see Note 4). This was essential because Vogt, in his pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, had attributed the flysheet to Marx. Marx also wished to expose, in the person of Blind, the cowardice of the petty-bourgeois democrats reluctant to come out openly against Bonapartist agents (see this volume, pp. 30-32 and 37, and present edition Vol. 17, pp. 111-32).