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Title: Address of the International Working Men’s Association to President Johnson (1865)
Description: Address written by Marx for the Central Council of the International on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln: the slaveholders’ rebellion ends in infamy, and two men of labour have led the American people into the new era of the emancipation of labour.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1865-05-13
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1865%20Address%20of%20the%20International%20Working%20Men%27s%20Association%20to%20President%20Johnson
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*Written by Karl Marx between May 2 and 9, 1865, adopted by the Central Council of the International Working Men’s Association and sent to the United States Legation in London; published in* The Bee-Hive Newspaper*, No. 188, May 20, 1865. Text as printed in* The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln … Expressions of Condolence and Sympathy Inspired by These Events *(Washington, Government Printing Office, 1867), pp. 266-267 (scan in the Internet Archive), compared with the German translation in Marx/Engels,* Werke*, vol. 16 (Berlin, 1962), pp. 98-99. The misspellings of several names in the list of signatures are those of that edition; one misprint has been corrected (“Gerard” for “Gerards”). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1865%20Mensaje%20de%20la%20Asociaci%C3%B3n%20Internacional%20de%20los%20Trabajadores%20al%20presidente%20Johnson).*

*London, W., 18 Greek street, May 13, 1865.*

Sir: The demon of the peculiar institution, for the supremacy of which the South rose in arms, would not allow his worshippers to honorably succumb in the open field. What he had begun in treason he must needs end in infamy. As Phillip Second’s war for the inquisition bred a Gerard, thus Jefferson Davis’s pro-slavery war a Booth.

It is not our part to cull 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, stuck 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 favor, 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 humor; 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.

To be singled out by the side of such a chief, the second victim to the infernal gods of slavery, was an honor due to Mr. Seward. Had he not, at a time of general hesitation, the sagacity to foresee and the manliness to foretell “the irrepressible conflict?” Did he not, in the darkest hours of that conflict, prove true to the Roman duty to never despair of the republic and its stars? We earnestly hope that he and his son will be restored to health, public activity, and well deserved honors within much less than “ninety days.”

After a tremendous civil war, but which, if we consider its vast dimensions and its broad scope, and compare it to the Old World’s one hundred years’ wars, and thirty years’ wars, and twenty-three years’ wars, can hardly be said to have lasted ninety days. Yours, sir, has become the task to uproot by the law what has been felled by the sword, to preside over the arduous work of political reconstruction and social regeneration. A profound sense of your great mission will save you from any compromise with stern duties. You will never forget that, to initiate the new era of the emancipation of labor, the American people devolved the responsibilities of leadership upon two men of labor, the one Abraham Lincoln, the other Andrew Johnson.

Signed, on behalf of the International Working Men’s Association, by the central council:

Charles Kaub. Edwin Coulson. Ferd. Lessner. Carl Pfaender. N. P. Hansen. Karl Schapper. William Dell. George Lockner. George Eccarius. John Asbeun. Emill Hattorp, *Secretary for Poland.* Karl Marx, *Secretary for Germany.* George William Wheeler. J. Whitlock, *Financial Secretary.* P. Petersen. Alo Fänko. Eugene Dupont, *Secretary for France.* Hy Jung, *Secretary for Switzerland.* W. H. Cremer, *Honorary General Sec’y.* H. Cluwosky. John Weston. Henry Bolleter. Benjamin Lucrapt. James Buckley. Peter Fox. N. Salvatella. George Howell. Bordage. A. Valtier. Robert Shaw. John H. Longmaid. M. Morgan. John D. Nicass. William C. Worley. Dixon Stawtz. G. T. de Lassarie. J. Carter. G. Adger, *President.*

Andrew Johnson, *President of the United States.*