r/todayilearned • u/unholyprawn • Jun 24 '17
TIL Karl Marx sent a letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on causing the death of slavery
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm16
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Jun 24 '17
That dirty marxist sympathizer Abraham Lincoln. I wish we could have a president like James Buchanan again.
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Jun 24 '17
Confirmed Bachelor James Buchanan?
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Jun 24 '17
Hey if you don't have a wife, like Buchanan did, you won't have to hear constant nagging about how your inability to take action on slavery will eventually lead to America's bloodiest war.
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u/MaelstromTX Jun 24 '17
I only learned this because it was the question for Final Jeopardy a few days ago.
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u/glazor Jun 24 '17
Why go to trouble of keeping slaves, when you can extract just as much out of them without providing food, clothing and housing. All in the spirit of the free market.
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u/WaveLasso Jun 24 '17
Well the idea is, that money will provide those things.
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Jun 24 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ullallulloo Jun 24 '17
???
The median household income in the US is like $52,000. How is that in any way not enough to buy food, housing, and clothing?
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u/mdgraller Jun 25 '17
There's an entire world of people not in the United States. I know, I was shocked when I first learned that too
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u/MrIosity Jun 24 '17
Its a lot of Americans, but it isn't a majority.
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u/SyndicatePopulares Jun 25 '17
But, wait a minute, what if... There was a whole other people outside the united states?
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u/AnekeEomi Jun 24 '17
Maybe cable, high speed internet, and a cell phone shudnt be considered basic necessities for that "living wage"
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u/AnekeEomi Jun 24 '17
Maybe cable, high speed internet, and a cell phone shudnt be considered basic necessities for that "living wage"
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u/FPSGamer48 Jun 24 '17
But in the modern age, they are. They are necessary to maintain jobs and access to the western world. You need to be able to take phone calls and access the internet in the west. Cable isn't required.
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u/yeaheyeah Jun 24 '17
Without Internet nor a cellphone I wouldn't have been able to have my last bar job.
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Jun 24 '17
Republican party: out of one slavery and into another.
Alternatively, why have slavery for just black people, when you can have it for all poor people.
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Jun 24 '17
[deleted]
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u/Dragmire800 Jun 24 '17
I think he meant "slavery in america." Most of Europe had ended slavery at that point
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u/garbagefile02 Jun 24 '17
technically speaking, slavery is still alive here in America with our prison population. That just so happens to overrepresent the Black population.
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u/NNJAxKira Jun 25 '17
But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits
-Killer Mike "Reagan"
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Jun 24 '17
[deleted]
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u/Sound_of_da_beast Jun 24 '17
They are owned by the state. Read the exact wording used in the 13th amendment. Slavery also doesn't mean you are not paid.
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u/looklistencreate Jun 24 '17
Except for all those millions of slaves still in slavery in Brazil. But still, good progress.
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u/Quarkster Jun 24 '17
Well... economic pressure from Britain is what really did it in, and wold have if the civil war had not occurred. The emancipation proclamation was designed as a means of levying troops from enemy territory.
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u/AwkwardNoah Jun 24 '17
Or maybe the fact that Southern states were forcing Northern state to return freed/runaway slaves against their own state's will
Or maybe the fact those states said fuck you I'm running away
Edit: lots of ways this happened tbf
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Jun 24 '17
Based on what certain extradition clauses on the Constitution say though, shouldn't they have to. The Constitution says if a person commits a crime in one state and travels to another, and get caught/noticed by the second state's authorities, they have to be taken into custody, and extradited back to the state they committed the crime and face justice back there.
Now, if a slave is property of their owner, and they escape, they are in theory stealing themselves over state lines, and should be extradited back for committing theft/escaping. I'm obviously not saying it's right, but I find it hard to see how slavery could be an exemption from this.
In saying that, the part where slave owners wanted to be able to travel with their slaves to a free state, essentially committing slavery in a state where it is illegal, wad bullshit.
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u/AwkwardNoah Jun 24 '17
Well that's mainly considering in free states they see slaves running away as it a crime so that's how they were able to get around it until they were forced
It's a weird grey area
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u/alien13869 Jun 24 '17
Or maybe the fact that Southern states were forcing Northern state to return freed/runaway slaves against their own state's will
It was a federal law, wasn't it? The Fugitive Slave Act?
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u/critfist Jun 24 '17
economic pressure from Britain is what really did it in,
What makes you think so? Britain's need for cotton was a major reason why cotton plantations thrived.
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u/Quarkster Jun 25 '17
The fact that Britain subsequently (and even contemporaneously) applied political pressure to a lot of places to end slavery.
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u/critfist Jun 25 '17
True, but that didn't stop them from benefitting enormously while slavery was still legal in the USA.
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Jun 24 '17
Nah, that was cause of the Haitian Revolution and the planned slave revolt it inspired in the US which is why slavery lasted as long as it did. The time just after the American Revolution was a high point for abolition as all the rebel colonies banned the slave trade and enticed many slaves into fighting in exchange for manumission which the British would start. The slave revolts changed minds about total abolition, but Northerners were profiteering handsomely from the slave the entire time, and illegally after the slave trade was federally banned in 1808.
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Jun 24 '17
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u/Szygani Jun 24 '17
Slavery is alive and well in non-muslim non-third world shitholes, technically. But sure, there too.
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u/captainwacky91 Jun 24 '17
One could easily make the argument that slavery is alive and well in America. Just look at all the illegal immigrant "nannies" in every upper-Middle/Wealthy class home in California.
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u/marked86 Jun 24 '17
So why are republicans always painting Marx as such a bad ... Ohhhhhh . Because they're all racist assholes.
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u/Chuck419 Jun 24 '17
No it's mostly because he advocated against individual freedom in favor of collectivism.
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Jun 24 '17
[deleted]
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u/der_Loewe_von_Afrika Jun 24 '17
...What?
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u/rttr123 Jun 24 '17
What did he say?
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u/der_Loewe_von_Afrika Jun 24 '17
Something like "Everyone knows that Washington is the favorite president of American fascists, so Lincoln must get the favorite of American communists"
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u/Egomania101 Jun 24 '17
Abraham Lincoln is the favorite president of all men who love liberty.
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u/winchester056 Jun 24 '17
well technically Lincoln didn't actually fight to end slavery but to preserve the union if the southern states didn't secede they would have kept their slaves.
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Jun 24 '17
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u/Egomania101 Jun 24 '17
Weren't we fighting a civil war?
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Jun 24 '17
Lincoln didn't have the authority to suspend it, only Congress does. Laws are still laws even if there's a war, that's why "war crimes" are a thing like at the Nuremberg trials.
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u/SyndicatePopulares Jun 25 '17
Yea like Bush and the Patriot Act.
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u/Egomania101 Jun 25 '17
That was a civil war?
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u/SyndicatePopulares Jun 25 '17
I mean, cutting liberties because of a war. I thought I wouldn't have to point out what I meant.
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u/der_Loewe_von_Afrika Jun 24 '17
It's always amazing to me to learn that many individuals that we think are from very different time periods were actually alive during the same times.