Socialism and the American Revolution

A Dossier

309 min readJul 4, 2018

CLIME of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave,
Was Freedom’s home or Glory’s grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave;
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free, —
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis!
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame;
For Freedom’s battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
— Lord Byron, from “The Giaour”
IS this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?
— John Greenleaf Whittier, from “Stanzas for the Times”
If we should fail here in America, then six thousand years of history will have failed; for history has come to its limit on the shores of the Pacific; it has come back to its starting point. If we fail, the heart of the world will break again, and another cycle of history, with its weary procession of bleeding centuries, will have to begin. But we cannot fail, we dare not fail. Liberty, fraternity, and equality are not tantalisms to hopeless human suffering; they are ideals to be realized by human worth and effort. We must prove our worth and power to match these ideals.
— George Herron, from “Why I am a Socialist”

Preface

I created this as a birthday gift, for myself, my country, and my comrades.

As Debs put it,

I am a patriot, but in the sense that I love all countries. I love the sentiment of William L. Garrison: ‘All the world is my country and all mankind are my countrymen.’ Thomas Jefferson once said: ‘Where liberty is, is my country.’ That is good. Thomas Paine said: ‘Where liberty is honored, that is my country.’ That is better. Where liberty is not, Socialism has a mission, and, therefore, the mission of Socialism is as wide as the world.

Though this document contains not an original word, I feel I have done something good for this world in compiling it. I hope you will all consider taking the time to read through it.

Consider our revolution comrades! The American revolution belongs to the people of the world! It is our hallowed duty to complete it, and to lay the memory of all who have suffered and died on its behalf — rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly — to rest.

The great task remaining before us is plain: to redeem those sacrifices by realizing the freedom those who came before us, and who suffer with us, did not and could not, do not and can not yet know.

To quote Langston Hughes:

O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME —
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

— Reid Kane Kotlas, July 4th, 2018

“THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!”

The great task remaining before us

The last stand of Providence

America was promises to whom?

“THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!”

Black Panther Party, “The Ten-Point Program”, 1966

1. We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.

We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We Want Full Employment For Our People.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.

We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.

We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.

We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

8. We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.

We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community.

10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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Thomas Paine, from the Appendix to the third edition of “Common Sense”, 1776

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months…

WHEREFORE, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND, and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.

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Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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Chief Joseph, from his Speech at Lincoln Hall, 1879

Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk.

Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.

You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.

I only ask of the government to be treated as all other men are treated. If I cannot go to my own home, let me have a home in a country where my people will not die so fast. I would like to go to Bitter Root Valley. There my people would be happy; where they are now they are dying. Three have died since I left my camp to come to Washington.

When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.

I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think, and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike — brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers’ hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

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Frederick Douglass, from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, 1852

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back…

On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness.

The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.

The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!

Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you…

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — “We have Washington to our father.” — Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.

The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival…

Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?

[…]

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.

Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped

To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered fights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end.
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

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Benjamin Rush, from his Address to the People of the United States, 1787

There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of the American revolution with those of the late American war. The American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.

The confederation, together with most of our state constitutions, were formed under very unfavourable circumstances. We had just emerged from a corrupted monarchy. Although we understood perfectly the principles of liberty, yet most of us were ignorant of the forms and combinations of power in republics. Add to this, the British army was in the heart of our country, spreading desolation wherever it went: our resentments, of course, were awakened. We detested the British name; and unfortunately refused to copy some things in the administration of justice and power, in the British government, which have made it the admiration and envy of the world. In our opposition to monarchy, we forgot that the temple of tyranny has two doors. We bolted one of them by proper restraints; but we left the other open, by neglecting to guard against the effects of our own ignorance and licentiousness…

The conduct of some of those strangers who have visited our country, since the peace, and who fill the British papers with accounts of our distresses, shews as great a want of good sense, as it does of good nature. They see nothing but the foundations and walls of the temple of liberty, and yet they undertake to judge of the whole fabric.

Our own citizens act a still more absurd part, when they cry out, after the experience of three or four years, that we are not proper materials for republican government. Remember, we assumed these forms of government in a hurry, before we were prepared for them. Let every man exert himself in promoting virtue and knowledge in our country, and we shall soon become good republicans. Look at the steps by which governments have been changed, or rendered stable in Europe. Read the history of Great Britain. Her boasted government has risen out of wars, and rebellions that lasted above sixty years. The united states are travelling peaceably into order and good government. They know no strife — but what arises from the collision of opinions: and in three years they have advanced further in the road to stability and happiness, than most of the nations in Europe have done, in as many centuries…

I am extremely sorry to find a passion for retirement so universal among the patriots and heroes of the war. They resemble skilful mariners, who, after exerting themselves to preserve a ship from sinking in a storm, in the middle of the ocean, drop asleep as soon as the waves subside, and leave the care of their lives and property, during the remainder of the voyage, to sailors, without knowledge or experience. Every man in a republic is public property. His time and talents — his youth — his manhood — his old age — nay more, life, all, belong to his country.

PATRIOTS of 1774, 1775, 1778 — HEROES of 1778, 1779, 1780! come forward! your country demands your services! — Philosophers and friends to mankind, com forward! your country demands your studies and speculations! Lovers of peace and order, who declined taking part in the late war, come forward! your country forgives your timidity, and demands your influence and advice! Hear her proclaiming, in sighs and groans, in her governments, in her finances, in her trade, in her manufactures, in her morals, and in her manners, “THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!”

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Thomas Jefferson, from “Notes on the State of Virginia”, 1781

[W]ith what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. — But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

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Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Frances Wright, August 7, 1825

my own health is very low, not having been able to leave the house for 3. months, and suffering much at times. in this state of body and mind, your letter could not have found a more inefficient counsellor, one scarcely able to think or to write. at the age of 82. with one foot in the grave, and the other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man, not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter, and which has been thro’ life that of my greatest anxieties. the march of events has not been such as to render it’s completion practicable within the limits of time alloted to me; and I leave it’s accomplishment as the work of another generation. and I am cheared when I see that on which it is devolved, taking it up with so much good will, and such mind engaged in it’s encoragement. the abolition of the evil is not impossible: it ought never therefore to be despaired of. every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object. that which you propose is well worthy of tryal. it has succeeded with certain portions of our white brethren, under the care of a [Christian communist George] Rapp and an [Utopian Socialist Robert] Owen; and why may it not succeed with the man of colour? an opinion is hasarded by some, but proved by none, that moral urgencies are not sufficient to induce him to labor; that nothing can do this but physical coercion. but this is a problem which the present age alone is prepared to solve by experiment. it would be a solecism to suppose a race of animals created, without sufficient foresight and energy to preserve their own existence. it is disproved too by the fact that they exist, and have existed thro’ all the ages of history. we are not sufficiently acquainted with all the nations of Africa to say that there may not be some, in which habits of industry are established, and the arts practised which are necessary to render life comfortable. the experiment now in progress in St Domingo, those of Sierra Leone and Cape Mesurado are but beginning. your proposition has it’s aspects of promise also; and should it not answer fully to calculations in figures, it may yet, in it’s developments, lead to happy results. these however I must leave to another generation. the enterprise of a different, but yet important character, in which I have embarked, too late in life, I find more than sufficient to occupy the enfeebled energies remaining to me, and that to divert them to other objects, would be a desertion of these. you are young, dear Madam, and have powers of mind which may do much in exciting others in this arduous task. I am confident they will be so exerted, and I pray to heaven for their success, and that you may be rewarded with the blessings which such efforts merit.

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The great task remaining before us

Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions”: Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, 1838

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected.

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. — We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them — they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it? — At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana; — they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning suns of the latter; — they are not the creature of climate — neither are they confined to the slave-holding, or the non-slave- holding States. Alike, they spring up among the pleasure hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order loving citizens of the land of steady habits. — Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

It would be tedious, as well as useless, to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi, and at St. Louis, are, perhaps, the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case, they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers; a set of men, certainly not following for a livelihood, a very useful, or very honest occupation; but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature, passed but a single year before. Next, negroes, suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection, were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State: then, white men, supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers, from neighboring States, going thither on business, were, in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.

Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short; and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic, if anything of its length, that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man, by the name of McIntosh, was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world.

Such are the effects of mob law; and such as the scenes, becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order; and the stories of which, have even now grown too familiar, to attract any thing more, than an idle remark.

But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, “What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” I answer, it has much to do with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil; and much of its danger consists, in the proneness of our minds, to regard its direct, as its only consequences. Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg, was of but little consequence. They constitute a portion of population, that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept, from the stage of existence, by the plague or small pox, honest men would, perhaps, be much profited, by the operation. — Similar too, is the correct reasoning, in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life, by the perpetration of an outrageous murder, upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city; and had not he died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law, in a very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was, as it could otherwise have been. — But the example in either case, was fearful. — When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. — By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. — Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.

I know the American People are much attached to their Government; — I know they would suffer much for its sake; — I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.

Here then, is one point at which danger may be expected.

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; — let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap — let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. — I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.

But, it may be asked, why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not for fifty times as long?

We hope there is no sufficient reason. We hope all dangers may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise, would itself be extremely dangerous. There are now, and will hereafter be, many causes, dangerous in their tendency, which have not existed heretofore; and which are not too insignificant to merit attention. That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one. — Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. Their allwas staked upon it: — their destiny was inseparably linked with it. Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition, which had hitherto been considered, at best no better, than problematical; namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be revered and sung, and toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful; and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true, that with the catching, end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

Here, then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as could not have well existed heretofore.

Another reason which once was; but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were, for the time, in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive; while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it.

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read; — but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. — But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone. — They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. — Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

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Alexander Stephens, The “Corner Stone” Speech, March 1861

The new constitution [of the Confederate States of America] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

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Abraham Lincoln, Special Session Message on July 4th, 1861

It may be affirmed without extravagance that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration. So large an army as the Government has now on foot was never before known without a soldier in it but who had taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this, there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly competent to administer the Government itself. Nor do I say this is not true also in the army of our late friends, now adversaries in this contest; but if it is, so much better the reason why the Government which has conferred such benefits on both them and us should not be broken up. Whoever in any section proposes to abandon such a government would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is that he does it; what better he is likely to get in its stead; whether the substitute will give, or be intended to give, so much of good to the people. There are some foreshadowings on this subject. Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words “all men are created equal.” Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit “We, the people,” and substitute “We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States.” Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, “American Civilization”, 1862

A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found, — a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal, — a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization. It is a vague, complex name, of many degrees. Nobody has attempted a definition. Mr. Guizot, writing a book on the subject, does not. It implies the evolution of a highly organized man, brought to supreme delicacy of sentiment, as in practical power, religion, liberty, sense of honor, and taste. In the hesitation to define what it is, we usually suggest it by negations. A nation that has no clothing, no alphabet, no iron, no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call barbarous. And after many arts are invented or imported, as among the Turks and Moorish nations, it is often a little complaisant to call them civilized.

Each nation grows after its own genius, and has a civilization of its own. The Chinese and Japanese, though each complete in his way, is different from the man of Madrid or the man of New York. The term imports a mysterious progress. In the brutes is none; and in mankind, the savage tribes do not advance. The Indians of this country have not learned the white man’s work; and in Africa, the Negro of today is the Negro of Herodotus. But in other races the growth is not arrested; but the like progress that is made by a boy, “when he cuts his eye-teeth,” as we say, — childish illusions passing daily away, and he seeing things really and comprehensively, — is made by tribes. It is learning the secret of cumulative power, of advancing on one’s self. It implies a facility of association, power to compare, the ceasing from fixed ideas. The Indian is gloomy and distressed, when urged to depart from his habits and traditions. He is overpowered by the gaze of the white, and his eye sinks. The occasion of one of these starts of growth is always some novelty that astounds the mind, and provokes it to dare to change. Thus there is a Manco Capac at the beginning of each improvement, some superior foreigner importing new and wonderful arts, and teaching them. Of course, he must not know too much, but must have the sympathy, language, and gods of those he would inform. But chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.

Where shall we begin or end the list of those feats of liberty and wit, each of which feats made an epoch of history? Thus, the effect of a framed or stone house is immense on the tranquillity, power, and refinement of the builder. A man in a cave, or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves. But so simple a labor as a house being achieved, his chief enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the teeth of wild animals, from frost, sun stroke, and weather; and fine faculties begin to yield their fine harvest. Invention and art are born, manners and social beauty and delight. ‘T is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those towhead boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one, who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer’s iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.

When the Indian trail gets widened, graded, and bridged to a good road, — there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry. The building three or four hundred miles of road in the Scotch Highlands in 1726 to 1749 effectually tamed the ferocious clans, and established public order. Another step in civility is the change from war, hunting, and pasturage, to agriculture. Our Scandinavian forefathers have left us a significant legend to convey their sense of the importance of this step. “There was once a giantess who had a daughter, and the child saw a husbandman ploughing in the field. Then she ran and picked him up with her finger and thumb, and put him and his plough and his oxen into her apron, and carried them to her mother, and said, ‘Mother, what sort of a beetle is this that I found wriggling in the sand?’ But the mother said, ‘Put it away, my child; we must begone out of this land, for these people will dwell in it.’” Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy, augmented by cheapness, and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind, so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea, over land, and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine metre of civilization.

The division of labor, the multiplication of the arts of peace, which is nothing but a large allowance to each man to choose his work according to his faculty, to live by his better hand, fills the State with useful and happy laborers, — and they, creating demand by the very temptation of their productions, are rapidly and surely rewarded by good sale: and what a police and ten commandments their work thus becomes! So true is Dr. Johnson’s remark, that “men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are making money.”

The skilful combinations of civil government, though they usually follow natural leadings, as the lines of race, language, religion, and territory, yet require wisdom and conduct in the rulers, and in their result delight the imagination. “We see insurmountable multitudes obeying, in opposition to their strongest passions, the restraints of a power which they scarcely perceive, and the crimes of a single individual marked and punished at the distance of half the earth.” *[Dr. Thomas Brown.]

Right position of woman in the State is another index. Poverty and industry with a healthy mind read very easily the laws of humanity, and love them: place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought it a sufficient definition of civilization to say, it is the influence of good women.

Another measure of culture is the diffusion of knowledge, overrunning all the old barriers of caste, and, by the cheap press, bringing the university to every poor man’s door in the newsboy’s basket. Scraps of science, of thought, of poetry are in the coarsest sheet, so that in every house we hesitate to tear a newspaper until we have looked it through.

The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgement and compend of a nation’s arts: the ship steered by compass and chart, longitude reckoned by lunar observation, and, when the heavens are hid, by chronometer; driven by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast distances from home,

“The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.”

No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful skill whereby the engine in its constant working was made to produce two hundred gallons of fresh water out of salt water, every hour, — thereby supplying all the ship’s want.
The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains himself; the chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and yield a revenue, and, better than that, made a reform school, and a manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water out of salt: all these are examples of that tendency to combine antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high civilization.

Civilization is the result of highly complex organization. In the snake, all the organs are sheathed: no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird and beast, the organs are released, and begin to play. In man, they are all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this unswaddling, he receives the absolute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true liberty.

Climate has much to do with this melioration. The highest civility has never loved the hot zones. Wherever snow falls, there is usually civil freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent and pampered at the cost of higher qualities: the man is grasping, sensual, and cruel. But this scale is by no means invariable. For high degrees of moral sentiment control the unfavorable influences of climate; and some of our grandest examples of men and of races come from the equatorial regions, — as the genius of Egypt, of India, and of Arabia.

These feats are measures or traits of civility; and temperate climate is an important influence, though not quite indispensable, for there have been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics. But one condition is essential to the social education of man, — namely, morality. There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name, but sometimes the point of honor, as in the institution of chivalry; or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman republics; or the enthusiasm of some religious sect which imputes its virtue to its dogma; or the cabalism, or esprit du corps, of a masonic or other association of friends.

The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels. It must be catholic in aims. What is moral? It is the respecting in action catholic or universal ends. Hear the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct: “Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.”

Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe chopping upward chips and slivers from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until, one day, he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel: the river is good-natured, and never hints an objection.

We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and it was always going our way, — just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection, — he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread, — and it went like a charm.

I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus embraces the assistance of the moon, like a hired band, to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing.

Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived to put the diameter of the earth’s orbit, say two hundred millions of miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line afforded him a respectable base for his triangle.

All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained paths, — neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote of dust.

And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature walled in on every side, as Donne wrote, —

— “unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”

but when his will leans on a principle, when he is the vehicle of ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. “It was a great instruction,” said a saint in Cromwell’s war, “that the best courages are but beams of the Almighty.” Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way, — Charles’s Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: — every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote, — justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.

If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the path of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the powers of darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise Government puts fines and penalties on pleasant vices. What a benefit would the American Government, now in the hour of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village, and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? — “he got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much.” Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

These are traits, and measures, and modes; and the true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops, — no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I see the immense material prosperity, — towns on towns, states on states, and wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities, California quartz-mountains dumped down in New York to be re-piled architecturally along-shore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again. But it is not New-York streets built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston, — not these that make the real estimation. But, when I look over this constellation of cities which animate and illustrate the land, and see how little the Government has to do with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed all families are, — knots of men in purely natural societies, — societies of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight of opinion, of longer or better-directed industry, the refining influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes open to youth and labor, — when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person whom all men consider lives affectionately with scores of excellent people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue, and in the symmetry and force of their qualities, I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.

In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual steps. The appearance of the Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddha, — in Greece, of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and of the Stoic Zeno, — in Judea, the advent of Jesus, — and in modern Christendom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther, are causal facts which came to forward races to new convictions, and elevate the rule of life. In the presence of these agencies, it is frivolous to insist on the invention of printing or gunpowder, of steam-power or gas light, percussion-caps and rubber-shoes, which are toys thrown off from that security, freedom, and exhilaration which a healthy morality creates in society. These arts add a comfort and smoothness to house and street life; but a purer morality, which kindles genius, civilizes civilization, casts backward all that we held sacred into the profane, as the flame of oil throws a shadow when shined upon by the flame of the Bude-light. Not the less the popular measures of progress will ever be the arts and the laws.

But if there be a country which cannot stand any one of these tests, — a country where knowledge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law and statute-law, — where speech is not free, — where the post-office is violated, mail-bags opened, and letters tampered with, — where public debts and private debts outside of the State are repudiated, — where liberty is attacked in the primary institution of their social life, — where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman, — where the arts, such as they have, are all imported, having no indigenous life, — where the laborer is not secured in the earnings of his own hands, — where suffrage is not free or equal, — that country is, in all these respects, not civil, but barbarous, and no advantages of soil, climate, or coast can resist these suicidal mischiefs.

Morality is essential, and all the incidents of morality, — as, justice to the subject, and personal liberty. Montesquieu says — “Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free”; and the remark holds not less, but more, true of the culture of men than of the tillage of land. And the highest proof of civility is, that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
Our Southern States have introduced confusion into the moral sentiments of their people, by reversing this rule in theory and practice, and denying a man’s right to his labor. The distinction and end of a soundly constituted man is his labor. Use is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless plant, an idle animal, is not found in the universe. They are all toiling, however secretly or slowly, in the province assigned them, and to a use in the economy of’ the world, — the higher and more complex organizations to higher and more catholic service; and man seems to play a certain part that tells on the general face of the planet, — as if dressing the globe for happier races of his own kind, or, as we sometimes fancy, for beings of superior organization.

But thus use, labor of each for all, is the health and virtue of all beings. Ich Dien, I serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to volunteer the lowest service, — the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of all. Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery, — they call it an institution, I call it a destitution, — this stealing of men and setting them to work, — stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself; and for two or three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of rice, cotton, and sugar. And standing on this doleful experience, these people have endeavored to reverse the natural sentiments of mankind, and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and the well-being of a man to consist in eating the fruit of other men’s labor. Labor: a man coins himself into his labor, — turns his day, his strength, his thought, his affection into some product which remains as the visible sign of his power; and to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his past self to his future self, is the object of all government. There is no interest in any country so imperative as that of labor; it covers all, and constitutions and governments exist for that, — to protect and insure it to the laborer. All honest men are daily striving to earn their bread by their industry. And who is this who tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise, the constitution of human nature, and calls labor vile, and insults the faithful workman at his daily toil? I see for such madness no hellebore, — for such calamity no solution but servile war, and the Africanization of the country that permits it.

At this moment in America the aspects of political society absorb attention. In every house, from Canada to the Gulf, the children ask the serious father, — “What is the news of the war today? and when will there be better times?” The boys have no new clothes, no gifts, no journeys; the girls must go without new bonnets; boys and girls find their education, this year, less liberal and complete. All the little hopes that heretofore made the year pleasant are deferred. The state of the country fills us with anxiety and stern duties. We have attempted to hold together two states of civilization: a higher state, where labor and the tenure of land and the right of suffrage are democratical; and a lower state, in which the old military tenure of prisoners or slaves, and of power and land in a few hands, makes an oligarchy: we have attempted to hold these two states of society under one law. But the rude and early state of society does not work well with the later, nay, works badly, and has poisoned politics, public morals, and social intercourse in the Republic, now for many years.

The times put this question, — Why cannot the best civilization be extended over the whole country, since the disorder of the less civilized portion menaces the existence of the country? Is this secular progress we have described, this evolution of man to the highest powers, only to give him sensibility, and not to bring duties with it? Is he not to make his knowledge practical? to stand and to withstand? Is not civilization heroic also? Is it not for action? has it not a will? “There are periods,” said Niebuhr, “when something much better than happiness and security of life is attainable.” We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race; and a literal slavish following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the destinies of this people. The evil you contend with has taken alarming proportions, and you still content yourself with parrying the blows it aims, but, as if enchanted, abstain from striking at the cause.

If the American people hesitate, it is not for want of warning or advices. The telegraph has been swift enough to announce our disasters. The journals have not suppressed the extent of the calamity. Neither was there any want of argument or of experience. If the war brought any surprise to the North, it was not the fault of sentinels on the watch-towers, who had furnished full details of the designs, the muster, and the means of the enemy. Neither was anything concealed of the theory or practice of slavery. To what purpose make more big books of these statistics ? There are already mountains of facts, if any one wants them. But people do not want them. They bring their opinions into the world. If they have a comatose tendency in the brain, they are pro-slavery while they live; if of a nervous sanguineous temperament, they are abolitionists. Then interests were never persuaded. Can you convince the shoe interest, or the iron interest, or the cotton interest, by reading passages from Milton or Montesquieu? You wish to satisfy people that slavery is bad economy. Why, the “Edinburgh Review” pounded on that string, and made out its case forty years ago. A democratic statesman said to me, long since, that, if he owned the State of Kentucky, he would manumit all the slaves, and be a gainer by the transaction. Is this new? No, everybody knows it. As a general economy it is admitted. But there is no one owner of the State, but a good many small owners. One man owns land and slaves; another owns slaves only. Here is a woman who has no other property, — like a lady in Charleston I knew of, who owned fifteen chimney-sweeps and rode in her carriage. It is clearly a vast inconvenience to each of these to make any change, and they are fretful and talkative, and all their friends are; and those less interested are inert, and, from want of thought, averse to innovation. It is like free trade, certainly the interest of nations, but by no means the interest of certain towns and districts, which tariff feeds fat; and the eager interest of the few overpowers the apathetic general conviction of the many. Bank-notes rob the public, but are such a daily convenience that we silence our scruples, and make believe they are gold. So imposts are the cheap and right taxation; but by the dislike of people to pay out a direct tax, governments are forced to render life costly by making them pay twice as much, hidden in the price of tea and sugar.

In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare courage which dares commit itself to a principle, believing that Nature is its ally, and will create the instruments it requires, and more than make good any petty and injurious profit which it may disturb. There never was such a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet it are not set down in any history. We want men of original perception and original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality, namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race, can act in the interest of civilization. Government must not be a parish clerk, a justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the State, the absolute powers of a Dictator. The existing Administration is entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for its angelic virtue, compared with any executive experiences with which we have been familiar. But the times will not allow us to indulge in compliment. I wish I saw in the people that inspiration which, if Government would not obey the same, it would leave the Government behind, and create on the moment the means and executors it wanted. Better the war should more dangerously threaten us, — should threaten fracture in what is still whole, and punish us with burned capitals and slaughtered regiments, and so exasperate the people to energy, exasperate our nationality. There are Scriptures written invisibly on men’s hearts, whose letters do not come out until they are enraged. They can be read by war-fires, and by eyes in the last peril.

We cannot but remember that there have been days in American history, when, if the Free States had done their duty, Slavery had been blocked by an immovable barrier, and our recent calamities forever precluded. The Free States yielded, and every compromise was surrender, and invited new demands. Here again is a new occasion which Heaven offers to sense and virtue. It looks as if we held the fate of the fairest possession of mankind in our hands, to be saved by our firmness or to be lost by hesitation.

The one power that has legs long enough and strong enough to cross the Potomac offers itself at this hour; the one strong enough to bring all the civility up to the height of that which is best prays now at the door of Congress for leave to move. Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue. This is a progressive policy, — puts the whole people in healthy, productive, amiable position, — puts every man in the South in just and natural relations with every man in the North, laborer with laborer.

We shall not attempt to unfold the details of the project of emancipation. It has been stated with great ability by several of its leading advocates. I will only advert to some leading points of the argument, at the risk of repeating the reasons of others. **[I refer mainly to a Discourse by the Rev. M. D. Conway, delivered before the “Emancipation League,” in Boston, in January last.]

The war is welcome to the Southerner: a chivalrous sport to him, like hunting, and suits his semi-civilized condition. On the climbing scale of’ progress, he is just up to war, and has never appeared to such advantage as in the last twelve-month. It does not suit us. We are advanced some ages on the war-state, — to trade, art, and general cultivation. His laborer works for him at home, so that he loses no labor by the war. All our soldiers are laborers; so that the South, with its inferior numbers, is almost on a footing in effective war-population with the North. Again, as long as we fight without any affirmative step taken by the Government, any word intimating forfeiture in the rebel States of their old privileges under the law, they and we fight on the same side, for Slavery. Again, if we conquer the enemy, — what then? We shall still have to keep him under, and it will cost as much to hold him down as it did to let him down. Then comes the summer, and the fever will drive our soldiers home; next winter, we must begin at the beginning, and conquer him over again. What use, then, to take a fort, or a privateer, or get possession of an inlet, or to capture a regiment of rebels ?

But one weapon we hold which is sure. Congress can, by edict, as a part of the military defense which it is the duty of Congress to provide, abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we ought to pay for. Then the slaves near our armies will come to us: those in the interior will know in a week what their rights are, and will, where opportunity offers, prepare to take them. Instantly, the armies that now confront you must run home to protect their estates, and must stay there, and your enemies will disappear.

There can be no safety until this step is taken. We fancy that the endless debate, emphasized by the crime and by the cannons of this war, has brought the Free States to some conviction that it can never go well with us whilst this mischief of Slavery remains in our politics, and that by concert or by might we must put an end to it. But we have too much experience of’ the futility of an easy reliance on the momentary good dispositions of the public. There does exist, perhaps, a popular will that the Union shall not be broken, — that our trade, and therefore our laws, must have the whole breadth of the continent, and from Canada to the Gulf. But, since this is the rooted belief and will of the people, so much the more are they in danger, when impatient of defeats, or impatient of taxes, to go with a rush for some peace, and what kind of peace shall at that moment be easiest attained: they will make concessions for it, — will give up the slaves; and the whole torment of the past half century will come back to be endured anew.

Neither do I doubt, if such a composition should take place, that the Southerners will come back quietly and politely, leaving their haughty dictation. It will be an era of good feelings. There will be a lull after so loud a storm; and, no doubt, there will be discreet men from that section who will earnestly strive to inaugurate more moderate and fair administration of the Government, and the North will for a time have its full share and more, in place and counsel. But this will not last, — not for want of sincere good-will in sensible Southerners, but because Slavery will again speak through them its harsh necessity. It cannot live but by injustice, and it will be unjust and violent to the end of the world.

The power of Emancipation is this, that it alters the atomic social constitution of the Southern people. Now their interest is in keeping out white labor; then, when they must pay wages, their interest will be to let it in, to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to invite Irish, German, and American laborers. Thus, whilst Slavery makes and keeps disunion, Emancipation removes the whole objection to union. Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor white of the South, and identifies his interest with that of the Northern laborer.

Now, in the name of all that is simple and generous, why should not this great right be done? Why should not America be capable of a second stroke for the well-being of the human race, as eighty or ninety years ago she was for the first? an affirmative step in the interests of human civility, urged on her, too, not by any romance of sentiment, but by her own extreme perils? It is very certain that the statesman who shall break through the cobwebs of doubt, fear, and petty cavil that lie in the way, will be greeted by the unanimous thanks of mankind. Men reconcile themselves very fast to a bold and good measure, when once it is taken, though they condemned it in advance. A week before the two captive commissioners were surrendered to England, every one thought it could not be done: it would divide the North. It was done, and in two days all agreed it was the right action. And this action which costs so little (the parties injured by it being such a handful that they can very easily be indemnified) rids the world, at one stroke, of this degrading nuisance, the cause of war and ruin to nations. This measure at once puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the omnipotence of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest the blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages ? It is denying these that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks. But justice satisfies everybody, — white man, red man, yellow man, and black man. All like wages, and the appetite grows by feeding.

But this measure, to be effectual, must come speedily. The weapon is slipping out of our hands. “Time,” say the Indian Scriptures, “drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed, and which is delayed in the execution.”

I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple and beneficent thoroughly, which is the attribute of a moral action. An unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics or Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized reappear at every point, and will rule it. The end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis of all legislation. It is not free institutions, ‘t is not a republic, ‘t is not a democracy, that is the end, — no, but only the means. Morality is the object of government. We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is the consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and the afflictions of today, that the government of the world is moral, and does forever destroy what is not.

It is the maxim of natural philosophers, that the natural forces wear out in time all obstacles, and take place: and it is the maxim of history, that victory always falls at last where it ought to fall; or, there is perpetual march and progress to ideas. But, in either case, no link of the chain can drop out. Nature works through her appointed elements; and ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

Since the above pages were written, President Lincoln has proposed to Congress that the Government shall cooperate with any State that shall enact a gradual abolishment of Slavery. In the recent series of national successes, this Message is the best. It marks the happiest day in the political year. The American Executive ranges itself for the first time on the side of freedom. If Congress has been backward, the President has advanced. This state-paper is the more interesting that it appears to be the President’s individual act, done under a strong sense of duty. He speaks his own thought in his own style. All thanks and honor to the Head of the State! The Message has been received throughout the country with praise, and, we doubt not, with more pleasure than has been spoken. If Congress accords with the President, it is not yet too late to begin the emancipation; but we think it will always be too late to make it gradual. All experience agrees that it should be immediate. More and better than the President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this Message be, — but, we are sure, not more or better than he hoped in his heart, when, thoughtful of all the complexities of his position, he penned these cautious words.

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Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Robert Frost, from “The Black Cottage”, 1915

Whatever else the Civil War was for
It wasn’t just to keep the States together,
Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.
She wouldn’t have believed those ends enough
To have given outright for them all she gave.
Her giving somehow touched the principle
That all men are created free and equal.
And to hear her quaint phrases — so removed
From the world’s view to-day of all those things.
That’s a hard mystery of Jefferson’s.
What did he mean? Of course the easy way
Is to decide it simply isn’t true.
It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.
But never mind, the Welshman got it planted
Where it will trouble us a thousand years.
Each age will have to reconsider it.

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Abraham Lincoln, from his First Annual Message, December 1861

It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government — the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

From the first taking of our national census to the last are seventy years, and we find our population at the end of the period eight times as great as it was at the beginning. The increase of those other things which men deem desirable has been even greater. We thus have at one view what the popular principle, applied to Government through the machiney, of the States and the Union, has produced in a given time, and also what if firmly maintained it promises for the future. There are already among us those who if the Union be preserved will live to see it contain 250,000,000. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day; it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

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Karl Marx, from Capital Volume 1, 1867

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared:

“The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working-day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained.”

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Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln, 1865

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding “the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution”, and maintained slavery to be “a beneficent institution”, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of “the relation of capital to labor”, and cynically proclaimed property in man “the cornerstone of the new edifice” — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

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Address of the International Working Men’s Association to the People of the United States of America, 1865

Citizens of the Great Republic!

Again we take the liberty of addressing you. Not this time in sympathy and sadness, but in words of congratulation.

Had we not deeply sympathised with you in your hours of sorrow, when enemies, both at home and abroad, were earnestly seeking the overthrow of your Government, and those principles of universal justice upon which it is based, we should not now have dared to congratulate you upon your success.

But we have never swerved in our fidelity to your cause, which also is the cause of our common humanity; nor did we fear its ultimate triumph, even in the darkest shadow of its adversity.

Firmly attached to, and believing in those principles of equality and common brotherhood for which you drew the sword, so did we believe that when the battle should have ended, and the victory have been won, that it would again be returned to its scabbard, peace restored to your borders, and rejoicing to the whole of your people.

Our anticipations have been justified, by the results. Your struggle is the only example on record in which the Government fought for the people’s liberty, against a section of its own citizens.

We have first to congratulate you that the war is ended, and the Union preserved. The stars and stripes once rudely torn down by your own sons, again flutter in the breeze, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, never again, we hope, to be insulted by your own children, or again to wave over fields of carnage, either by civil commotion or foreign war.

And may those misguided citizens who have displayed courage on the battle-field for an unhallowed cause, show equal avidity to aid in healing the breaches they have made, and in restoring peace to their common country.

We have next to congratulate you that the cause of these years of suffering is now removed — Slavery is no more. That dark spot on your otherwise fair escutcheon is blotted out for ever. No more shall the salesman’s hammer barter human flesh and blood in your market places, causing humanity to shudder at its cold barbarity.

Your noblest blood has been shed to wipe out these stains; desolation has spread its black pall over your land in atonement for its past history.

To-day you are free, purified by past suffering. A brighter future dawns upon your glorious Republic, teaching this lesson to the old world — That a Government of the People and by the People, is for the People; and not for a privileged few.

Since we have had the honour of expressing sympathy with your sufferings, a word of encouragement for your efforts, and of congratulation for the results, permit us also to add a word of counsel for the future.

As injustice to a section of your people has produced such direful results, let that cease. Let your citizens of to-day be declared free and equal, without reserve.

If you fail to give them citizens’ rights, while you demand citizens’ duties, there will yet remain a struggle for the future which may again stain your country with your people’s blood.

The eyes of Europe and of the world are fixed upon your efforts at re-construction, and enemies are ever ready to sound the knell of the downfall of republican institutions when the slightest chance is given.

We warn you then, as brothers in the common cause, to remove every shackle from freedom’s limb, and your victory will be complete.

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Address of the International Working Men’s Association to the National Labor Union of the United States, 1869

Fellow Workmen:

In the initiatory program of our Association we stated:

“It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic.”

Your turn has now come to stop a war the clearest result of which would be, for an indefinite period, to hurl back the ascendant movement of the working class on both sides of the Atlantic.

We need hardly tell you that there exist European powers anxiously bent upon hurrying the United States into a war with England. A glance at commercial statistics will show that the Russian export of raw produce, and Russia has nothing else to export, was rapidly giving way before American competition when the civil war suddenly turned the scales. To convert the American plowshares into swords would just now rescue from impending bankruptcy that despotic power which your republican statesmen have, in their wisdom, chosen for their confidential adviser. But quite apart from the particular interests of this or that government, is it not the general interest of our common oppressors to turn our fast-growing international cooperation into an internecine war?

In a congratulatory address to Mr. Lincoln on his reelection as president, we expressed our conviction that the American Civil War would prove of as great import to the advancement of the working class as the American War of Independence had proved to that of the middle class. And, in point of fact, the victorious termination of the antislavery war has opened a new epoch in the annals of the working class. In the States themselves, an independent working-class movement, looked upon with an evil eye by your old parties and their professional politicians, has since that date sprung into life. To fructify it wants years of peace. To crush it, a war between the Untied States and England is wanted.

The next palpable effect of the Civil War was, of course, to deteriorate the position of the American workman. In the United States, as in Europe, the monster incubus of a national debt was shifted from hand to hand, to settle down on the shoulders of the working class. The prices of necessaries, says one of your statesmen, have since 1860 risen 78 per cent, while the wages of unskilled labor rose 50 per cent, those of skilled labor 60 per cent only. “Pauperism,” he complains, “grows now in America faster than population.” Moreover, the suffering of the working of the working classes set off as a foil the newfangled luxury of financial aristocrats, shoddy aristocrats, and similar vermin bred by wars. Yet, for all this, the Civil War did compensate by freeing the slave and the consequent moral impetus it gave to your own class movement. A second war, not hallowed by a sublime purpose and a great social necessity, but of the Old World’s type, would forge chains for the free lborer instead of tearing asunder those of the slave. The accumulated misery left in its track would afford your capitalists at once the motive and the means of divorce the working class from its bold nd just aspirations by the soulless sword of a standing army.

On you, then, depends the glorious task to prove to the world that now at last the working classes are bestriding the scene of history no longer as servile retiners but as independent actors, conscious of their own responsibility, and able to command peace where their would-be masters shout war.

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The last stand of Providence

Eugene Debs, “The Fourth of July”, 1894

Mr. Samuel J. Niccolls, in the [St. Louis] Globe-Democrat of July 4th, has a paper captioned, “Thoughts for the Fourth,” and starts out as follows:

The Fourth of July, by unquestioned right, stands first among our national holidays. The great event which it commemorates must ever make it dear to all true Americans and lovers of liberty. Usually it has been celebrated with not a little boasting over our manifest destiny and our favored condition as a free people. But whatever we may think of our future as a nation, it would be idle to attempt to disguise the fact that the return of Independence Day this year finds us in a condition that excites distress and alarm among all serious-minded men. Our industries are prostrated, trade is paralyzed, capital is unemployed, labor is full of unrest and discontent, and hope for better times through long delays is sick and weak. There is a serious apprehension felt on all sides with reference to greater evils to come; nor can there be any relief until this apprehension is removed. Some urgent questions must be settled, and settled promptly and finally, before there can be a return to prosperity. It is indeed a most serious time with a people when they begin to distrust themselves and their institutions. Two things are specially manifest to all, and they are signs of evil import. One is the prevailing lawlessness of the times. In this respect our present condition furnishes a sad contrast with earlier periods in our national life. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the American people in the past has been their respect for law. Intelligent visitors from the Old World, where force plays such an important part in the preservation of public order, have observed this characteristic, and writers like De Tocqueville and Prof. Bryce have mentioned it to our praise.

The 4th day of July, as a national holiday, commemorates an event which ought to be very dear to American workingmen opposed to oppression, robbery, and degradation, because it was a day on which the people — at least a large majority of them — decided to strike against the laws, the authority, the government of England.

Prior to July 4th, 1776, the colonies were full of agitators. They defied courts and their injunctions. They flung defiance into the very teeth of the British king, his generals, and his soldiers. There was riot and bloodshed, battles, defeats, and victories. Washington and his compatriots were denounced as anarchists, nihilists, rebels, and traitors. Upon the heads of Hancock, Adams, Washington, and others a price was set, and if they had been caught they would have been unceremoniously shot to death or hanged. The Declaration of Independence recited the cause of the great strike for liberty. The authors of the strike knew there would be great inconvenience to the people of the colonies, that trade and commerce would be crippled; that untold sacrifices and sufferings would result, but the leaders did not heed such ravings. There was a principle involved, and they struck for a principle, and, moreover, these patriotic strikers started out early to enlist sympathy for their righteous cause. They wanted money, they wanted troops, they wanted ships of war, and France sympathized with the heroic, patriotic strikers, gave money, men, fleets, munitions of war, and by virtue of such sympathy and aid Washington eventually won the strike. At that time there were thousands of Tories in the colonies, despicable creatures who denounced the strike for liberty and independence, they denounced France for her sympathy and aid, and the colonists, who fought and suffered and bled and died were denounced as anarchists, traitors, enemies of their country and their countrymen. It was the greatest strike on record, and as a result of the strike conditions were greatly improved, a new nation was born, and England learned and the world learned that the strikers were not anarchists; that they were simply opposed to bad laws but were in favor of good laws, of good government, of being sovereign citizens instead of subjects and slaves, that they were opposed to degradation, and that their shibboleth was, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

The strike of which we write began 118 years ago and continued about eight years, or until 1784, and from that day to the present, the American people have kept alive and vital the spirit of independence. They love liberty and hate tyrants. It does not matter to them who the tyrants are or what methods are employed to crush them, they will not yield their rights, their liberties, their independence and go down to degradation without a struggle. It is as Grant said, “The American way.”

We have no eulogies for old King George, but it is doubtless true, and easily demonstrated, that the American people now are confronted with enemies indefinitely more infamous than was King George and his advisers. Mr. Niccolls says:

But the outlook today reveals something widely different. Within the last ten years there have come among us those who are professedly anarchists. They are the avowed foes of all government, and are earnestly laboring to bring society into that disorganized and debased condition in which there shall be no law save that which seems best to each man. The murderous spirit which recently, through the hand of an assassin, struck down the chief magistrate of France,1 animates the bosoms of thousands in our own land. Nor is this spirit of lawlessness confined to those who openly declare that they seek the destruction of society. It is to be seen among those who would be indignant if classed with anarchists, but who, nevertheless, upon one pretext or another, combine to defeat law, in order to carry out their own selfish purposes. They organize to carry out their own ends, irrespective of the legal and social rights of others. It is simply anarchy in organized form, paradoxical as the statement may seem. Sometimes we see it among capitalists, who cloak their oppression and robbery under the disguise of law. Again, it is in the world of labor, where the laws that secure the rights of all are defied in the interests of an organized society.

We do not doubt that there are anarchists in the United States, and that some of them have been imported, the most of them by a class of capitalistic employers who, disregarding justice and the welfare of the state, raked the ranks of the most degraded localities of Europe for men who would work for less wages than were demanded by Americans, preferring to employ anarchists rather than patriotic workingmen, and yet, all of these imported Huns, Dagoes, Slavs, and Poles are not anarchists, and if they have been transformed into enemies of law and order, the employees who sought to degrade them more than when they landed upon our shores, are responsible. But the writer is unfortunate when he refers to the assassination of Carnot as indicating the spirit of imported workingmen. Booth, who assassinated Lincoln; Guiteau, who assassinated Garfield; Prendergast, who assassinated Mayor Harrison, were not importations, but native assassins — anarchists, if the term better expresses the infamy of their acts.

Anarchists, wherever found are the outgrowth of conditions; necessarily so. They are the effect of a cause, as, for instance, President Cleveland said the widespread demoralization in finances and industries which began in 1893 was chiefly owing to congressional legislation. In this we have the cause. Multiplied thousands of idle, hungry, ragged, desperate men is the effect, not the only effect, because such conditions produce or are likely to produce, anarchists. It does not matter in what country or under what form of government the conditions exist, the effect, while human nature remains as it is, will be practically the same. As, for instance, if the republic of the United States of America was Russianized, the mere fact of calling it a republic will not prevent nihilism. Arbitrary, despotic tyranny will produce anarchists. Bad laws enacted, under cover of which, courts, governors, and presidents issue despotic decrees which crush the masses and protect plutocrats, trusts, and corporations, will now, as certainly as in 1774–84 produce rebellion. There is always a limit beyond which, if arbitrary power is exerted, the consequences will necessitate martial law, which being no law at all, will be anarchism. True, the military power may restore order, but liberty will have taken to itself wings and will have flown away.

The grand old 4th of July, as a national holiday is a thing of the past. That men are “created equal” is denounced as a vagary, the hallucination of a diseased brain, and the “ inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” have been relegated to the limbo of shams. Court injunctions spread out over the land like shrouds. The club of the deputy marshals and the rattling discharge of guns proclaim that the sacred institutions of the country are in peril; only plutocrats are happy as they behold the power of the government exerted to protect them in their piracies and spoliations.

Mr. Niccolls puts in a plea for labor; indeed it has become fashionable for writers and speakers to express a great deal of sympathy for labor. They deplore the degradation of the masses — shed tears at the wails of the idle, the starving, the ragged, homeless victims of oppression are wafted on every wind that blows over the country — in fact, endorse strikes and declare them good things to have, but when the strike inconveniences the public and the plutocratic pirates who are responsible for the strike, then, in that supreme hour, presto! the strikers become anarchists and to shoot them down as if they were coyotes is applauded to the echo.

No fair-minded man can help sympathizing with the wage-earners, who constitute the large bulk of society, in their efforts to secure themselves from the oppression of capital, and to obtain a fair share in the goods of this world. Undoubtedly many disabilities rest upon this class, and there are limitations which make their lot, at times, no enviable one. Those who are more fortunate in the possession of material wealth would be most selfish indeed, and untrue to what is best in our common humanity, if they failed to show to the great mass of the wage-earners their sympathy; or to aid them in their struggles to ameliorate their condition. But while this is true, it does not follow that we should permit our sympathies to blind us to the dangers and wrongs of many well meant, but misguided, movements in the world of labor. Within the last few months a civil war has been existing in some seven or eight states of our Union, and is now being carried on. There is a widespread and formidable insurrection against law now existing and actively propagated. This state of affairs has been plausibly disguised under the name of “strikes” A strike in one aspect of it is a perfectly proper and lawful affair. No one can question the right of one man or ten thousand to quit work, provided they have filled their contracts to their employers; and, furthermore, I do not hesitate to say, that there is something sublime and worthy of admiration, when thousands of men quit and choose to suffer hunger and privation In order that wrongs done to some of their number may be righted, or that those who have wronged them may be compelled to do them justice. If strikes were confined to this limit, no one could find fault, and no one need dread them, save selfish oppressors of the poor. But, unfortunately, strikes as they now exist, are very different things from this ideal one. They are movements that destroy the peace and subvert the social order of communities. Municipal, county, and even state authorities are helpless in the presence of the violence they inspire. They have no hesitancy in arraying themselves against national authority, and only submit in the presence of superior force.

In 1776 when the 4th of July became a national holiday the supreme idea was liberty, liberty as the patriotic colonists, not the Tories and traitors, understood the term. In 1894 the battle cry, not of Tories and traitors, but of patriotic wage-earners, is wages — for without honest wages comes poverty, degradation, and slavery; hence the strike, “something” the writer extols as sublime and worthy of admiration, until someone is inconvenienced, then troops are called out, not to protect but to overwhelm the men fighting for breath and bread, for wives, children, and homes. Surely, the 4th of July, 1894, was not a day for rejoicing. Millions of men’s hearts, like muffled drums, were beating funeral marches to the graves plutocrats were digging to bury the hopes, aspirations, and liberties of workingmen — and the plutocrats won the victory. What then? A nation of helots, of peons, pariahs, proletariasts — debased below the level of Russian serfs. What is the remedy? Some say the ballot — but under the sway of the ballot for more than a hundred years, we have achieved present conditions. But, says one, “vote for honest men.” That is what we have been doing for a hundred years — that is to say — voting for men said to be honest, and who were probably honest up to the time that the High Priests of Bullion tempted them with “thirty pieces of silver” or a railroad pass, and accepting the bribe they would, in obedience to their masters, have betrayed Jesus Christ, as they have betrayed those who had confidence in them.

But it is doubtless wise to try the ballot method of preserving something of the old glory of the 4th of July. There is little hope that anything very creditable can be accomplished, because the more men are debased, the more ready are they to sell their votes to the monsters who oppress them. Still, if the tyrannies of the present have sufficiently aroused the populace it is possible that honest men may be elected and the 4th of July rescued from eternal odium.

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Eugene Debs, “Liberty’s Anniversary”, July 4, 1895

Sitting in Woodstock Jail, behind prison bars, and permitting my fancy to have free rein, what more natural that to contemplate the resounding acclamations of a great nation celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of Liberty? What more natural than to commune with the dead, who, when living, in the spirit of heroism expanded to the full stature of patriots and dared all things, battles, wounds, imprisonment, confiscation, and death, to secure liberty for themselves and their posterity.

But in the midst of such ardent admiration of the men who wrested the scepter from England’s proud monarch and secured for the American people the priceless boon of liberty, I am compelled to ponder present conditions and ask myself, “What remains of the liberty thus secured for the American people? Why celebrate the ‘birthday’ of American liberty when Liberty itself lies cold and stiff and dead, stabbed to death by nine gowned and ermined men, who, if they have any mission connected with the affairs of the American people, it is to forever stand guard over their constitutional and unalienable rights.”

It has been regarded as a patriotic duty for Americans, on the 4th of July, to apostrophize Liberty and to select from the vocabularies of all languages eulogistic words to describe its value and its glory, and when words failed to express those essential attributes of liberty which made life itself an inferior blessing, bonfires have blazed, cannons have belched their thunder, banners have waved, drums have throbbed, and bugle blasts have called the people to assemble and rejoice together over God’s inscrutable decree in bestowing upon Americans blessings denied to all other peoples, kindreds, and tongues since time began. Nor do I doubt that on this anniversary such exhibitions will be repeated, but it will be a hollow mockery. The stage will be gorgeous with scenery for the play of liberty, but liberty will be absent — only its ghost will appear, only its “canonized bones” will be present; only its skeleton jaws will move to tell American slaves that the supreme “funeral directors” have buried it in a potter’s field without so much as a slab to mark its resting place.

And yet the farce will proceed and orators will be found to bombard the air to convince the people that in the nation’s grand march across the continent and in its physical achievements, the ultima thule of its destiny has been reached. If liberty is referred to at all, it will be to emphasize the plutocratic doctrine that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people and constitutional guarantees of liberty are as so many vagaries and that a strong, centralized government is what the Fathers designed should be established upon the ruins of the Republic, and that the Constitution itself, ceasing to be a guarantee of the liberties of the people, should be eventually so construed that one man, robed, crowned, and sceptered as a judge, combining the characteristics of caitiff and satrap, could, as whim might influence him, strike down every constitutional right of the citizen and send him to prison.

I am familiar with the often quoted maxim:

No man e’er felt the halter drawn
With good opinion of the law.

It has been said of every martyr from the first time that a thumbscrew was ever applied by the inquisition. It was said of every victim broken upon the wheels, disjointed upon the rack, or burned at the stake. It has been a handy excuse for tyrants in all ages and is as current now as when the beasts of bigotry first lapped the innocent blood of their victims.

I know with what gusto corporations and their ermined sycophants and all their brood of degenerate creatures regard the imprisonment of the officers of the American Railway Union, and yet it is not law, nor the administration of law that called forth our protest, but the abrogation of all laws and the substitution of ironclad despotism. Innocent men, untainted by crime, we appealed to the courts ad to the Constitution for protection, for guaranteed rights. We appealed as American citizens to the Supreme Court of the nation. As well might we have appealed to so many man-eating tigers in an African jungle. Our destiny was imprisonment, and it tells the story of the final triumph of Russian methods of government in the United States of America. For my associates and myself I may say:

Of all the work my hand hath wrought
Beneath the sky,
Save a place in kindly human thought,
No gain have I.

And yet, when, on the morning of the 4th of July, the effulgent glories of the sun gild my cell and when his softer evening rays invite to meditation, my thoughts must turn upon conditions which give the lie direct to the old-time american boast of liberty and independence. The law of injunction, a despotic decree, is the death knell of liberty as once enjoyed by the American people. That myself and associates in prison happen to be the victims of the unspeakable outrage in no regard emphasizes my abhorrence and detestation of the traitorous grasp of power by which the atrocious crime against the liberties of the people was perpetrated. I would have demanded for the most brutal, base-born, and red-handed criminal a trial by an impartial jury, under due forms of law, and would have punished him only by the fiat of a verdict legally obtained, but in the case of myself and associates , we behold American citizens, charged with no crime, and without indictment or trial branded as criminals and sent, like galley slaves, to prison by one man who arrogating to himself the authority of lawmaker, judge, and jury, plays the role of Tsar and sends whom he will to prison, as the Russian despot sends men to Siberia, to prison or to death, as it suits his caprice.

The question may be prudently asked: What remains worth saving of the liberties of Americans? I answer — the Ballot. It is a powerful weapon if the American people can be persuaded to unify and wield it in defense of their rights and their liberties. True it is that the people have slept while their enemies, “working like gravity,” have stolen the most valued jewel from their crown of sovereignty. Can it be recovered, or is it entirely lost? It required eight years of a bloody, cruel, and devastating war to secure it, and thousands of brave souls perished in the patriotic conflict. If the anniversary of the 4th of July is devoted to arousing the American people to a realization of their great misfortune, if they will resolve to regain their liberties by renewing he pledge of the Fathers to perish or conquer, then Woods and Woodstock Jail may stand in the future monumental infamies, from which the people may go forth as did the revolutionary heroes from the infamous edicts of King George to regain their lost liberties — and all along the lines of the hosts of the common people, the victims of plutocracy and their corrupt agencies, should resound again the battle cry that was heard from Lexington to Yorktown: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

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Eugene Debs, “Liberty”: Speech at Battery D, Chicago, On Release from Woodstock Jail, November 22, 1895

Manifestly the spirit of ’76 still survives. The fires of liberty and noble aspirations are not yet extinguished. I greet you tonight as lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. I comprehend the significance of this demonstration and appreciate the honor that makes it possible for me to be your guest on such an occasion. The vindication and glorification of American principles of government, as proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence, is the high purpose of this convocation.

Speaking for myself personally, I am not certain whether this is an occasion for rejoicing or lamentation. I confess to a serious doubt as to whether this day marks my deliverance from bondage to freedom or my doom from freedom to bondage. Certain it is, in the light of recent judicial proceedings, that I stand in your presence stripped of my constitutional rights as a freeman and shorn of the most sacred prerogatives of American citizenship, and what is true of myself is true of every other citizen who has the temerity to protest against corporation rule or question the absolute sway of the money power. It is not law nor the administration of law of which I complain. It is the flagrant violation of the constitution, the total abrogation of law and the usurpation of judicial and despotic power, by virtue of which my colleagues and myself were committed to jail, against which I enter my solemn protest; and any honest analysis of the proceedings must sustain the haggard truth of the indictment.

In a letter recently written by the venerable judge Trumbull that eminent jurist says: “The doctrine announced by the Supreme Court in the Debs case, carried to its logical conclusion, places every citizen at the mercy of any prejudiced or malicious federal judge who may think proper to imprison him.” This is the deliberate conclusion of one of the purest, ablest and most distinguished judges the Republic has produced. The authority of Judge [Lyman] Trumbull upon this question will not be impeached by anyone whose opinions are not deformed or debauched.

At this juncture I deem it proper to voice my demands for a trial by a jury of my peers. At the instigation of the railroad corporations centering here in Chicago I was indicted for conspiracy and I insist upon being tried as to my innocence or guilt. It will be remembered that the trial last winter terminated very abruptly on account of a sick juror. It was currently reported at the time that this was merely a pretext to abandon the trial and thus defeat the vindication of a favorable verdict, which seemed inevitable, and which would have been in painfully embarrassing contrast with the sentence previously pronounced by Judge [William A.] Woods in substantially the same case. Whether this be true or not, I do not know. I do know, however, that I have been denied a trial, and here and now I demand a hearing of my case. I am charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, and if guilty I should go to the penitentiary. All I ask is a fair trial and no favor. If the counsel for the government, alias the railroads, have been correctly quoted in the press, the case against me is “not to be pressed,” as they “do not wish to appear in the light of persecuting the defendants.” I repel with scorn their professed mercy. Simple justice is the demand. I am not disposed to shrink from the fullest responsibility for my acts. I have had time for meditation and reflection and I have no hesitancy in declaring that under the same circumstances I would pursue precisely the same policy. So far as my acts are concerned, I have neither apology nor regrets.

Dismissing this branch of the subject, permit me to assure you that I am not here to bemoan my lot. In my vocabulary there are no wails of despondency or despair. However gloomy the future may appear to others, I have an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of the right. My heart responds to the sentiments of the poet who says:

Swing back today, O prison gate,
O winds, stream out the stripes and stars,
O men, once more in high debate
Denounce injunction rule and czars.
By Freedom’s travail pangs we swear
That slavery’s chains we will not wear.
Ring joyously, O prison bell,
O iron tongue, the truth proclaim;
O winds and lightnings, speed to tell
That ours is not a czar’s domain.
By all the oracles divine
We pledge defense of Freedom’s shrine.
O freemen true! O sons of sires!
O sons of men who dared to die!
O fan to life old Freedom’s fires
And light with glory Freedom’s sky.
Then swear by Cod’s eternal throne,
America shall be Freedom’s home.
O workingmen! O Labor’s hosts!
O men of courage, heart and will;
O far and wide send Labor’s toasts
Till every heart feels Freedom’s thrill,
And freemen’s shouts like billows roar
O’er all the land from shore to shore.

Liberty is not a word of modern coinage. Liberty and slavery are primal words, like good and evil, right and wrong; they are opposites and coexistent.

There has been no liberty in the world since the gift, like sunshine and rain, came down from heaven, for the maintenance of which man has not been required to fight, and man’s complete degradation is secured only when subjugation and slavery have sapped him of the last spark of the noble attributes of his nature and reduced him to the unresisting inertness of a clod.

The theme tonight is personal liberty; or giving it its full height, depth and breadth, American liberty, something that Americans have been accustomed to eulogize since the foundation of the Republic, and multiplied thousands of them continue in the habit to this day because they do not recognize the truth that in the imprisonment of one man in defiance of all constitutional guarantees, the liberties of all are invaded and placed in peril. In saying this, I conjecture I have struck the keynote of alarm that has convoked this vast audience.

For the first time in the records of all the ages, the inalienable rights of man, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” were proclaimed July 4, 1776. It was then that crowns, scepters, thrones and the divine right of kings to rule sunk together and man expanded to glorious liberty and sovereignty.

It was then that the genius of Liberty, speaking to all men in the commanding voice of Eternal Truth, bade them assert their heaven — decreed prerogatives and emancipate themselves from bondage. It was a proclamation countersigned by the Infinite — and man stood forth the coronated sovereign of the world, free as the tides that flow, free as the winds that blow, and on that primal morning when creation was complete, the morning stars and the sons of God, in anthem chorus, sang the song of Liberty.

It may be a fancy, but within the limitless boundaries of the imagination I can conceive of no other theme more appropriate to weave into the harmonies of Freedom. The Creator had surveyed his work and pronounced it good, but nothing can be called good in human affairs with liberty eliminated. As well talk of air without nitrogen, or water without oxygen, as of goodness without liberty.

It does not matter that the Creator has sown with stars the fields of ether and decked the earth with countless beauties for man’s enjoyment. It does not matter that air and ocean teem with the wonders of innumerable forms of life to challenge man’s admiration and investigation. It does not matter that nature spreads forth all her scenes of beauty and gladness and pours forth the melodies of her myriad — tongued voices for man’s delectation. If liberty is ostracized and exiled, man is a slave, and the world rolls in space and whirls around the sun a gilded prison, a doomed dungeon, and though painted in all the enchanting hues that infinite art could command, it must still stand forth a blotch amidst the shining spheres of the sidereal heavens, and those who cull from the vocabularies of nations, living or dead, their flashing phrases with which to apostrophize Liberty, are engaged in perpetuating the most stupendous delusion the ages have known. Strike down liberty, no matter by what subtle and infernal art the deed is done, the spinal cord of humanity is sundered and the world is paralyzed by the indescribable crime.

Strike the fetters from the slave, give him liberty and he becomes an inhabitant of a new world. He looks abroad and beholds life and joy in all things around him. His soul expands beyond all boundaries. Emancipated by the genius of Liberty, he aspires to communion with all that is noble and beautiful, feels himself allied to all the higher order of intelligences, and walks abroad, redeemed from animalism, ignorance and superstition, a new being throbbing with glorious life.

What pen or tongue from primeval man to the loftiest intellect of the present generation has been able to fittingly anathematize the more than satanic crime of stealing the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reducing the victim of the burglary to slavery or to prison, to gratify those monsters of iniquity who for some inscrutable reason are given breath to contaminate the atmosphere and poison every fountain and stream designed to bless the world!

It may be questioned if such interrogatories are worth the time required to state them, and I turn from their consideration to the actualities of my theme. As Americans, we have boasted of our liberties and continue to boast of them. They were once the nation’s glory, and, if some have vanished, it may be well to remember that a remnant still remains. Out of prison, beyond the limits of Russian injunctions, out of reach of a deputy marshal’s club, above the throttling clutch of corporations and the enslaving power of plutocracy, out of range of the government’s machine guns and knowing the location of judicial traps and deadfalls, Americans may still indulge in the exaltation of liberty, though pursued through every lane and avenue of life by the baying hounds of usurped and unconstitutional power, glad if when night lets down her sable curtains, they are out of prison, though still the wage-slaves of a plutocracy which, were it in the celestial city, would wreck every avenue leading up to the throne of the Infinite by stealing the gold with which they are paved, and debauch Heaven’s supreme court to obtain a decision that the command “thou shalt not steal” is unconstitutional.

Liberty, be it known, is for those only who dare strike the blow to secure and retain the priceless boon. It has been written that the “love of liberty with life is given” and that life itself is an inferior gift; that with liberty exiled life is a continuous curse and that “an hour of liberty is worth an eternity of bondage.” It would be an easy task to link together gilded periods extolling liberty until the mind, weary with delight, becomes oblivious of the fact that while dreaming of security, the blessings we magnified had, one by one, and little by little, disappeared, emphasizing the truth of the maxim that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Is it worth while to iterate that all men are created free and that slavery and bondage are in contravention of the Creator’s decree and have their origin in man’s depravity?

If liberty is a birthright which has been wrested from the weak by the strong, or has been placed in peril by those who were commissioned to guard it as Gheber priests watch the sacred fires they worship, what is to be done? Leaving all other nations, kindred and tongues out of the question, what is the duty of Americans? Above all, what is the duty of American workingmen whose liberties have been placed in peril? They are not hereditary bondsmen. Their fathers were free born — their sovereignty none denied and their children yet have the ballot. It has been called “a weapon that executes a free man’s will as lighting does the will of God.” It is a metaphor pregnant with life and truth. There is nothing in our government it can not remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts. It can abolish unjust laws and consign to eternal odium and oblivion unjust judges, strip from them their robes and gowns and send them forth unclean as lepers to bear the burden of merited obloquy as Cain with the mark of a murderer. It can sweep away trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies, and every other abnormal development of the money power designed to abridge the liberties of workingmen and enslave them by the degradation incident to poverty and enforced idleness, as cyclones scatter the leaves of the forest. The ballot can do all this and more. It can give our civilization its crowning glory — the cooperative commonwealth.

To the unified hosts of American workingmen fate has committed the charge of rescuing American liberties from the grasp of the vandal horde that have placed them in peril, by seizing the ballot and wielding it to regain the priceless heritage and to preserve and transmit it without scar or blemish to the generations yet to come.

Snatch from the ashes of their sires
The embers of their former fires,
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear.

Standing before you tonight reclothed in theory at least with the prerogatives of a free man, in the midst of free men, what more natural, what more in consonance with the proprieties of the occasion, than to refer to the incarceration of myself and associate officials of the American Railway Union in the county jail at Woodstock?

I have no ambition to avail myself of this occasion to be sensational, or to thrust my fellow prisoners and myself into prominence. My theme expands to proportions which obscure the victims of judicial tyranny, and yet, regardless of reluctance, it so happens by the decree of circumstances, that personal references are unavoidable. To wish it otherwise would be to deplore the organization of the American Railway Union and every effort that great organization has made to extend a helping hand to oppressed, robbed, suffering and starving men, women and children, the victims of corporate greed and rapacity. It would be to bewail every lofty attribute of human nature, lament the existence of the golden rule and wish the world were a jungle, inhabited by beasts of prey, that the seas were peopled with sharks and devil-fish and that between the earth and the stars only vultures held winged sway.

The American Railway Union was born with a sympathetic soul. Its ears were attuned to the melodies of mercy, to catch the whispered wailings of the oppressed. It had eyes to scan the fields of labor, a tongue to denounce the wrong, hands to grasp the oppressed and a will to lift them out of the sloughs of despondency to highlands of security and prosperity.

Here and now I challenge the records, and if in all the land the American Railway Union has an enemy, one or a million, I challenge them all to stand up before the labor world and give a reason why they have maligned and persecuted the order. I am not here to assert the infallibility of the organization or its officials, or to claim exemption from error. But I am here to declare to every friend of American toilers, regardless of banner, name or craft, that if the American Railway Union has erred, it has been on the side of sympathy, mercy, and humanity — zeal in a great cause, devotion to the spirit of brotherhood which knows no artificial boundaries, whose zones are mapped by lines of truth as vivid as lightning, and whose horizon is measured only by the eye of faith in man’s redemption from slavery.

I hold it to have been inconceivable that an organization of workingmen, animated by such inspirations and aspirations, should have become the target for the shafts of judicial and governmental malice.

But the fact that such was the case brings into haggard prominence a condition of affairs that appeals to all thoughtful men in the ranks of organized labor and all patriotic citizens, regardless of vocation, who note the subtle invasions of the liberties of the American people by the courts, sustained by an administration that is equally dead to the guarantees of the constitution.

It is in no spirit of laudation that I aver here tonight that it has fallen to the lot of the American Railway Union to arouse workingmen to a sense of the perils that environ their liberties.

In the great Pullman Strike the American Railway Union challenged the power of corporations in a way that had not previously been done, and the analyzation of this fact serves to expand it to proportions that the most conservative men of the nation regard with alarm.

It must be borne in mind that the American Railway Union did not challenge the government. It threw down no gauntlet to courts or armies — it simply resisted the invasion of the rights of workingmen by corporations. It challenged and defied the power of corporations. Thrice armed with a just cause, the organization believed that justice would win for labor a notable victory, and the records proclaim that its confidence was not misplaced.

The corporations, left to their own resources of money, mendacity and malice, of thugs and ex-convicts, leeches and lawyers, would have been overwhelmed with defeat and the banners of organized labor would have floated triumphant in the breeze.

This the corporations saw and believed — hence the crowning act of infamy in which the federal courts and the federal armies participated, and which culminated in the defeat of labor.

Had this been all, the simple defeat of a labor organization, however disrupted and despoiled, this grand convocation of the lovers of liberty would never have been heard of. The robbed, idle and blacklisted victims of defeat would have suffered in silence in their darkened homes amidst the sobbings and wailings of wives and children. It would have been the oft repeated old, old story, heard along the track of progress and poverty for three-quarters of a century in the United States, where brave men, loyal to law and duty, have struck to better their condition or to resist degradation, and have gone down in defeat. But the defeat of the American Railway Union involved questions of law, constitution and government which, all things considered, are without a parallel in court and governmental proceedings under the constitution of the Republic. And it is this judicial and administrative usurpation of power to override the rights of states and strike down the liberties of the people that has conferred upon the incidents connected with the Pullman strike such commanding importance as to attract the attention of men of the highest attainments in constitutional law and of statesmen who, like Jefferson, view with alarm the processes by which the Republic is being wrecked and a despotism reared upon its ruins.

I have said that in the great battle of labor fought in 1894 between the American Railway Union and the Corporations banded together under the name of the “General Managers’ Association,” victory would have perched upon the standards of labor if the battle had been left to these contending forces — and this statement, which has been verified and established beyond truthful contradiction, suggests the inquiry, what other resources had the corporations aside from their money and the strength which their federation conferred?

In replying to the question, I am far within the limits of accepted facts when I say the country stood amazed as the corporations put forth their latent powers to debauch such departments of the government as were required to defeat labor in the greatest struggle for the right that was ever chronicled in the United States.

Defeated at every point, their plans all frustrated, out-generaled in tactics and strategy, while the hopes of labor were brightening and victory was in sight, the corporations, goaded to desperation, played their last card in the game of oppression by an appeal to the federal judiciary and to the federal administration. To this appeal the response came quick as lightning from a storm cloud. It was an exhibition of the debauching power of money which the country had never before beheld.

The people had long been familiar with such expressions as “money talks,” “money rules,” and they had seen the effects of its power in legislatures and in congress. They were conversant with jay Gould’s methods of gaining his legal victories by. “buying a judge” in critical cases. They had tracked this money power, this behemoth beast of prey, into every corporate enterprise evolved by our modern civilization, as hunters track tigers in India jungles, but never before in the history of the country had they seen it grasp with paws and jaws the government of the United States and bend it to its will and make it a mere travesty of its pristine grandeur.

The people had seen this money power enter the church, touch the robed priest at the altar, blotch his soul, freeze his heart and make him a traitor to his consecrated vows and send him forth a Judas with a bag containing the price of his treason; or, if true to his conviction, ideas and ideals, to suffer the penalty of ostracism, to be blacklisted and to seek in vain for a sanctuary in which to expound Christ’s doctrine of the brotherhood of man.

The people had seen this money power enter a university and grasp a professor and hurl him headlong into the street because every faculty of mind, redeemed by education and consecrated to truth, pointed out and illumined new pathways to the goal of human happiness and national glory.

The people had seen this money power practicing every art of duplicity, growing more arrogant and despotic as it robbed one and crushed another, building its fortifications of the bones of its victims, and its palaces out of the profits of its piracies, until purple and fine linen on the one side and rags upon the other side, defined conditions as mountain ranges and rivers define the boundaries of nations — palaces on the hills, with music and dancing and the luxuries of all clinics, earth, air and sea — huts in the valley, dark and dismal, where the music is the dolorous “song of the shirt” and the luxuries rags and crusts.

These things had been seen by the people, but it was reserved for them in the progress of the Pullman strike to see this money power, by the fiat of corporations, grasp one by one the departments of the government and compel them to do its bidding as in old plantation days the master commanded the obedience of his chattel slaves.

The corporations first attacked the judicial department of the government, a department which, according to Thomas Jefferson, has menaced the integrity of the Republic from the beginning.

They did not attack the supreme bench. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and the corporations knew where that was and the amount of strain it would bear. How did they attack this weakling in the judicial chain?

I am aware that innuendos, dark intimations of venality are not regarded as courageous forms of arraignment, and yet the judicial despotism which marked every step of the proceedings by which my official associates and myself were doomed to imprisonment, was marked by infamies, supported by falsehoods and perjuries as destitute of truth as are the Arctic regions of orange blossoms.

Two men quarreled because one had killed the other’s dog with an ax. The owner of the dog inquired, “when my dog attacked you, why did you not use some less deadly weapon?” The other replied, “why did not your dog come at me with the end that had no teeth in it?” There is an adage which says, “fight the devil with fire.” In this connection why may it not be intimated that a judge who pollutes his high office at the behest of the money power has the hinges of his knees lubricated with oil from the tank of the corporation that thrift may follow humiliating obedience to its commands?

If not this, I challenge the world to assign a reason why a judge, under the solemn obligation of an oath to obey the constitution, should in a temple dedicated to justice, stab the Magna Carta of American liberty to death in the interest of corporations, that labor might be disrobed of its inalienable rights and those who advocated its claim to justice imprisoned as if they were felons?

You may subject such acts of despotism to the severest analysis, you may probe for the motive, you may dissect the brain and lay bare the quivering heart, and, when you have completed the task, you will find a tongue in every gash of your dissecting knife uttering the one word “pelf.” Once upon a time a corporation dog of good reputation was charged with killing sheep, though he had never been caught in the act. The corporation had always found him to be an obedient dog, willing to lick the hand of his master, and declared that he was a peaceable and law-abiding dog; but one day upon investigation the dog was found to have wool in his teeth and thenceforward, though the corporation stood manfully by him, he was believed to be a sheep -killing dog. The world has no means of knowing what methods corporations employ to obtain despotic decrees in their interest, but it is generally believed that if an examination could be made, there would be found wool in the teeth of the judge.

I do not profess to be a student of heredity, and yet I am persuaded that men inherit the peculiarities of the primal molecules from which they have been evolved. If the modern man, in spite of our civilizing influences, books, stage and rostrum, has more devil than divinity in his nature, where rests the blame?

Leaving the interrogatory unanswered, as it has been in all the past, it is only required to say that men with the ballot make a fatal mistake when they select mental and moral deformities and clothe them with despotic power. When such creatures are arrayed in the insignia of authority, right, justice and liberty are forever in peril.

What reasons exist today for rhetorical apostrophes to the constitution of the Republic? Those who are familiar by experience, or by reading, with the pathways of the storms on the ocean will recall recollections of ships with their sails rent and torn by the fury of the winds, rolling upon the yeasty billows and flying signals of distress. Clouds had for days obscured sun and stars and only the eye of omnipotence could tell whither the hulk was drifting — and today the constitution of our ship of state, the chart by which she had been steered for a century, has encountered a judicial tornado and only the gods of our fathers can tell whither she is drifting. True, Longfellow, inspired by the genius of hope, sang of the good old ship:

We know what master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel.
Who made each mast and sail and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope.

But the poet wrote before the chart by which the good old ship sailed had been mutilated and torn and flung aside as a thing of contempt; before Shiras “flopped” and before corporations knew the price of judges, legislators and public officials as certainly as Armour knows the price of pork and mutton.

Longfellow wrote before men with heads as small as chipmunks and pockets as big as balloons were elevated to public office, and before the corporation ruled in courts and legislative halls as the fabled bull ruled in a china shop.

No afflatus, however divine, no genius, though saturated with the inspiring waters of Hippocrene, could now write in a spirit of patriotic fire of the old constitution, nor ever again until the people by the all pervading power of the ballot have repaired the old chart, closed the rents and obscured the judicial dagger holes made for the accommodation of millionaires and corporations, through which they drive their four — in — hands as if they were Cumberland gaps.

Here, this evening, I am inclined to indulge in eulogistic phrase of Liberty because once more I am permitted to mingle with my fellow — citizens outside of prison locks and bars.

Shakespeare said:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I know something of adversity, and with such philosophy as I could summon have extracted what little sweetness it contained. I know little of toads, except that of the genus judicial, and if they have a precious jewel in their heads or hearts it has not fallen to my lot to find it, though the corporations seem to have been more successful.

The immortal bard also wrote that

This our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

If to be behind prison bars is to be “exempt from public haunt,” then for the past six months I may claim such exemption, with all the rapture to be found in listening to the tongues of trees, to the charming lessons taught by the books of the running brooks and to the profound sermons of the stones. There is not a tree on the Woodstock prison campus, or near by, to whose tongued melodies or maledictions I have not in fancy listened when liberty, despotism or justice was the theme.

The bard of Avon, the one Shakespeare of all the ages, was up to high-water mark of divine inspiration when he said there were those who could find tongues in trees, and never since trees were planted in the garden of Eden has the tongue of a tree voiced a sentiment hostile to liberty.

Thus, when in prison and exempt from judicial persecution, the tongues of trees as well as the tongues of friends taught me that sweets could be extracted from adversity.

Nor was I less fortunate when I permitted my fancy to see a book in a running brook as it laughed and sang and danced its way to the sea, and find that on every page was written a diviner song to liberty and love and sympathy than was ever sung by human voice.

And as for the stones in Woodstock prison, they were forever preaching sermons and their themes were all things good and evil among men.

In prison my life was a busy one, and the time for meditation and to give the imagination free rein was when the daily task was over and night’s sable curtains enveloped the world in darkness, relieved only by the sentinel stars and the earth’s silver satellite “walking in lovely beauty to her midnight throne.” It was at such times that the “Reverend Stones” preached their sermons, sometimes rising in grandeur to the Sermon on the Mount.

It might be a question in the minds of some if this occasion warrants the indulgence of the fancy. It will be remembered that Aesop taught the world by fables and Christ by parables, but my recollection is that the old “stone preachers” were as epigrammatic as an unabridged dictionary.

I remember one old divine who, one night, selected for his text George M. Pullman, and said: “George is a bad egg, handle him with care. Should you crack his shell the odor would depopulate Chicago in an hour.” All said “Amen” and the services closed. Another old sermonizer who said he had been preaching since man was a molecule, declared he had of late years studied corporations, and that they were warts on the nose of our national industries, — that they were vultures whose beaks and claws were tearing and mangling the vitals of labor and transforming workingmen’s homes into caves. Another old stone said he knew more about strikes than Carroll D. Wright, and that he was present when the slaves built the pyramids; that God Himself had taught His lightning, thunderbolts, winds, waves and earthquakes to strike, and that strikes would proceed, with bullets or ballots, until workingmen, no longer deceived and cajoled by their enemies, would unify, proclaims their sovereignty and walk the earth free men.

O, yes, Shakespeare was right when he said there were sermons in stones. I recall one rugged-visaged old stone preacher who claimed to have been a pavement bowlder in a street of heaven before the gold standard was adopted, and who discussed courts. He said they had been antagonizing the decrees of heaven since the day when Lucifer was cast into the bottomless pit. Referring to our Supreme Court he said it was a nest of rodents forever gnawing at the stately pillars supporting the temple of our liberties. I recall how his eyes, as he lifted their stony lids, flashed indignation like orbs of fire, and how his stony lips quivered as he uttered his maledictions of judicial treason to constitutional liberty.

But occasionally some old bald-headed ashler, with a heart beating responsive to every human joy or sorrow, would preach a sermon on love or sympathy or some other noble trait that in spite of heredity still lived even in the heart of stones. One old divine, having read some of the plutocratic papers on the Pullman strike and their anathemas of sympathy, when one workingman’s heart, throbbing responsive to the divine law of love, prompted him to aid his brother in distress, discussed sympathy. He said sympathy was one of the perennial flowers of the Celestial City, and that angels had transplanted it in Eden for the happiness of Adam and Eve, and that the winds had scattered the seed throughout the earth. He said there was no humanity, no elevating, refining, ennobling influences in operation where there was no sympathy. Sympathy, he said, warmed in every ray of the sun, freshened in every breeze that scattered over the earth the perfume of flowers and glowed with the divine scintillation of the stars in all the expanse of the heavens.

Referring to the men and women of other labor organizations who had sympathized with the American Railway Union in its efforts to rescue Pullman’s slaves from death by starvation, the old preacher placed a crown of jeweled eulogies upon their heads and said that in all the mutations of life, in adversity or prosperity, in the vigor of youth or the infirmities of age, there would never come a time to them when like the Pen grasping a penitent’s tear as a passport to heaven, they would not cherish as a valued souvenir of all their weary years that one act of sympathy of the victims of the Pullman piracy, and that when presented at the pearly gate of paradise, it would swing wide open and let them in amidst the joyous acclaims of angels.

From such reflections I turn to the practical lessons taught by this “Liberation Day” demonstration. It means that American lovers of liberty are setting in operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings. It means that the people are aroused in view of impending perils and that agitation, organization, and unification are to be the future battle cries of men who will not part with their birthrights and, like Patrick Henry, will have the courage to exclaim: “Give me liberty or give me death!” I have borne with such composure as I could command the imprisonment which deprived me of my liberty. Were I a criminal; were I guilty of crimes meriting a prison cell; had I ever lifted my hand against the life or the liberty of my fellowmen; had I ever sought to filch their good name, I would not be here. I would have fled from the haunts of civilization and taken up my residence in some cave where the voice of my kindred is never heard. But I am standing here without a self-accusation of crime or criminal intent festering in my conscience, in the sunlight once more, among my fellowmen, contributing as best I can to make this “Liberation Day” from Woodstock prison a memorial day, realizing that, as Lowell sang:

He’s true to God who ‘s true to man; wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest, ‘neath the all-beholding sun.
That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves and not for all their race.

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George Herron, “Why I Am a Socialist”: Address at a Mass Meeting of the Social Democratic Party at Central Music Hall, Chicago, September 29, 1900.

In speaking for socialism tonight I shall be as frank with this audience as I am with myself. I must give my own reasons for standing upon this platform. I cannot give the reasons of any other man, or of any sect or party, for supporting the socialist movement, though I respect all the men and motives that here converge. The best service which I can render the cause is to bear witness to the light that I actually see, and not to the light I know only by report. I am a socialist; and all my voting, for the last eight years, has been with the Socialist Labor Party. But before I am a socialist, I am a free man; I am a socialist because I am free. I have paid too great a price for my freedom, and have left too many blood stains upon the capitalistic order, to make any compromise with what I have won and intend to keep. I will never limit the liberty of another man’s soul, nor permit any man or party to limit the liberty of my own. I will not tell lies to support the truth, or conceal one truth for the sake of helping another truth. I will not evade bearing witness to exactly what I seem to see this year, in order to be consistent with something I may have said last year. I will not tell anything less or more than just the truth I see, at the moment I am speaking, to support any party, or even to support the throne of the universe itself. If economic socialism means anything, it means just this liberty of every man to take a free look at life and all its problems and to be gladly heard by his comrades while he tells what he sees.

When I left Chicago last January for Egypt and eastern lands, I had the intention of staying across the seas until a later time than the present. For many weeks I was living tent life in Syria, out of the reach of letter and newspaper communication with America. Only recently, on coming into Europe, have I understood something of the beginning and meaning of the American socialist movement. I could have gone on with my plans of travel and have committed myself to the cause of political socialism at a later period. The socialist movement does not seem to me to have yet taken its coherent and conquering form in the politics of America. But when I saw that American socialism was actually in the political melting-pot, being tried by fire, in order that it might come forth as a national effort for that freedom and fullness of life which was promised by our fathers, then I also saw that my place was in the melting-pot. I could not wait until socialism should be exactly pleasing to me in all of its aspects, or until I should be altogether pleasing to socialists in some of my views of life; my place was with my comrades, sharing with them in the troubles that are always involved in the first creative steps of an organized movement. So I gave up my plans of travel and am here to publicly commit myself to the socialist movement. And I am here to stay until the cooperative commonwealth be established, or until the possibilities of my life be exhausted in helping American labor to consciously and nobly express itself in a coherent effort towards that collective order of society that shall change work from a curse into a song.

It may be that the American socialist party is yet to be formed. If that be true, all of us who call ourselves socialists are ready to form in any party that shall truly stand for the cause and philosophy of socialism. It is to socialism itself we are committing ourselves tonight and not to any particular party as a final expression of socialism. Socialism is larger than any sect or party, any definition or creed. It has no bible except the living human facts as they unfold. The particular name or party under which socialism shall finally come is not here important. The thing of importance is this: that we now have an opportunity to politically express ourselves in a movement which is at least the germ of the American socialism that is to fulfill what was good and true in the democracy of our fathers.

Three great lines are converging in the American socialist outcome. We must name first the Socialist Labor people, who brought from Europe to America what is sometimes called dogmatic socialism. These men have seemed to some of us to be sectarian and harsh, and to have carried class-consciousness into class-hatred. But is it to be wondered at that they have been bitter and dogmatic in their advocacy of socialism and in their attack upon the capitalistic order? Our early socialists were men who had themselves experienced the bitterness and devastation of life that comes to labor in the service of capitalism; they were men who spelled out their Marx in the hideous misery of the sweatshops; men who pawned their threadbare coats to print their tracts. They were socialists when it took a fanatic and a hero to be a socialist; socialists, when to be known as a socialist meant hunger or starvation for themselves and their families. They were men who made brave and pitiful sacrifices for one another as comrades; men who, however fierce, practiced towards each other some of the ethics which we teachers are not even heroic enough to teach. These men do not make a bible of their Marx, and they understand as well as any of us that the economic philosophy of fifty years ago will have to be recast in the mold of present American facts and ideals. What they now justly ask is that socialism, under whatever name it appears or by whatever party it is brought before the people, shall base itself directly upon the fundamental fact that those who live by selling their labor-power to capital must become class-conscious of the fact that they are the rightful owners and real producers of the earth; and that this producing class must intelligently and coherently set to work to achieve its own liberty from the capitalistic system of industry. I do not see how any socialist, or any nobly thoughtful man, can dispute this fundamental proposition, however fiercely it may have been advocated. Nor do I see how American socialism can be established until American labor comes to such a consciousness of its manhood and worth as shall lift it into mighty response to this mightiest task to which mankind has ever summoned itself — the task of organizing out of the materials of nature and history a harmonious and free society, in which every man shall equally inherit with every other man the resources and opportunities that open wholeness and gladness of life to human hope.

Another converging line is that individualism which was the genius of our American political origins and which was the meaning of eighteenth century political and social philosophy. The end which that individualism sought was right. Rousseau and Jefferson, and the French Revolutionists, have a claim which must be justly and fully acquitted in the court of American socialism. Socialism does not come to destroy but to fulfill the ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality, which made our century so big with promises in its beginnings and so sad and skeptic with failure in its endings. The liberty which early American aspiration sought can be fulfilled only in the association which socialism offers. Individualism can be fulfilled only in collectivism. Liberty is a social achievement and must be achieved by men together, not in competition with each other. American democracy, which originally meant voluntary cooperation as the order of the state, will soon be lost, even as an ideal, unless it realizes itself in democratic or cooperative production.

The third converging line is a new religious sense, developing much keener and more comprehensive spiritual attitude in the common life. It is a movement so wide and deep that it is scarcely yet recognized, and has nothing to do with the conventional religious experiences. It is so altogether outside of historic religious institutions, and has come upon the world so unawares, that it does not even know itself as religious or spiritual. But it is upon the tides of this new spiritual movement that some of us have been borne into socialism, and we must be true to our inspiration, while fully recognizing the worth of other inspirations than our own.

Let me explain the point of view and advance from which this unobserved spiritual movement becomes one with the economic movement. We began our working life with the conviction that the individual soul is all that has any worth. The individual man, his wholeness and liberty, are the unrivaled concern of the universe, and all that gives it any worth or meaning. Nature and economic things have a value just to the extent that they are the materials by which the human soul may freely express itself. All material things are intrinsically spiritual values; they are the coin of the spiritual realm. The goal of history, if the universe is sincere and has a meaning, is the liberty of each soul to at last become a law unto itself; the liberty of each man to individualize nature and truth for himself, and to live an original life of his own. If you examine closely enough just what it is that has made the centuries red with human struggle, you will find it to be just this struggle of the soul of man for emancipation from every form of coercion; this struggle of the individual life to freely and unfearingly choose for itself what it should be, to richly and fully be what it should choose, and to actually lay up its treasures beside its heart. It was upon the tides of a spiritual passion for this liberty that some of us were beaten against the hard fact that there is no liberty for the individual so long as some people own that upon which all people depend. We have discovered that no spiritual freedom can achieve or maintain itself except it be realized in economic freedom. Private property in the natural resources upon which all men depend, private property in the capital which all men create, is nothing less than private property and traffic in human souls; yea, it is the foundation of the ecclesiastical claim of private property in God and the truth, which is no less vicious than the claim of the monopolist to private ownership of the earth. The liberty of the soul can be achieved only through the passing away of the capitalistic form of society and the coming of the free and cooperative state.

The soul cannot find its freedom in “a free field and a fair fight”; for the soul is not free so long as it is compelled to fight for anything; the individual is free only when he is liberated from fighting, that he may live for the common good, in company with his brothers.

But there is still another factor in this spiritual movement towards socialism; and that is, the ethical strain that has come to some of us who have faced the whole truth about our economic selves. We who are at once the receivers and victims of special privileges know that we are on the backs of our brothers. We know that our books, our clothes, our privileges are ours because our hands are in our brothers’ blood. I am able to stand here tonight and make my plea for socialism because I have consumed the labor-product which pays for all that I am able to be and all that I am able to give. I cannot believe that I can serve my comrades best by withdrawing from the problem with the Tolstoian and setting up a private kingdom of heaven of my own; it would be an unspeakable relief to me to pay my world-debt so cheaply. My place is in the thick of social pain and travail, in the depth of the resolving chaos, even if I have to bear this ethical strain and shame to the end. The least that I can do to pay my debt to my brothers, the least that I can do to be decent, is to contribute the whole of my life to the emancipation of labor from that capitalistic order which makes the product of the millions the profit and luxury of the few.

I said, when I began, that the American socialist movement had not yet been fully and coherently organized, and that these three ethical factors which I have named are converging in that movement. But whether you agree with me or not as to these converging lines, let me ask you to face clearly the fact that socialism in some form is coming, without any regard to what you or I want. Closely speaking, socialism can have but one meaning and issue. Loosely speaking, there might be many kinds of socialism. There can be a thoroughly democratic and spiritual socialism, and there might be an imperialistic or Bismarckian socialism, in which the state would own the people rather than the people the state. If I might prophesy, I would say that in twenty years there will be, as now, two great political parties in America; but both of them will be socialistic: one the party of Tory socialism and the other the party of social democracy. But whatever the form under which collectivism comes, the next stage of the world will be a collective stage of production and distribution. We might just as well appoint a committee to sit down on the sun to keep it from going on its way as to attempt to obstruct the socialistic issue of the capitalist mode of production. Competition and private industry no longer work, and they ought not to work. The present industrial system is approaching an economic world-crisis, which is also the world’s spiritual crisis.

What is the attitude of the two great national parties toward this evident world-crisis? The Republican is frankly the party of the capitalistic order. Under the priesthood of Mr. Hanna, it has been indissolubly wedded to capitalism as its weaker and obedient half. Let us credit Mr. Hanna and his party with all sincerity in their belief that capitalism is the best and only safe order of industry. I am not here to question the sincerity of any man or party; but only to state their attitude towards social reconstruction. The Republican Party is so openly the capitalistic party that its principles need no discussion before an audience anywise in sympathy with socialism.

But the Democratic Party gives somewhat intangible hints of social reform. Let us examine those hints.

So far as I can see, I am not able to find in any of Mr. Bryan’s utterances nor in the various platforms of his party, a syllable that indicates the slightest knowledge of the real human problem that now confronts us. The Democratic propositions for economic and social reforms are negative and meaningless. Their talk of anti-trust legislation is childish, as well as unhistoric. You might just as well legislated against the tides of the sea or the movements of the solar system as to imagine that anti-trust legislation can for a moment hinder the present industrial development from going on to its consummation. If Mr. Bryan does not know, I am sure that Mr. Altgeld knows, that anti-trust declarations and legislations are sheer hypocrisy; that they have about as much relation to the real economic problem as Mr. Roosevelt has to modesty and gentle instincts. It is sometimes mysteriously hinted that Mr. Bryan has up his sleeve some very telling card, which he intends to play in the economic game if he is elected; that he is playing politics just as Lincoln did. I do not believe that Mr. Lincoln played politics in any such sense as some of Mr. Bryan’s supporters credit their candidate with doing. It is true that Mr. Lincoln shrewdly adopted every available means to achieve his end; but he knew exactly what he wanted from the beginning and made clear his goal from the opening of his political career as a member of the Illinois legislature. He wanted the progressive abolition of slavery and a nation composed entirely of free men; and he said so. Furthermore, even if Lincoln did play politics in the sense in which Mr. Bryan’s friends would indicate, we have nothing to do with that. It is time that we quit asking what Lincoln would do, or what Jefferson would do, or what Moses would do, or what Marx would do, and decide for ourselves, and by our own inspiration, what we are to do in the face of the world-problem that confronts us. No age or its leaders can live by the inspiration and leadership of a past age. There is always more truth and resource in the present than have ever been available in the past. Besides, this method of playing politics as a game will no longer work with the awakening social sense of the common life. The people do not want to know what card a man has up his sleeve, but what coherent and frankly spoken principles a man may have wherewith to meet the problems that are meeting him. There is no game that could be so wisely played just now as the hitherto untried game of honesty. Leaders whom the people will trust in the future must be leaders who believe in principles so strongly that they are not afraid to tell them to the world. They must be leaders who will trust the people and the truth so fully that they will shake out before the face of the people all the truth they have in their heads and hearts.

If we further examine the policy of the Democratic Party, we will find that it is haltingly against the evils that are, but that it has not a single constructive proposition to make as to future good. It is idle to protest that we are against one order of things if we have no better order to propose. Whatever it may disclose in the future, the Democratic Party has not disclosed any constructive ability in the past. The best that its most ardent reformers propose is the abolition of special privileges and the restoration of an imaginary free competition. Now Twentieth Century problems cannot be solved by Eighteenth Century phrases. So-called special privileges can be abolished only by making the highest privileges of the few the common privileges of all. The special privileges at which the individualist reformer would aim are the direct results of the very competition which he proposes as a remedy. Special privileges, class legislation, and industrial monopoly are merely the triumph of the strongest competitor; they are the big fish that have swallowed the little fish. Even if the abstract “free field and fair fight,” which has never existed outside of the economist’s brain, could really exist, the result would again be special privileges and monopoly. In the freest economic field and fairest competition, somebody would get whipped; and the result would be the triumph of sheer brute strength expressing itself in economic might; not the triumph of those men and qualities socially fitted to survive. Besides, a rational civilization has for its end not the so-called survival of the fittest, but the fitting of all to worthily survive. Furthermore, we are not seeking remedies for the existing social order; for it is an order of things that we do not want, well or ill. It is not a remedy for a capitalistic order that the present human situation demands, but a manhood with the spiritual nerve and might to create a cooperative order, which shall realize all the best ideals of all democracies and political philosophies of the past.

I know that there are many that will vote for Mr. Bryan in the hope that the imperialism, which reveals the degradation of our nation and which has made our government the betrayer and the assassin of the liberties of a helpless people, may be rebuked and corrected. But these good people ought to see that imperialism is merely the result of capitalism. Capitalism increases itself out of the produce of the people until they are too poor to buy what they produce. India, starving in the presence of walled-up and plentiful food supplies, is a monument to the capitalistic order. As Thomas Carlyle said, England was seeking new markets, while the million and a half men and women and children of London who made the clothes went with bare backs because they had nothing wherewith to buy the clothes they made. Strange as it may seem, they were not making clothes to wear, but clothes for the increase of capital. The capitalistic order of America has debauched the conscience of the nation, and used its government to betray and conquer weaker peoples, in order to find markets for the produce of the struggling and blighted lives of the laborers, who cannot buy what they produce. Capitalism, after absorbing the purchasing power of the real producers, destroys the liberties of weaker peoples in order to compel them to furnish a market, and besides coerces them into paying interest upon bonds. Suppose a man should come into your room tonight with a revolver and forcibly take your money, watch, clothes, and available possessions; and then suppose that, tomorrow, he should send an armed officer with a bill for services rendered in keeping you in order while he robbed you; suppose, further, that in lieu of your having nothing left wherewith to pay the bill, he should compel you to sign a note for an amount of money so large that you could never pay it, but not too large to consume the produce of each year’s toil in paying the interest thereupon; suppose all this and you have an epitome of imperialism, which is nothing less than capitalism preserving and extending itself through diplomatic and military force. Imperialism has always been the immediate result of centralization of wealth in the hands of a few and can be dealt with only by changing the order of things from which it naturally springs.

Socialism comes not as a remedy for the evils of existing society, but as a program of principles for a new society; or rather, let us say, as the first proposition for social order that has ever been presented to the world. Mankind has not yet had anything that can properly be called social order. Society has not yet been created. The materials for the building of a human world are here, but the creation remains to be undertaken. The task of creating a coherent and free society is the mightiest to which man has summoned himself; and it is a task which now presses urgently upon us. Socialism does not recognize as society anything that has hitherto come, but it sees in every preceding human stage a preparation for society. The socialist is an evolutionist, but with this difference between himself and much that is called scientific evolution: namely, that the social will is henceforth to be the supreme factor in evolution. Hitherto, what we call society has been the evolution of blind forces, which man did not understand and could not control. But we are reaching that moment when man will become the evolutor as well as the evolved; when man will become conscious of himself as the decreeing and creative force in evolution. Man will henceforth take evolution into his own hands and fashion creation according to his own will and make out of society what he wants it to be. Henceforth the social will is to become the creator and master, which the winds and waves shall at last obey and at whose word the strifes and storms of history shall be stilled and give back their responsive peace to the masterful social will of love.

Socialism starts with the brotherhood and unity of the race as a fact. It does not proclaim it as a sentiment, but recognizes it as a scientific fact. Each for all and all for each is the only rational mode of procedure, in view of this fact. That where one suffers all suffer is not a sentiment to meditate about, but the hardest inescapable fact with which we have to deal. The grippe breaks out in a wretched hamlet of two or three hundred peasants on the Siberian frontier; and every home in America is endangered or broken. A little girl is shot down by the constituted authorities at a Pennsylvania coal mine; and every thoughtful American recognizes that capitalistic government is not law, but brutal and lawless authority founded on economic might and that his little girl in Chicago or California may be the next victim of the brute lawlessness of capitalistic government. For good or ill, whether we will or no, we are bound up together in this world and can only achieve our well-being together. We might like to have separate interests and be able to extricate ourselves as individuals from the compulsions of this unity; but we cannot do so any more than we can individually extricate ourselves from the law of gravity. We all in common depend upon the same common resources of nature and history. None of us is rightly or nobly born until every child born into the world as the immediate inheritor of all the resources of nature and history, of industry and society, of inspiration and culture; of all that tempts to goodness and greatness and makes for fullness, freedom, and gladness of life. If the whole world were full and glad with life and should yet consent that one child should be born with less, the world would be economically and spiritually damned. Until all of us together see to it that every man is equal with every other man in resource, opportunity, and liberty, we shall none of us see the kingdom of fullness and freedom upon the earth. In this sense brother-interest and self-interest are one and the same; for no man has a true and noble interest in himself who does not regard the whole life of man as his calling and interest; and no man has a true regard for his brothers who does not seek to make himself a whole and free man in their service.

Now socialism comes as the scientific and economic recognition of unity. Since all people in common depend upon the sources and tools of production, there can be no individual liberty save these sources and tools belong to the people in common. There can be no social peace and sanity, no full liberty of the human soul, so long as some people own that upon which all people depend. All that can be said against slavery can also be said against the private ownership of economic sources and tools; for the private ownership of the common sources and machinery of life is nothing less than a substantial ownership of human beings. No man is free so long as he is dependent upon some other man for the chance to earn his livelihood. If a man owns my bread, or owns that which I must have in order to get my bread, he owns my moral being, unless I choose to revolt and starve. Private ownership of the earth, of its productive machinery, means private ownership of the people who live on the earth. He who sells his labor-power for wages sells himself; for his labor-power is his life. The wages system is merely an advance in the slave-system, but it is no fit system for free men; and there can be no true freedom for all men until there is not another hireling left under the sun. The labor of the world is essentially slave-labor. There is not a wage-earner on earth tonight who is not in some degree debauched in soul, even in spite of himself, by his dependence upon the private buyer of his labor. So long as some men own that upon which all men depend, the owners and the dependents are alike corrupted, enslaved, and robbed.

Yet our industrial system rests upon this power of private capital to legally appropriate the fruits of the labor of society. And behind the economics of capitalism rests the question of elemental right and wrong. If nature and history have a meaning and goal, if the universe be sincere, then it is elementally wrong that some people should own that upon which all people depend; and the only elemental right is that the people in common should own that upon which the people in common depend; and the only just reward of labor is the whole produce of labor.

This elemental right cannot be amended or evaded, as history well witnesses. The centralization of the wealth of the people in the hands of the few has been the poison of history. It has brought the decline or destruction of every nation, every civilization, every religion that has come to its end or decline. The pages of history are red with the retribution that comes to the whole people through the centralization of wealth in the hands of a few; for centralized wealth is not prosperity but disease, congestion, and destruction. No man or civilization can escape this retribution.

It lies not in the power of man, of governments or armies, to make practicable what is elementally wrong. No religion can go deep enough to bring forth universal individual nobleness out of a political or economic system that enslaves souls and bodies by enslaving labor. No law or custom is mighty or sacred enough to bring forth peace and order out of injustice and elemental disorder. It is beyond the power of kings or parliaments, priests or politicians, to bring forth good effects from bad causes. There is no God in the universe almighty enough to make right out of sheer economic might; and there is no civilization strong enough to prevent that which is elementally right from becoming the ultimate and universal might. A house built upon the sands cannot be made safer by priestly steeples, political declarations, and police protection; the longer and stronger the building, the more appalling and complete the ruin. A civilization build upon fraud and force, gambling and lying, stealing and political debauchery, capitalism and slave-labor, simply builds for its own retribution. Unless the universe itself is a lie, such civilization cannot stand. We build on a sure foundation only when we build a system that has for its end the commonwealth, the common wholeness, the common freedom, the common abundance and gladness of all men and women. Nature convicts our impoverishing civilization to its face; for profusion of life is nature’s eternal message. Nature offers resources enough for abundance of life for countless billions of human beings, and will never consent that these resources should be appropriated by the few for the exploitation of the many.

I know that some of you are indulging in the popular saying that socialism might answer for a society of angels, but not for a society of human beings such as we are; that we must wait till we have a better brand of human beings before we can have socialism. All of which is very much like saying that it is not safe to cure a man of his disease until he gets well; or like saying that well will not come in out of the rain until we first get dry; or like refusing to abolish the devil in order that we may preserve the job of saving the people from him. It is a strange superstition that makes men regard what they know to be elementally good as dangerous in practice, and what they know to be elementally wrong as practically safe. Socialism strikes at the root of the chief cause of our unangelic conduct and proposes to abolish that slavery and competition and capitalism which sends all its forces in the direction of making men brutal and dishonest. The whole influence of competition and capitalism is to war against love and liberty, and to make all that is noble and lovely in human life impossible. Socialism comes to remove the causes that prevent men from being lovers and brothers one with another and to bring in that equality of opportunity without which there can be no true fellowship, no abiding social love.

Many of you, too, are raising the question of whether people are yet prepared for the economic administration and liberty involved in what we call public ownership. The question is often raised with reference to a public utility, such as the railway system. First of all, there is the principle that nothing prepares people for responsibility save experience in responsibility. It is only in liberty that man learns to be free; only in the possession of his rights does a man learn to practice the highest right. Then underneath the question of advisability lies the foundation fact that it is elementally wrong for public functions to be privately owned and administered for private profit. No principle of expediency can make this elemental wrong result in the good of either individuals or society. That I may think some other man shiftless with his money does not excuse me in taking it away from him and spending most of it for myself.

The lesson of association in freedom must be learned and it can only be learned by practicing it. We shall have to go the whole length of liberty, or finally have no liberty at all. You doubt whether liberty can be trusted. I am very sure that tyranny cannot be trusted, and I am furthermore sure that the care of liberty cannot be delegated to any representatives. Liberty cannot be put under bonds to keep the peace without liberty being lost and peace unattained. All the socalled evils of liberty have been the evils of a lack of liberty. We shall have to accept the full logic of liberty at last, for there is nothing under the sun that can be trusted in its place. The lesson of cooperation has got to be learned, and learned in liberty; and the lesson of liberty has got to be learned, and learned in cooperation. We had as well begin.

Again, some of you are offended at the class-conscious appeal of socialism. I think it is because you do not rightly understand its meaning. Socialists have no thought of arraying one class against another class as individuals; class-consciousness does not mean class-hatred. Let us admit that socialists sometimes give utterances that have the class-hatred ring about them. Class-hatred is nonetheless alien to the spirit and genius of socialism. Even so bitter a controversialist as Karl Marx says that, of all men, socialists can afford to be tolerant and kindly toward the capitalist class, knowing that class to be victims of a system as truly as the laborer. What the socialist does mean by class-consciousness is this: that nothing can obviate the hideous fact that one class of human beings is living off another class; that a capitalistic class is heaping up the produce of the producing class. And he appeals to labor to become class conscious, because he knows perfectly well that the laborer cannot achieve his freedom, nor have the produce of his labor, until he becomes conscious that he is the real producer and the owner of the earth. Capital lords and landlords will exist and despoil the earth with economic and military wars until the disinherited labor of the world arises to nobly take possession of its inheritance. So long as the laborer is willing to be a mere wage-earner, so long as he is led about by politician and agitator, so long as his weariness and poverty, his dependence and hopelessness so eat out his nerve of soul and body that he will not act, just so long will his condition wax worse and worse. Labor must achieve its own liberty, if it is ever to be achieved. Liberty cannot be handed down by a superior class to an inferior class; it has never been so achieved, and ought not to be so achieved. If liberty were something that could be imposed upon one class by another, or could be presented as a gift from superiors to inferiors, it would vanish in the night. Men are not free until they have won and established their freedom in experience and in the power of their own manhood.

The class-conscious appeal is not for strife or hostility, or antagonism, but for manhood; for constructive purpose and spiritual nerve and genius. The end of socialism is the abolition of all classes and parties and the coming in of but one class, the people, with opportunity for every man to produce his own living and at the same time to become, as Charles Kingsley said, “a scholar, a saint, and a gentleman.” Unless American laborers as a class are so spiritually awakened that they become noble and courageous enough to adopt the cooperative commonwealth as a working ideal, and adopt it in the spirit of goodwill toward all men, no one can achieve their liberty for them, or ought to achieve it for them. All history demonstrates how the people have had to achieve for themselves each inch and gain of liberty, and how they have been again and again betrayed when their liberties have been committed to those above them in worldly condition. Even the best and truest of men hesitate when the moment comes for them to get down into the thick of the blood and dust of the human struggle.

I know that some of these are waiting until socialism shall present a more pleasing aspect. But we cannot await until the socialist movement is just to our liking before we take creative part in it. Our place is in the blood and the dust, the struggles and the disgraces, that always inhere in the beginnings of every great movement. Our place is at the heart of the chaos in order that we may work with the developing purpose. How can we truly respect ourselves, or help to make the socialist movement what it ought to be, if we fail it in its moment of sorest need? Socialists are not appealing to you for support on the ground that socialists are better than other men, but on the ground that socialism is better than capitalism. Socialism proposes to bring forth and educate the best that is in man; capitalism and competition are bringing forth and educating the worst.

We do not deny that socialism has its risks; that its advocates have the common share of human passions and imperfections; but we insist that the risks of adventuring upon socialism are as nothing compared to the risks of continuing in capitalism. Besides, if we only knew it, the dangers to human life all lie on the side of staying where we are, while safety lies only in going on. As Louis Kossuth pointed out, conservatism has been the cause of every violent revolution. We cannot avert disaster by sitting on the throttle valve of the forces that are making for universal change; we cannot prevent the change; we only cause explosion and disaster.

In the truest sense, socialism is essentially conservative. It comes not to destroy, but to fulfill — to fulfill all the true ideals of order and liberty and property. It offers that equality which must be the foundation of brotherhood; that liberty which must be the vital breath of the love which the great teachers taught. It offers the economic basis for the realization of that fraternity which has been the dream of the ages. It comes with no attack upon any man, but with the message of goodwill among all men. It comes with no attack upon property, but rather to save property from the attacks and ravages of a system that is the destruction of all that makes property sacred; for property is sacred only as it serves the highest uses of all men in common. It comes not to destroy private property; for capitalism has already destroyed the possibility of the bulk of mankind ever becoming property owners; but it comes to place within the reach of every man that private property upon which he must stand, in order to live a free and original life of his own, and express his noblest ideals in being. It comes to make the strong bear the infirmities of the weak, until the weak, too, have become strong; knowing well that if we do not actually become our brother’s keepers, we shall be destroyed in our brother’s destruction, as we ought to be. It comes to put all the temptations of life on the side of service and freedom and goodness, and to abolish the temptation to avarice and meanness and oppression.

I know that there is needed a vast spiritual preparation to prepare the way of political socialism; but that preparation will come. In its essence, socialism is a religion; it stands for the harmonious relating of the whole life of man; it stands for a vast and collective fulfilling of the law of love. As the socialist movement grows, its religious forces will come forth from the furnace of experience. No matter how materialistic its origin, when socialism brings men together in a great purpose, it soon begins to develop fidelity and tolerance, patience and goodwill, and the noblest of human graces. As American Socialism goes on its way, it will become a spiritual passion; not a cry for rights, but a call to elemental righteousness. It will make its appeal to the instinct of man for a beautiful public life, for communal heroism, and will show how the individual life can fulfill itself only by relating itself to the whole life of mankind. It will create a conscience that shall at last become cosmic and titanic and able to grapple with all the problems the universe can bring forth. In place of the individual hero of the past, it will submit to you the ideal of a heroic common life; the ideal of a common citizenship that shall truly have its consciousness in heavenly things.

It seems to me that America stands in order to be the birthplace of just such an appeal and the social ground for just such a realization. Emerson once said that America seemed like the last stand of Providence in behalf of the human race. If the sorrows and the struggles that have made centuries red with effort are to have their fruition, it must be upon our American soil. Back there in the shadows, the oppressed peoples of history are waiting for some great word to be here spoken that shall call them into resurrection and liberty. Egypt and Persia, Greece and Italy, and peoples that we have forgotten, are waiting for the word from us that shall call them out into the sunlight. Peoples and nations unborn are stretching forth entreating hands to us from out of the future. If we should fail here in America, then six thousand years of history will have failed; for history has come to its limit on the shores of the Pacific; it has come back to its starting point. If we fail, the heart of the world will break again, and another cycle of history, with its weary procession of bleeding centuries, will have to begin. But we cannot fail, we dare not fail. Liberty, fraternity, and equality are not tantalisms to hopeless human suffering; they are ideals to be realized by human worth and effort. We must prove our worth and power to match these ideals. Potential within this meeting, is a power which we may use for the freeing and the healing of the nations. Within this audience are the resources and weapons for conquering the world for love and liberty. The saving sword which the peoples now need is not the sword of Joshua or Cromwell, but the sword of an awakened and inspired and ennobled common life. And as the hand of destiny reaches out in the dark of our social chaos, it is our privilege to put within that hand the sword of comrade-love that shall liberate the world and make every child indeed the heir of all the good of all the ages. I plead that the highest and most unselfish that lies in you and in me may respond to the highest and most unselfish inspirations of history, as we go forth to support this cause of socialism and to support, in our presidential candidate, one who has proved his fidelity to American labor and who is in his rightful place as the leader of this first national campaign for social democracy.

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Platform of the Social Democratic Party of America, 1900

The Social Democratic Party of America declares that life, liberty, and happiness depend upon equal political and economic rights.

In our economic development an industrial revolution has taken place, the individual tool of former years having become the social tool of the present. The individual tool was owned by the worker who employed himself and was master of his product. The social tool, the machine, is owned by the capitalist and the worker is dependent upon him for employment. The capitalist thus becomes the master of the worker and is able to appropriate to himself a large share of the product of his labor.

Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people; but the same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will necessitate the adoption of socialism, the collective ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare.

The present system of social production and private ownership is rapidly converting society into two antagonistic classes — i.e., the capitalist class and the propertyless class. The middle class, once the most powerful of this great nation, is disappearing in the mill of competition. The issue is now between the two classes first named. Our political liberty is now of little value to the masses unless used to acquire economic liberty.

Independent political action and the trade union movement are the chief emancipating factors of the working class, the one representing its political, the other its economic wing, and both must cooperate to abolish the capitalist system.

Therefore the Social Democratic Party of America declares its object to be:

First — The organization of the working class into a political party to conquer the public powers now controlled by capitalists.

Second — The abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a national system of cooperative industry, based upon the social or common ownership of the means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the common interest of all its members, and the complete emancipation of the socially useful classes from the domination of capitalism.

The working class and all those in sympathy with their historic mission to realize a higher civilization should sever connection with all capitalist and reform parties and unite with the Social Democratic Party of America.

The control of political power by the Social Democratic Party will be tantamount to the abolition of all class rule.

The solidarity of labor connecting the millions of class-conscious fellow workers throughout the civilized world will lead to international socialism, the brotherhood of man.

As steps in that direction, we make the following demands:

First — Revision of our federal constitution, in order to remove the obstacles to complete control of government by the people irrespective of sex.

Second — The public ownership of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts, and combines.

Third — The public ownership of all railroads, telegraphs, and telephones; all means of transportation and communication; all water works, gas and electric plants, and other public utilities.

Fourth — The public ownership of all gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, coal, and other mines, and all oil and gas wells.

Fifth — The reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the increasing facilities of production.

Sixth — The inauguration of a system of public works and improvements for the employment of the unemployed, the public credit to be used for that purpose.

Seventh — Useful inventions to be free, the inventor to be remunerated by the public.

Eighth — Labor legislation to be national, instead of local, and international where possible.

Ninth — National insurance of working people against accidents, lack of employment, and want in old age.

Tenth — Equal civil and political rights for men and women, and the abolition of all laws discriminating against women.

Eleventh — The adoption of the initiative and referendum, proportional representation, and the right of recall of representatives by the voters.

Twelfth — Abolition of war and the introduction of international arbitration.

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Eugene Debs, “The Mission of Socialism is Wide as the World”: Speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 4, 1901

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Comrades: —

It is our good fortune, if we can boast, no other, to live in the most marvelous age of all the centuries, not contemplating the material progress of our time, which overwhelms and bewilders by its extraordinary achievements. Improvements have been accomplished as if by magic and we behold with wonder and awe the march of human conquest. The forces of nature which terrified primitive man, and before which the ancient world bent in superstition, have to a large extent been conquered and are the subject servants of man’s desire. In this march of progress the brain and heart have been expanded, the one shedding light and the other life, without which civilization would turn back upon its axis. Fortunately for man, everything is subject to change, and all change tends to the development of the race and the advancement of human institutions. Institutions crumble in this march of time. All of them have their periods of gestation, of birth, of development, maturity, decline, decay, and death. All of them come in their order. They fulfill their mission, they give birth to their offspring, and they pass away.

A little over a century ago the inhabitants of this country were not citizens. They were ruled by a foreign king. They petitioned for relief. Their petitions were disregarded. They objected to taxation without representation. Their protests were scorned. Finally they revolted. They issued the Declaration of Independence and enunciated the proposition that men are created equal. But the founders of this republic had only vague conceptions of democracy. The working class as we understand it today were not represented in the Constitutional Convention. The founders of the republic in declaring that men were created equal evidently meant themselves alone. They did not include the negro, who had been brought here against his will and had been reduced to a state of abject slavery. The institution of chattel slavery was already securely established at that time. It was founded in iniquity, yet it did not seemingly disturb the consciences of the founders of the republic. This institution was in conflict with the spirit of the Declaration, with the genius of free institutions, and yet it was incorporated in them. It steadily grew in power, and in course of time it controlled the country and the courts and the life of the people.

On this day, commemorating the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was issued. Thousands of orators all over this broad land will glorify the institutions under which we live. In pride they will point toward Old Glory and declare that it is a flag that waves over a free country. In these modern days we hear very much about that flag and about the institutions over which it waves. I am not of those who worship the flag. I have no respect for the stars and stripes, or for any other flag that symbolizes slavery. It does not matter to me what others may think, say, or do. I propose to preserve the integrity of my soul. I will give you a transcript of my mind and tell you precisely what I think. Not very long ago the President of the country [William McKinley], in the attitude of mock heroics, asked who would haul down the flag. I will tell him. Triumphant Socialism will haul down that flag and every other that symbolizes capitalist class rule and wage slavery.

I am a patriot, but in the sense that I love all countries. I love the sentiment of William L. Garrison: “All the world is my country and all mankind are my countrymen.” Thomas Jefferson once said: “Where liberty is, is my country.” That is good. Thomas Paine said: “Where liberty is honored, that is my country.” That is better. Where liberty is not, Socialism has a mission, and, therefore, the mission of Socialism is as wide as the world.

The framers of the Constitution of this country had no faith in the people. They did not suffer them to see the proceedings of the Convention. The insufferable institution of chattel slavery was compromised in the American Constitution. It was at this time a perfectly legal institution, but it was founded inn iniquity. It was doomed to finally disappear and the agitation against it began in a feeble way. Lovejoy was one of the pioneers of the revolt. He went to New England and then to Illinois, and with all the vigor of his intellect began to attack slavery. A committee called upon him. He said to them, “I can afford to die at my post, but I cannot afford to desert it.” I take pride in paying to such a man the humble tribute of my gratitude and love. It is such men as he who have made it possible for me to enjoy some degree of liberty. I can only discharge my duty to him and to them to try to do something for those who are to come after me. In 1837 the mob took his office and destroyed it by fire, his printing press was thrown in the Mississippi River, and he was murdered.

But to the greatest and noblest figure among those early pioneers was reserved the final act which culminated in the rule in which the institution of slavery disappeared from American soil. I need only mention his name, and although it is a very common one, you will at once recognize it — John Brown. He was educated in no college, he graduated from no university — he was simply a child of the people. He knew that is part in that struggle required the sacrifice of his life, and with a dozen men he attacked the so-called Commonwealth of Virginia. He struck the immortal blow. He was dragged through a mob trial, he was sentenced to death. On his way to the gallows he begged for a negro child and pressed a kiss upon its black face.

He was strangled to death. His soul went its way to that bourne from which no traveler returns. John Brown was branded a traitor, a scoundrel, and a monster of iniquity. The whole country applauded the crime [of his execution]. In just 10 years, with the mellowing wings of time, John Brown was the hero of the people; enshrined in their hearts — he had won immortality.

Chattel slavery disappeared because in the development of machinery an improved form of slavery was required, and this new slavery must not be confined to the black race alone, but must embrace within its mighty folds all of the toiling children of men. Slavery in that form only became extinct and the people as such only rose against it when it became impossible; and just here it is in order to say that the development in every form is dependent upon economic conditions.

We live today under a system that has the best code of morals and the best instruments of production and distribution. It has also the most destructive weapons of warfare. Commercialism not only requires the cheapest possible production, but it also requires the most murderous instruments of death, and in the full development of this system the world pays its highest tribute to that man who can devise ways and means that can murder the most men in the smallest space of time. If you go to the city of Washington tomorrow with some device that will enable you to kill one million human beings in the twinkling of an eye, your name will become famous.

When the [Civil] war closed, modern machinery was developing very rapidly, the small workshop was beginning to disappear, being supplanted by the larger factory. The individual worked no longer by himself, for his tool had been touched by the magic of industrial evolution; the shop began to expand and the modern industrial revolution was on. Up to this time production was carried on largely for use in separate communities. There was no demand for a foreign market because there was no surplus production, and the worker’s ability to consume was equal to his producing capacity. But with the advent of machinery, conditions were changed. If the workers had had intelligence enough to have retained the ownership and control of the tool — that is to say, of the means of production, there would have been no such problems as now confront us.

The women were formerly the queens of the homes, and the children were being sent to school and equipped for the battle of life. When labor began to supply so abundantly and the machine could be operated by the finger of a little child, we had an intensification of the struggle — women competing with men and the child competing with all. No workingman is given employment that he may provide for himself and his family. It is only on condition that a profit can be extracted from his labor. If there is no profit he is discharged. His wife may suffer, his children may be on the street, no matter what the results, he cannot work.

I have said again and again in this system there is nothing quite so cheap as human flesh and blood. It is in the power of a single individual sitting in New York to press a button that will send a message over the wire that will doom 50,000 willing men, women, and children. Concentration and cooperation are the master forces of this age. In the conflict that is going forward among the capitalists, the capital of the country is held in the hands of a few, and these few, though untitled and uncrowned, wield greater power than crowned kings and despots. The owners of the means of production are the real rulers of the American people and of all other people of other nations. Those who control the means of production, land, and capital, control all human institutions.

Now, there are a great many men who believe that they have a voice in government. You workingmen have as much to do with the control of this government as if you inhabited Mars or some other planet. (Cheers.) You regularly deposit your ballot and suppose it to be counted. The will of the people is supposed to be registered. But what your votes register is the will of the capitalist class. The capitalist class rules absolutely in every department of our government. It controls every legislature. It controls both branches of Congress and the Supreme Court is simply its convenience. Why, it is not possible for a lawyer, whatever his attainments, to find his way to the bench of the Supreme Court unless he has given overwhelming evidence of his capacity to serve the capitalist class and his willingness to crook the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning. Every judge who sits on the bench of the Supreme Court today is a tool of the capitalist class. I had an experience. (Great applause.) I think it was a good thing. I ought to have known better. The working class have no rights.

I am not fond of denouncing the capitalist class. I am more inclined to find fault with the working class. Now, do you know that for every capitalist, large and small, in the United States there are about 10 workingmen? That is to say, you workingmen are in the majority, are in the clear majority of 10 to 1, and as long as you suffer the capitalist class to rule, you do not deserve to fare better. As Lincoln said: “If that is what you want, that is what you want,” and as long as you are satisfied with the capitalist rule or misrule, you will have to submit to it.

Now, a few workingmen realize that the old parties are simply two wings of the same capitalist vulture, and that every reform party is a straggling tail feather in that same bird. Socialism is after that bird, and if you look at it you can see the light between the wings. Some of that light is beginning to reach gradually the working class. They are beginning to realize, first, that their interests as workingmen are absolutely identical, that what is good for one is good for all, what it equal for one is equal for all. They are beginning to realize that there are trade unions in the year 1901 which fall short of requirements; that while organization is a necessity upon the economic field, it is vastly more important on the political field. There was a time when there was some efficiency in the strike. What difference does it make to you to go out on strike, even if you win a raise in your wages of 15, 20, or 25 cents per day, if the same class that employs and pays your wages has also the power to raise the cost of the commodities?

In the wage system you and your children, and your children’s children, if capitalism shall prevail until they are born, are condemned to slavery and there is no possible hope unless by throwing over the capitalist and voting for Socialism. Now, what you want to do is quit every capitalist party of every name whatsoever. What you want to do is to organize your class and assert your class interests as capitalists do the interests of the class that is robbing you. It will not do for you to go to the polls and vote for some good men on some of the tickets and expect relief in that way. What can a good man do if he should happen to get to Congress? What could he do? Why, he simply would be polluted or helpless, or both. What we want is not to reform the capitalist system. We want to get rid of it. (Tremendous cheers.)

Now, it is a curious thing to me that a great many workingmen will vote for a thing that will do them no good, a thing that they do not want, because they are dead sure of getting it; and they will vote against the thing they need, against the thing they want, because they reason that if they all vote for it they might get it. Every workingman in every community should assert himself on election day, totally regardless of what others do.

Suppose you are the only Socialist in the community. Now, that might require a little more courage on your part, and if you lack it we cannot win. But if you have a little more courage and if you cast a Socialist vote, you will give some evidence of the final redemption of your community. If you cast that vote, someday you and your children will be proud of it; you will make a beginning and you will soon have company. Now, I would rather vote my convictions and vote alone than to vote against my convictions and be with the majority. What good is it to be with the majority of cowards, anyway? As a matter of fact, in the history of great principles, men everywhere have been wrong outside the minority. All of these great changes depend upon minorities, and in the march of time a minority becomes a majority and everyone applauds. In 10 years from now it will be very difficult in the city of Chicago to find a man who was not a Socialist 25 years ago.

There has never been any democracy in the world. Political democracy in the United States, so called, is a myth. A single capitalist, upon whom 25 workingmen depend, has political power more than equal to the slaves in his employ, simply because he owns and controls the means upon which their lives depend, without which they are doomed to idleness and starvation. What good would it do if it were in my power to shut off the supply of life and heat; you would all vote my ticket, would you not? Your lives depend upon the control and ownership of the means of production and distribution.

The owner of the slaves had to provide for them, he had to feed them, and he had to care for them in a way. It is not necessary to own slaves bodily today in order to exploit their labor. You simply have to own the tool, then they are completely at your mercy. To begin with, a slave cannot buy the modern tool. They are gigantic machines of great cost. The great mass of workingmen cannot buy them. They are compelled to present themselves at the door of the giant and humbly petition him for the privilege of using the tools they made for a share of what their labor produces. They are at his mercy, and not only this, but in the regular periods of depression that always follow periods of activity, it is even a privilege to be a slave, and thousands of so-called free Americans are denied that privilege. (Cheers.) If they go on voting the Republican ticket and the Democratic ticket, either party perpetuates the system that keeps them in fetters and their wives in rags and their children in hunger.

Arouse, ye slaves! Declare war, not on the capitalist, but on the capitalist system, and if it should be your fate or your fortune to suffer in years to come, that suffering will not be the result of your own deliberate act. I am for the freedom of the working class. Though my heart yearns for the freedom of men, I am powerless. Only the working class itself can achieve its emancipation. The workingman who is not yet awakened, who has not yet realized all his class interests, is a blind tool, the willing instrument of his own degradation, and thousands of them on the 4th of July, when reference is made to the capitalist flag that symbolizes the triumph of capitalism only, thousands of these wage slaves will applaud their own degradation. What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition.

Notwithstanding the boast that is often made that this is an era of prosperity, notwithstanding the statement that is made by capitalist politicians that the wages of workingmen are higher than ever in the history of the history of the country, I do not hesitate to declare, and I challenge refutation, that there never was a time when wages were so small in proportion to the products as now. Politicians assure us that we are extremely prosperous because our exports exceed the exports of all other nations of the world. What have you got to do with the exports? I think if you held a little interview with your stomach, you are more interested with import than export. Much money goes into the pockets of the capitalist class out of the product of your labor. You never receive notice from the government to get your share of the dividends, and as a matter of fact, in this system the more you produce the worse you are off. If you could produce as much tomorrow as you could in the next six months, you would be out of a job the day after tomorrow. (Loud applause.)

I wonder how many of the workingmen of Chicago are enjoying today at the sea coast this summer, or how many of them are toying with icicles in the arctic region, and next September how many will go down to Florida and stop at the Palmetto Hotel? Not many of them. Only the man can afford these luxuries, can afford these enjoyments, who has nothing to do with the production of them. No man that has anything to do with building a Pullman car can ride in it. You show me a man who has to make a Pullman car, and I will show you a man who walks when he travels.

If you have calloused hands, I will show you precisely what degree you mark on the social thermometer. I will locate you close to the zero point.

A man has to be a master or a slave. He will have to either wield a lash or hold the plow. Socialism proposes to free them both and level them both up to the plane of manhood. Whatever walk of life, constant struggle is going forward, man is arrayed against man, nation against nation, and all due to the capitalist system. The survival of the fittest is a survival of cunning over conscience.

Business means doing somebody else, and in the struggle the middle class loses in economic power. Men are driven to dishonesty in the system; they suspect each other, not because they do not know each other, but because they do. It is a mock civilization. Socialism will give humanity a new world. (Great cheer.) Business men attend the same prayer meeting, but they keep a business eye on each other. Business is business, and each one knows that the other is trying to do him. In the capitalist system we cannot give expression to the noblest sentiments of humanity; all success is born of failure and he who achieves the largest success succeeds in destroying the largest number of his fellow men.

The revolution is under way, but, like all revolutions, it is totally blind. It is in the nature of great social forces that they sometimes sweep humanity down. Let us work so that this revolution may come in peace. Socialists are organized to pave the way for its peaceful culmination.

We appeal first to the working class to come together in one class-conscious solidarity. We likewise appeal to the middle class who will day by day be forced down in the crowded ranks of the working class. We are asking them to open their eyes and see the new light. Their class is doomed and this debauched civilization is doomed to disappear with them. If I were in the middle class today, I would be a Socialist. I would be a socialist from a perfectly selfish motive. I would say to myself: “My class is to be crowded out, and my only hope is in the new social order; and although I may not live to see it, I may be doomed to die a slave, I will cast my lot with the man that proposes to make it possible for my children and the children of my children to enjoy life.”

But there are a great many who say that is all well enough, but we will not see it in our time. When a man talks so to me, I am inclined to think that there is something seriously wrong with him. Very often the case is that it is impossible to reach the intellect of such a man as this. It is questionable whether he has a thing that we can properly call by that name.

So far as I am concerned it does not matter in the slightest whether it comes next year or next century, or in a thousand centuries — that is not a question that concerns me. I simply know that the change is bound to come sometime and I know that it is my duty to do all I can to hasten its coming; and although I feel and indeed, I know, that I will be here to help celebrate its coming, to ratify its triumph, whether I am or not is a matter of the slightest consequence. I simply say that the capitalist system has almost fulfilled its mission. On every hand we behold the signs of change. It is disintegrating. It is to dissolve and pass away and you can prolong it if you wish and that is what you are doing if you war supporting the old parties.

There are two fundamental principles that are in conflict with each other — individualism and cooperation. Now there is perfect individualism among the beasts of the jungle. They do not cooperate, they compete, and the stronger competitor devours the weaker. You see a girl in the sweatshop only able to earn enough to keep her wretched soul within her shrunken body. Her pulled cheeks, her sunken eyes, her emaciated body testify to the poverty and horror of the competitive system. Hail the coming of Socialism!

But in every nation, in every civilized nation, men and women are massing beneath the banner of Socialism, men and women, for in Socialism woman stands side by side with man, she has all the rights that he enjoys.

We declare then, that the time has come when working men should open their eyes to the economic struggle, when they should have an intelligent understanding of Socialism and pave the way for its triumph and the abolishment of capitalism from the face of the world.

Now I have a right to get rich if I can in this system. I scorn to get rich. I could get rich only by making someone else poor. Suppose I have sharper claws and keener fangs than some of the rest of you, am I justified in using them to prey upon your vitals? If I have any ability whatever, I can only prove it by using it for the benefit of my fellow man. John Rockefeller is as completely a slave as any coal miner in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. He lives in a gilded cell, but he is serving a life sentence. He does not mingle with his fellow men, he does not enjoy the fellowship of the class he robs. He rules by the power of private ownership and he tries to ease the pangs of conscience by endowing universities. We do not want educational institutions in that way and when Socialism supplants capitalism, and when the wealth that is created is in the possession of the men who created it, when every man has not only plenty of what is required to supply his physical wants, but has leisure to enjoy, we will fill this country with educational institutions, we will make education universal; not only that, we will rescue industry from its cupidity. Then man shall stand erect in touch with his fellow man. He will be the monarch of his work. It will not be possible for one man to enslave another without forging fetters for himself. There is no release, there is no relief on any other line. It is Socialism or capitalism; as capitalism declines, Socialism follows it, so it is only a question of time.

I like the 4th of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution. On this day we reaffirm the ultimate triumph of Socialism. It is coming as certain as I stand in your presence. Trials are not to be regretted. They are a part and a necessary part of the development. We may disagree. We may divide. It is possible that we shall quarrel and still be perfectly honest. The development demands it all. We are all subscribers to the same fundamental principles. We all stand upon the same uncompromising platform. We all have our faces turned toward the economic dawn. We are battling for the triumph of the producers of the world. We are in touch with the International Socialists of the world — with our ears turned down, we can hear the thrones totter before the great march of the international hosts of Socialism.

So do not be discouraged for a single instant. If you have the courage of your convictions you can face the universe. So far as I am concerned, if there were a million, I would be one of the million. If they should be reduced to a thousand, I would be one of a thousand; if reduced to a hundred, I would be one of the hundred; if a single one survive, I would be that one against the world. I want every one of you to be that one and if you find that you are not so constituted that you can be that one against the world, you have no place in the Socialist movement, but go to the old parties and stay there until you get ripe.

We are educating, we are agitating, we are organizing, that is to say we are preparing for the inevitable. It is only a question of time when Socialists will be in the majority. They will succeed on a platform declaring for the social ownership of the means of production and distribution. Then the factory will no longer be a dismal den thronged with industrial convicts. Then for a’ that and a’ that, man to man the world o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that.

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Eugene Debs, “The Negro In The Class Struggle”, 1903

It so happens that I write upon the Negro question, in compliance with the request of the editor of the International Socialist Review , in the state of Louisiana, where the race prejudice is as strong and the feeling against the “nigger” as bitter and relentless as when Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation lashed the waning Confederacy into fury and incited the final and desperate attempts to burst the bonds that held the southern states in the federal union. Indeed, so thoroughly is the south permeated with the malign spirit of race hatred that even Socialists are to be found, and by no means rarely, who either share directly in the race hostility against the Negro, or avoid the issue, or apologize for the social obliteration of the color line in the class struggle.

The white man in the south declares that “the nigger is all right in his place”; that is, as menial, servant and slave. If he dare hold up his head, feel the thrill of manhood in his veins and nurse the hope that some day may bring deliverance; if in his brain the thought of freedom dawns and in his heart the aspiration to rise above the animal plane and propensities of his sires, he must be made to realize that notwithstanding the white man is civilized (?) the black man is a “nigger” still and must so remain as long as planets wheel in space.

But while the white man is considerate enough to tolerate the Negro “in his place,” the remotest suggestion at social recognition arouses all the pent-up wrath of his Anglo-Saxon civilization; and my observation is that the less real ground there is for such indignant assertion of self -superiority, the more passionately it is proclaimed.

At Yoakum, Texas, a few days ago, leaving the depot with two grips in my hands, I passed four or five bearers of the white man’s burden perched on a railing and decorating their environment with tobacco juice. One of them, addressing me, said: “There’s a nigger that’ll carry your grips.” A second one added: “That’s what he’s here for,” and the third chimed in with “That’s right, by God.” Here was a savory bouquet of white superiority. One glance was sufficient to satisfy me that they represented all there is of justification for the implacable hatred of the Negro race. They were ignorant, lazy, unclean, totally void of ambition, themselves the foul product of the capitalist system and held in lowest contempt by the master class, yet esteeming themselves immeasurably above the cleanest, most intelligent and self-respecting Negro, having by reflex absorbed the “nigger” hatred of their masters.

As a matter of fact the industrial supremacy of the south before the war would not have been possible without the Negro, and the south of today would totally collapse without his labor. Cotton culture has been and is the great staple and it will not be denied that the fineness and superiority of the fibre that makes the export of the southern states the greatest in the world is due in large measure to the genius of the Negroes charged with its cultivation.

The whole world is under obligation to the Negro, and that the white heel is still upon the black neck is simply proof that the world is not yet civilized.

The history of the Negro in the United States is a history of crime without a parallel.

Why should the white man hate him? Because he stole him from his native land and for two centuries and a half robbed him of the fruit of his labor, kept him in beastly ignorance and subjected him to the brutal domination of the lash? Because he tore the black child from the breast of its mother and ravished the black man’s daughter before her father’s eyes?

There are thousands of Negroes who bear testimony in their whitening skins that men who so furiously resent the suggestion of “social equality” are far less sensitive in respect to the sexual equality of the races.

But of all the senseless agitation in capitalist society, that in respect to “social equality” takes the palm. The very instant it is mentioned the old aristocratic plantation owner’s shrill cry about the “buck nigger” marrying the “fair young daughter” of his master is heard from the tomb and echoed and re-echoed across the spaces and repeated by the “white trash” in proud vindication of their social superiority.

Social equality, forsooth! Is the black man pressing his claims for social recognition upon his white burden bearer? Is there any reason why he should? Is the white man’s social recognition of his own white brother such as to excite the Negro’s ambition to covet the noble prize? Has the Negro any greater desire, or is there any reason why he should have, for social intercourse with the white man than the white man has for social relations with the Negro? This phase of the Negro question is pure fraud and serves to mask the real issue, which is not social equality , BUT ECONOMIC FREEDOM.

There never was any social inferiority that was not the shrivelled fruit of economic inequality.

The Negro, given economic freedom, will not ask the white man any social favors; and the burning question of “social equality” will disappear like mist before the sunrise.

I have said and say again that, properly speaking, there is no Negro question outside of the labor question — the working class struggle. Our position as Socialists and as a party is perfectly plain. We have simply to say: “The class struggle is colorless.” The capitalists, white, black and other shades, are on one side and the workers, white, black and all other colors, on the other side.

When Marx said: “Workingmen of all countries unite,” he gave concrete expression to the socialist philosophy of the class struggle; unlike the framers of the Declaration of Independence who announced that “all men are created equal” and then basely repudiated their own doctrine, Marx issued the call to all the workers of the globe, regardless of race, sex, creed or any other condition whatsoever.

As a social party we receive the Negro and all other races upon absolutely equal terms. We are the party of the working class, the whole working class, and we will not suffer ourselves to be divided by any specious appeal to race prejudice; and if we should be coaxed or driven from the straight road we will be lost in the wilderness and ought to perish there, for we shall no longer be a Socialist party.

Let the capitalist press and capitalist “public opinion” indulge themselves in alternate flattery and abuse of the Negro; we as Socialists will receive him in our party, treat him in our counsels and stand by him all around the same as if his skin were white instead of black; and this we do, not from any considerations of sentiment, but because it accords with the philosophy of Socialism, the genius of the class struggle, and is eternally right and bound to triumph in the end.

With the “’nigger” question, the “’race war” from the capitalist viewpoint we have nothing to do. In capitalism the Negro question is a grave one and will grow more threatening as the contradictions and complications of capitalist society multiply, but this need not worry us. Let them settle the Negro question in their way, if they can. We have nothing to do with it, for that is their fight. We have simply to open the eyes of as many Negroes as we can and bring them into the Socialist movement to do battle for emancipation from wage slavery, and when the working class have triumphed in the class struggle and stand forth economic as well as political free men, the race problem will forever disappear.

Socialists should with pride proclaim their sympathy with and fealty to the black race, and if any there be who hesitate to avow themselves in the face of ignorant and unreasoning prejudice, they lack the true spirit of the slavery-destroying revolutionary movement.

The voice of Socialism must be as inspiring music to the ears of those in bondage, especially the weak black brethren, doubly enslaved, who are bowed to the earth and groan in despair beneath the burden of the centuries.

For myself, my heart goes to the Negro and I make no apology to any white man for it. In fact, when I see the poor, brutalized, outraged black victim, I feel a burning sense of guilt for his intellectual poverty and moral debasement that makes me blush for the unspeakable crimes committed by my own race.

In closing, permit me to express the hope that the next convention may repeal the resolutions on the Negro question. The Negro does not need them and they serve to increase rather than diminish the necessity for explanation.

We have nothing special to offer the Negro, and we cannot make separate appeals to all the races.

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, regardless of color — the whole working class of the whole world.

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Eugene Debs, “The Negro and His Nemesis”, 1904

Since the appearance of my article on “The Negro in the Class Struggle” in the November Review I have received the following anonymous letter:

Elgin, Ill., November 25, 1903.
Mr. Debs:
Sir, I am a constant reader of the International Socialist Review. I have analyzed your last article on the Negro question with apprehension and fear. you say that the South is permeated with the race prejudice of the Negro more than the North. I say it is not so. When it comes right down to a test, the North is more fierce in the race prejudice of the Negro than the South ever has been or ever will be. I tell you, you will jeopardize the best interests of the Socialist Party if you insist on political equality of the Negro. For that will not only mean politial equality but also social equality eventually. I do not believe you realize what that means. You get social and political equality for the Negro, then let him come and ask the hand of your daughter in marriage, “For that seems to be the height of his ambition,” and we will see whether you still have a hankering for social and political equality for the Negro. For I tell you, the Negro will not be satisfied with equality with reservation. It is impossible for the Anglo-Saxon and the African to live on equal terms. You try it, and he will pull you down to his level. Mr. Lincoln, himself, said, that “There is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid them living together on terms of social and political equality.” If the Socialist leaders stoop to this method to gain votes, then their policy and doctrine is as rotten and degraded as that of the Republican and Democratic parties, and I tell you, if the resolutions are adopted to give the African equality with the Anglo-Saxon you will lose more votes than you now think. I for my part shall do all I can to make you lose as many as possible and there will be others. For don’t you know that just a little sour dough will spoil the whole batch of bread. You will do the Negro a greater favor by leaving him where he is. You elevate and educate him, adn you will make his position impossible in the U.S.A. Mr. Debs, if you have any doubt on this subject, I beg you for humanity’s sake to read Mr. Thomas Dixon’s “The Leopard’s Spots” and I hope that all others who have voiced your sentiments heretofore, will do the same.
I assure you, I shall watch the International Socialist Review with the most intense hope of a reply after you have read Mr. Thomas Dixon’s message to humanity.
Respectfully yours,
So far a staunch member of the
Socialist Party

The writer, who subscribed himself “A staunch member of the Socialist Party” is the only member of that kind I have ever heard of who fears to sign his name to, and accept responsibility for what he writes. The really “staunch” Socialist attacks in the open — he does not shoot from ambush.

The anonymous writer, as a rule, ought to be ignored, since he is unwilling to face those he accuses, while he may be a sneak or coward, traitor or spy, in the role of a “staunch Socialist,” whose base design it is to divide and disrupt the movement. For reasons which will appear later, this communication is made an exception and will be treated as if from a known party member in good standing.

It would be interesting to know of what branch our critic is a member and how long he has been, and how he happened to become a “staunch member of the Socialist Party.” That he is entirely ignorant of the philosophy of Socialism may not be to his discredit, but that a “staunch member” has not even read the platform of his party not only admits of no excuse, but takes the “staunchness” all out of him, punctures and discredits his foolish and fanatical criticism and leaves him naked and exposed to ridicule and contempt.

The Elgin writer has all the eminent and well recognized qualifications necessary to oppose Negro equality. His criticism and the spirit that prompts it harmonize delightfully with his assumed superiority.

That he may understand that he claims to be a “staunch member” of a party he knows nothing about I here incorporate the “Negro Resolutions” adopted by our last national convention, which constitute a vital part of the national platform of the Socialist Party and clearly defined its attitude toward the Negro:

NEGRO RESOLUTION
Whereas, The Negroes of the United States, because of their long training in slavery and but recent emancipation therefrom, occupy a peculiar position in the working class and in society at large;
Whereas, The capitalist class seeks to preserve this peculiar condition, and to foster and increase color prejudice and race hatred between the white worker and the black, so as to make their social and economic interests to appear to be separate and antagonistic, in order that the workers of both races may thereby be more easily and completely exploited;
Whereas, Both the old political parties and educational and religious institutions alike betray the Negro in his present helpless struggle against disfranchisement and violence, in order to receive the economic favors of the capitalist class. Be it, therefore,
Resolved, That we, the Socialists of America, in national convention assembled, do hereby assure our Negro fellow worker of our sympathy with him in his subjection to lawlessness and oppression, and also assure him of the fellowship of the workers who suffer from the lawlessness and exploitation of capital in every nation or tribe of the world. Be it further
Resolved, That we declare to the Negro worker the identity of his interests and struggles with the interests and struggle of the workers of all lands, without regard to race or color or sectional lines; that the causes which have made him the victim of social and political inequality are the effects of the long exploitation of his labor power; that all social and race prejudices spring from the ancient economic causes which still endure, to the misery of the whole human family, that the only line of division which exists in fact is that between the producers and the owners of the world — between capitalism and labor. And be it further
Resolved, That we the American Socialist Party, invite the Negro to membership and fellowship with us in the world movement for economic emancipation by which equal liberty and opportunity shall be secured to every man and fraternity become the order of the world.

But even without this specific declaration, the position of the party is so clear that no member and no other person of ordinary intelligence can fail to comprehend it.

The Socialist Party is the congealed, tangible expression of the Socialist movement, and the Socialist movement is based upon the modern class struggle in whic all workers of all countries, regardless of race, nationality, creed or sex, are called upon to unite against the capitalist class, their common exploiter and oppressor. In this great class struggle the economic equality of all workers is a foregone conclusion, and he who does not recognize and subscribe to it as one of the basic principles of the Socialist philosophy is not a Socialist, and if a party member must have been admitted through misunderstanding or false pretense, he should be speedily set adrift, that he may return to the capitalist parties with their social and economic strata from the “white trash” and “buck nigger” down to the syphilitic snob and harlot heiress who barters virtue for title in the matrimonial market.

I did not say that the race prejudice in the South was more intense than in the North. No such comparison was made and my critic’s denial is therefore unnecessary upon this point. Whether the prejudice of the South differs from that of the North is quite another question and entirely aside from the one at issue, not is it of sufficient interest to consider at this time.

The Elgin writer says that we shall “jeopardize the best interests of the Socialist Party” if we insist upon the political equality of the Negro. I say that the Socialist Party would be false to its historic mission, violate the fundamental principles of Socialism, deny its philosophy and repudiate its own teachings if, on account of race considerations, it sought to exclude any human being from political equality and economic freedom. Then, indeed, would it not only “jeopardize” its best interests, but forfeit its very life, for it would soon be scorned and deserted as a thing unclean, leaving but a stench in the nostrils of honest men.

Political equality is to be denied the Negro, according to this writer, because it would lead to social equality, and this would be terrible — especially for those “white” men who are already married to Negro women and those “white” women who have long since picked the “buck nigger” in preference to the “white trash” whose social superiority they were unable to distinguish or appreciate.

Of course the Negro will “not be satisfied with equality with reservation.” Why should he be? Would you?

Suppose you change places with the Negro just a year, then let us hear from you — “with reservation.”

What now follows it is difficult to consider with patience: “You get social and political equality for the Negro, then let him come and ask the hand of your daughter in marriage.”

In the first place you don’t get equality for the Negro — you haven’t got it yourself. In the present social scale there is no difference between you and the Negro — you are on the same level in the labor market, and the capitalist whose agent buys your labor power doesn’t know and doesn’t care if you are white or black, for he deals with you simply as labor power, and is uninterested save as to the quality and quantity you can supply. He cares no more about the color of your hide than does Armour about that of the steers he buys in the cattle market.

In the next place the Negro will fight for his own political and economic equality. He will take his place in the Socialist Party with the workers of all colors and all countries, and all of them will unite in the fight to destroy the capitalist system that now makes common slaves of them all.

Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.

As for “the Negro asking the hand of your daughter in marriage,” that is so silly and senseless that the writer is probably after all justified in withholding his name. How about the daughter asking the hand of the Negro in marriage? Don’t you know this is happening every day? Then, according to your logic, inferiority and degeneracy of the white race is established and the Negro ought to rise in solemn protest against political equality, lest the white man ask the hand of his daughter in marriage.

“It is impossible,” continues our critic, “for the Anglo-Saxon and the African to live upon equal terms. You try it and he will pull you down to his level.” Our critic must have tried something that had a downward pull, for surely that is his present tendency.

The fact is that it is impossible for the Anglo-Saxon and the African to live on unequal terms. A hundred years of American history culminating in the Civil War proves that. Does our correspondent want a repetition of the barbarous experiment?

How does the Anglo-Saxon get along with the Anglo-Saxon — leaving the Negro entirely out of the question? Do they bill and coo and love and caress each other? Is the Anglo-Saxon capitalist so devoted to his Anglo-Saxon wage-slave that he shares his burden and makes him the equal partner of his wealth and joy? Are they not as widely separated as the earth and sky, and do they not fight each other to the death? Does not the white capitalist look down with contempt upon the white wage-slave? And don’t you know that the plutocrat would feel himself pretty nearly, if not quite as outrageously insulted to have his Anglo-Saxon wage slave ask the hand of his daughter in marriage as if that slave were black instead of white?

Why are you not afraid that some Anglo-Saxon engine-wiper on the New York Central will ask the hand of Vanderbilt’s daughter in marriage?

What social distinction is there between a white and a black deck-hand on a Mississippi steamboat? Is it visible even with the aid of a microscope? They are both slaves, work side by side, sometimes a bunch of black slaves under a white “boss” and at other times a herd of white slaves under a black “boss.” Not infrequently you have to take a second look to tell them apart — but all are slaves and all are humans and all are robbed by their “superior” white brother who attends church, is an alleged follower of Jesus Christ and has a horror of “social equality.” To him “a slave is a slave for a’ that” — when he bargains for labor power he is not generally concerned about the color of the package, but if he is, it is to give the black preference because it can be bought at a lower price in the labor market, in which equality always prevails — the equality of intellectual and social debasement. To paraphrase Wordsworth:

A wage-slave by the river’s brim
A simple wage-slave is to him
And he is nothing more.

The man who seeks to arouse prejudice among workingmen is not their friend. He who advises the white wage-worker to look down upon the black wage-worker is the enemy of both.

The capitalist has some excuse for despising the slave — he lives out of his labor, out of his life, and cannot escape his sense of guilt, and so he looks with contempt upon his victim.

You can forgive the man who robs you, but you can’t forgive the man you rob — in his haggard features you read your indictment and this makes his face so repulsive that you must keep it under your heels where you cannot see it.

One need not experiment with “sour dough” nor waste any time on “sour” literature turned into “Leopard Spots” to arrive at sound conclusions upon these points, and the true Socialist delights not only in taking his position and speaking out, but in inviting and accepting without complaint all the consequences of his convictions, be they what they may.

Abraham Lincoln was a noble man, but he was not an abolitionist, and what he said in reference to the Negro was due regard to his circumscribed environs, and, for the time, was doubtless the quintessence of wisdom, but he was not an oracle who spoke for all coming ages, and we are not bound by what he thought prudent to say in a totally different situation half a century ago.

The Socialist platform has not a word in reference to “social equality.” It declares in favor of political and economic equality, and only he who denies this to any other human being is unfit for it.

Socialism will give all men economic freedom, equal opportunity to work, and the full product of their labor. Their “social” relations will be free to regulate to suit themselves. Like religion this will be an individual matter and our Elgin Negro-hater can consider himself just as “superior” as he chooses, confine his social attentions exclusively to white folks, and enjoy his leisure time in hunting down the black spectre who is bent on asking his daughter’s hand in marriage.

What warrant has he to say that the height of the Negro’s ambition is to marry a white woman? No more than a Negro has to say that the height of a white woman’s ambition is to marry a Negro. The number of such cases is about equally divided and it is so infitesimally small that any one who can see danger to society in it ought to have his visual organs treated for progressive exaggeration.

The normal Negro has ambition to rise. This is to his credit and ought to be encouraged. He is not asking, nor does he need, the white man’s social favors. He can regulate his personal associations with entire satisfaction to himself, without Anglo-Saxon concessions.

Suppose another race as much “superior” to the white as the white is to the black should drop from the skies. Would our Illinois correspondent at once fall upon his knees and acknowledge his everlasting inferiority, or would he seek to overcome it and rise to the higher plane of his superiors?

The Negro, like the white man, is subject to the laws of physical, mental and moral development. But in his case these laws have been suspended. Socialism simply proposes that the Negro shall have full opportunity to develop his mind and soul, and this will in time emancipate the race from animalism, so repulsive to those especially whose fortunes are built up out of it.

The Africans is here and to say. How came he to our shores? Ask your grandfathers, Mr. Anonymous, and if they will tell the truth you will or should blush for the crimes.

The black man was stolen from his native land, from his wife and child, brought to these shores and made a slave. He was chained and whipped and robbed by his “white superior,” while the son of his “superior” raped the black child before his eyes. For centuries he was kept in ignorance and debased and debauched by the white man’s law.

The rape-fiend? Horrible!

Whence came he! Not by chance. He can be accounted for. Trace him to his source and you will find an Anglo-Saxon at the other end. There are no rape-maniacs in Africa. They are the spawn of civilized lust.

Anglo-Saxon civilization is reaping and will continue to reap what it has sown.

For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.

Nor shall my door or my heart be ever closed against any human being on account of the color of his skin.

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Socialist Party of America Platform, 1904

THE DEFENDER OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.

We, the Socialist party, in convention assembled, make our appeal to the American people as the defender and preserver of the idea of liberty and self-government, in which the nation was born; as the only political movement standing for the program and principles by which the liberty of the individual may become a fact; as the only political organization that is democratic, and that has for its purpose the democratizing of the whole society.

To this idea of liberty the Republican and Democratic parties are utterly false. They alike struggle for power to maintain and profit by an industrial system which can be preserved only by the complete overthrow of such liberties as we already have, and by the still further enslavement and degradation of labor.

Our American institutions came into the world in the name of freedom. They have been seized upon by the capitalist class as the means of rooting out the idea of freedom from among the people. Our state and national legislatures have become the mere agencies of great propertied interests. These interests control the appointments and decisions of the judges of our courts. They have come into what is practically a private ownership of all the functions and forces of government. They are using these to betray and conquer foreign and weaker peoples, in order to establish new markets for the surplus goods which the people make, but are too poor to buy. They are gradually so invading and restricting the right of suffrage as to take unawares the right of the worker to a vote or voice in public affairs. By enacting new and misinterpreting old laws, they are preparing to attack the liberty of the individual even to speak or think for himself or for the common good.

By controlling all sources of social revenue, the possessing class is able to silence what might be the voice of the protest against the passing of liberty and the coming of tyranny. It completely controls the university and public school, the pulpit and the press, arts and literature. By making these economically dependent upon itself, it has brought all the forms of public teaching into servile submission to its own interests.

Our political institutions are also being used as the destroyers of that individual property upon which all liberty and opportunity depend. The promise of economic independence to each man was one of the faiths in which our institutions were founded. But under the guise of defending private property, capitalism is using our political institutions to make it impossible for the vast majority of human beings to ever become possessors of private property in the means of life.

Capitalism is the enemy and destroyer of essential private property. Its development is through the legalized confiscation of all that the labor of the working class produces, above its subsistence wage. The private ownership of the means of employment grounds society in an economic slavery which renders intellectual and political tyranny inevitable.

Socialism comes so to organize industry and society that every individual shall be secure in that private property in the means of life upon which his liberty of being, thought, and action depend. It comes to rescue the people from the fast increasing and successful assault of capitalism upon the liberty of the individual.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM VS. INTERNATIONAL CAPITALISM.

II. As an American Socialist party, we pledge our fidelity to the principles of International Socialism, as embodied in the united thought and action of the Socialists of all nations. In the industrial development already accomplished, the interests of the world’s workers are separated by no national boundaries. The condition of the most exploited and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the workers of the world to the same level. The tendency of the competitive wage system is to make labor’s lowest condition the measure or rule of its universal condition. Industry and finance are no longer national but international in both organizations and results. The chief significance of national boundaries, and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit.

The Socialist movement therefore is a world-movement. It knows of no conflicts between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity.

THE WORKERS VS. THE SHIRKERS.

III. The Socialist movement owes its birth and growth to that economic development or world process which is rapidly separating a working or producing class from a possessing or capitalist class. The class that produces nothing possesses labor’s fruits, and the opportunities and enjoyments these fruits afford, while the class that does the world’s real work has increasing economic uncertainty, and physical and intellectual misery as its portion.

The fact that these two classes have not yet become fully conscious of their distinction from each other, the fact that the lines of division and interest may not yet be clearly drawn, does not change the fact of the class conflict.

This class struggle is due to the private ownership of the means of employment, or the tools of production. Wherever and whenever man owned his own land and tools, and by them produced only the things which he used, economic independence was possible. But production, or the making of goods, has long ceased to be individual. The labor of scores, or even thousands, enters into almost every article produced. Production is now social, or collective. Practically everything is made or done by many men — sometimes separated by seas or continents — working together for the same end. But this co-operation in production is not for the direct use of the things made by the workers who make them, but for the profit of the owners of the tools and means of production; and to this is due the present division of society into two distinct classes, and from it has sprung all the miseries, inharmonies, and contradictions of our civilization.

Between these two classes there can be no possible compromise or identity of interests, any more than there can be peace in the midst of war, or light in the midst of darkness. A society based upon this class division carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Such a society is founded in fundamental injustice. There can be no possible basis for social peace, for individual freedom, for mental and moral harmony, except in the conscious and complete triumph of the working class as the only class that has the right or power to be.

SOCIALISM THE ONLY SAVING FORCE.

IV. The Socialist program is not a theory imposed upon society for its acceptance or rejection. It is but the interpretation of what is, sooner or later, inevitable. Capitalism is already struggling to its destruction. It is no longer competent to organize or administer the work of the world, or even to preserve itself. The captains of industry are appalled at their own inability to control or direct the rapidly socializing forces of industry. The so-called trust is but a sign and form of this developing socialization of the world’s work. The universal increase of the uncertainty of employment, the universal capitalist determination to break down the unity of labor in the trades unions, the widespread apprehension of impending change, reveal that the institutions of capitalist society are passing under the power of inhering forces that will soon destroy them.

Into the midst of the strain and crisis of civilization, the Socialist movement comes as the only saving or conservative force. If the world is to be saved from chaos, from universal disorder and misery, it must be by the union of the workers of all nations in the Socialist movement. The Socialist party comes with the only proposition or program for intelligently and deliberately organizing the nation for the common good of all its citizens. It is the first time that the mind of man has ever been directed toward the conscious organization of society.

Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to the creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together, and that opportunities shall be open and equal to all men.

TO SECURE IMMEDIATE INTERESTS OF THE WORKERS.

V. To the end that the workers may seize every possible advantage that may strengthen them to gain complete control of the powers of government, and thereby the sooner establish the co-operative commonwealth, the Socialist party pledges itself to watch and work in both the economic and the political struggle for each successive immediate interest of the working class;

for shortened days of labor and increase of wages;
for the insurance of the workers against accident, sickness, and lack of employment;
for pensions for aged and exhausted workers;
for the public ownership of the means of transportation, communication, and exchange;
for the graduated taxation of incomes, inheritances, and of franchise and land values, the proceeds to be applied to public employment and bettering the condition of the workers;
for the equal suffrage of men and women;
for the prevention of the use of the military against labor in the settlement of strikes;
for the free administration of justice;
for popular government, including initiative, referendum, proportional representation, and the recall of officers by their constituents;
and for every gain or advantage for the workers that may be wrested from the capitalist system, and that may relieve the suffering and strengthen the hands of labor.

We lay upon every man elected to any executive or legislative office the first duty of striving to procure whatever is for the workers’ most immediate interest, and whatever will lessen the economic and political powers of the capitalist and increase the like powers of the worker.

But, in so doing, we are using these remedial measures as means to one great end — the Co-operative Commonwealth. Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come into their rightful inheritance.

To this end we pledge ourselves, as the party of the working class, to use all political power, as fast as it shall be intrusted to us by our fellow-workers, both for their immediate interests and for their ultimate and complete emancipation. To this end we appeal to all the workers of America, and to all who will lend their lives to the service of the workers in their struggle to gain their own, and to all who will nobly and disinterestedly give their days and energies unto the workers’ cause, to cast their lot and faith with the Socialist party. Our appeal for the trust and suffrages of our fellow-workers is at once an appeal for their common good and freedom, and for the freedom and blossoming of our common humanity. In pledging ourselves, and those we represent, to be faithful to the appeal which we make, we believe that we are but preparing the soil of the economic freedom from which will spring the freedom of the whole man.

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Eugene Debs, Speech of Acceptance of the Presidential Nomination of the Socialist Party: Chicago, May 6, 1904

It is my honor to stand in the presence of a historic convention, and I would that Karl Marx might be here today. (Applause.) I would that Lassalle and Engels, the men who long before the movement had its present standing wrought and sacrificed themselves to make it possible for me to stand in this magnificent presence. I wish it were possible for them to share in the glories of this occasion. We are on the eve of battle today. We are ready for the contest. (Applause.) We are eager for the fray. (Applause.) We depart from here with the endorsement of a convention that shall challenge the approval of the working class of the world. (Applause.) Hitherto we have repeated, we have reiterated, we have followed. For the first time in the history of the American movement we have realized the American expression of that movement. There is not a line, not a word in that platform which is not revolutionary, which is not clear, which does not state precisely and properly the position of the American movement. We leave this convention, standing on this platform, to throw down the gauntlet to the capitalist enemy, (applause) to challenge the capitalist oppressor who stands for the perpetuation of the system that keeps in chains the workers in whose name we meet today. (Applause.)

There is a Republican Party — the dominant capitalist party of this time; the party that has its representative in the White House; the party that rules in both branches of Congress; the party that controls the Supreme Court; the party that commands the press; the party that gives inspiration to the subsidized pulpit; the party that guides every force of government; the party that is in absolute power in every department of our public affairs. And as a necessary result we find that corruption is rampant; that the Congress of the United States dare not respond to the demands of the people to uncover the sources from which corruption flows like lava streams down mountain sides; that they adjourned long before the regular hour in order they might postpone the inevitable. (Applause.)

There is a Democratic Party (A voice: “Where?”); a party that has not stock enough left to proclaim its own bankruptcy; (laughter and applause) an expiring party that totters upon the crumbling foundations of a dying class; a party that is torn by dissension; a party that cannot unite; a party that is looking backward and hoping for the resurrection of the men who gave it inspiration a century ago; a party that is appealing to the cemeteries of the past; (applause) a party that is trying to vitalize itself by its ghosts, by its corpses, by those who cannot be heard in their own defense. (Applause.)Thomas Jefferson would scorn to enter a modern Democratic convention. He would have as little business there as Abraham Lincoln would have in a latter-day Republican convention. (Applause.) If they were living today they would be delegates to this convention. (Tremendous applause.)

The Socialist Party meets these two capitalist parties face to face, without apology, scorning to compromise; it throws down the gage of battle and declares that there is but one solution of what is called the labor question, and that is by the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. (Applause.)

You have honored me, in the magnitude of the task you have imposed upon me, far beyond the power of my weak words to express. I can simply say that obedient to your call, I respond. (Applause.) Responsive to your command I am here, to serve you to the limit of my capacity. My controlling ambition shall be to bear the standard aloft where the battle waxes thickest. (Applause.) I shall take advantage of every opportunity to proclaim the emancipating mission of the Socialist movement. I shall be heard in the coming campaign (applause) as often, as decidedly, as emphatically, as revolutionarily, (applause) and as uncompromisingly (applause) as my ability, my strength, and my fealty to the party will allow.

I invoke no aid but that which springs from the misery of my class (applause) — no power that does not spring spontaneous from the oppression and exploitation of the workers of the world.

Above all things I realize that for the first time in the history of the ages there is a working class movement (“Hear, hear” and applause) — perfectly free from the patronizing cant of those who riot in the misery of the class who make up that movement.

On this occasion, above all others, my comrades, we are appealing to ourselves, we are bestirring ourselves, we are arousing the working class, the class that through all the ages has been oppressed, crushed, robbed, and debased, for the one reason that it has lacked the consciousness of its overmastering power that shall finally give it supreme control and make it the sovereign ruler of the world. (Applause.) This class is just beginning to awaken from the torpor of the centuries. (Applause.) The most hopeful sign of the time is that from the dull, dim eye of the proletaire there shoots forth the first gleam of intelligence, the first signal that he is waking up, and that he is becoming conscious of his power; and when through the vitalizing influence of the Socialist movement he shall become completely conscious of that power, he will overthrow the capitalist system and bring emancipation to his class and to all humanity. (Great applause.)

To consecrate myself to my part in this great work is my supreme ambition. (Applause.) I can only hope to do that part which is expected of me so well that my comrades, when the final verdict is rendered, will say, “He is not remembered because he was a candidate for President; he did not aspire to hold office; he did not try to associate his name with the passing glories, but he did prove himself a worthy member of the Socialist Party; (applause) he proved his right to a place in the International Socialist movement. (Applause.) If when the service to which you have called me shall have been completed this can be said of me, my acceptance of your nomination will have been far better made than I could hope to frame it in weak words, and so I close, with the wish and the hope and the ambition that when the fight has been fought, when the task you have imposed upon me has been performed, so far as it lies in the power of an individual to perform that task, my acceptance of the honor you have conferred upon me will have been worthily made, and that your judgment may then be vindicated by the membership of the party throughout the country.

From the depths of my heart I thank you. I thank you and each of you, and through you those you represent. I thank you not from my lips merely. I thank you from the depths of a heart that is responsive to your consideration. We shall meet again. We shall meet often. And when we meet finally we shall meet as a victorious host to ratify the triumph of the Socialist Republic. (Great and prolonged applause.)

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Eugene Debs, “Socialist Ideals”, 1908

While Socialism is a political movement with an industrial purpose, and, because it pays chief attention to the bread-and-butter problem, has been called materialistic, it is really the most idealistic movement of the centuries. So idealistic is it in its aims that, while having no specific religious tendency or purpose, it partakes somewhat of the nature of a religious movement and awakens something of a religious enthusiasm among its adherents.

Of course there are misconceptions of Socialism. These neither agitate nor surprise the Socialist, because they are to be expected. Without referring to any of them categorically, believe me when I say that Socialism is not so much a cut-and-dried program as it is a method by which industry is to be operated. It does not say what it will do or what you shall do, but only that the people, the workers and producers, shall be master of themselves and do with industry and the proceeds of their toil what they may think best. It is a continuation of the old fight against monarchy and in favor of democracy, which was begun in 1776, and which has since been growing into an enlarged world-demand.

Then the ideal was for the overthrow of the political autocracy that prevailed and the establishment of political democracy in its stead. After our forefathers won in that revolution of blood, the ideal inspired France to a glorious but unintelligent struggle for popular rule, and it has been growing and spreading ever since, until now it is only here and there, in isolated places, that political autocracy prevails; for even though England may have a king and Germany an emperor, they both have constitutions and parliaments elected by the people. Democracy has been so successful that it is safe to say that the people will never permit a return to absolute kingly rule.

Socialism is merely an extension of the ideal of democracy into the economic field. At present, industry is ruled by the owners of the machines of production and distribution, who have literally the power of life and death over the subjects. There are now, in round numbers, 17 millions and a half people in America who are wageworkers and dependents on others for means of life. There are at least 30 million more who are dependents on the wage-workers for a livelihood. But these are not the only people who are affected by the monarchy that prevails in industry. In many lines the prices of necessary articles of consumption are fixed arbitrarily, and in all cases a tribute of profit is exacted on all things bought and all things sold.

Through these means the entire people are constrained and made helpless before the system. Under political absolutism the emperor did not kill unless there was at least the semblance of crime, but under industrial absolutism the masters of the machine may cut off the means of life at their will and without charge or trial, so that the innocent, the helpless, are left without means whereby they may live. Socialism proposes to put industry in control of the people so that they may no longer be dependents on others for a job, so that they may be freed from the tribute of profit, and so that they may manage industry in their own way, as seems best to them.

It is evident that our forefathers who established political democracy in America could not have known all the uses to which democracy would be put through the years; they only believed that the people would fare better if they were permitted to manage the government for themselves than if a few private individuals should manage it for private good, and on these principles were ready to risk the future. Few there are today who will deny that their judgement was sound. today the socialist does not pretend to forecast what measures the people will take under popular rule of industry. He only believes in the people, that it will be better and safer for them to manage industry in their interest, than it will be to longer permit the owners of the machine to dominate industry in their private interest.

It is not entirely a new and untried principle, but only an extension of the principle for which our forefathers struggled in 1776. We do not need, like them, to resort to arms, but may use the democracy they bestowed on us as a means for obtaining further democracy; in the sense that political democracy is to be used as a means for the obtaining of industrial democracy is Socialism a political movement, and in no other sense. It will necessarily differ largely from political democracy in its application, and it is believed, will be the completion of the system begun so long ago that will make it automatic and simple in operation and successful in the solution of the problems that have hitherto baffled the ages. We know not what the people will do when they control the means by which they make their living, but we believe they will use them in their own interest and with a reasonable degree of intelligence. If they do, they can accomplish these results:

They can make it so no one who wants to do productive labor can be deprived of the opportunity of doing it, at any time.

They can make it possible to banish want from the face of the earth.

They can make it possible for every family to have a home and to be immune from the fear of want for themselves and their children.

They can make it possible for every child to have a good education, to be able to see the world, and to make its way without the least danger of losing out economically.

They can make it possible for every man to marry and support a family in comfort and security.

They can make it possible for every woman to be free economically, so that she may get along whether she marries or not.

These are part of the ideals that the Socialist cherishes. They are not mere visions, but are things that may be wrought into concrete form, whenever men shall have free access to the means with which things are produced and distributed. They have been impossible of attainment in the past, only because the earth and its fullness was held from the people by either political or industrial masters. In brief, Socialism holds as its great ideal that freedom of action which shall make the making of a living a simple, easy thing, possible to all; and beyond this lies the greater hope of being able to live, to really live.

Hitherto we have been engaged in a struggle for bread. We have been so busy seeking to make a living that we have not been able to make a life. So there have been no real men and no noble women in the world, in the high sense which they may be when men and women are free. If Socialism meant the solution of the bread-and-butter problem alone then it would be the most wonderful idea ever given to earth, for with all our philosophy and with all our machinery we have not yet accomplished this. If it meant the solution of the bread-and-butter problem only, even then it would surpass all other movements the world has seen, because it would mean an end of the slum and the sweatshop, of child slavery and white slavery, of the worry that kills and the anxiety that ages and destroys both temper and joy.

But it will mean infinitely more than this. When the bread-and-butter problem is settled and all men and women and children, the world around, are rendered secure from dread of war and fear of want, then the mind and soul will be free to develop as they never were before. We shall have a literature and an art such as the troubled heart and brain of man never before conceived. We shall have beautiful houses and happy homes such as want could never foster or drudgery secure. We shall have beautiful thoughts and sentiments, and a divinity in religion, such as man weighted down by the machine could never have imagined.

Think the best you can of good and beauty now, and it is only a rude and grotesque conception of that which will be possible when man is really free by virtue of being master of his own life and free from the mastery of the devils of want and worry.

Religion in its primaries is a great conception, a masterful longing, a transfiguring ideal. To Israel emerging from Egypt it took the form of aspiration for a land flowing with milk and honey, where every man might sit under his own vine and fig tree. This was as materialistic a conception as that which actuates the Socialist. But beyond that was the individual desire to make of his own life the best and happiest thing he possibly could. The Socialist wants the same thing. His vision of a free world is auxiliary to his ideal of making his own life better and sweeter. And when freedom comes, when the vision enlarges because of the horizon lifting with the higher plane man takes, then the ideal will expand beyond what is beheld now, until it reaches a grandeur such as eye hath not seen, or ear heard, or it hath entered into the heart of man to conceive.

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Morris Hillquit, “The Red Flag and the Stars & Stripes”, 1912

On the first day of each May the militant hosts of Socialism and labor, as usual, turn out to celebrate the international holiday of brotherhood. In New York and San Francisco, in Paris and Warsaw, in Tokyo and Johannesburg, in all parts of the glob where the masses toil and suffer, and the idlers rule and enjoy, the workers will march in proud procession to the inspiring tune of the “Marseillaise” or the “Internationale,” carrying the defiant emblem of their hopes and aspirations, their creed and their ideal, their revolt and their challenge — the Red Flag of Socialism.

As usual also a savage howl of mingled rage and fear will go up from the capitalist press, the capitalist pulpit, and the capitalist government. The parasites of all nations have a morbid aversion to the red color. Their guilty conscience interprets it as a symbol of carnage and bloodshed.

And our American capitalists are even more sensitive to the irritating effects of the red flag than their brethren across the seas. Perhaps their nerves are more sadly unstrung. In the recent municipal campaigns in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, philanthropists and parasites, reformers and boodlers, preachers and dive-keepers, in a word, all “respectable” society, rallied to the slogan: “The Stars and Stripes as Against the Red Flag,” and the “Red Flag” was beaten in both cases. The average unthinking American voter has a holy horror of the red flag, and our astute politician can be relied on to take advantage of that idiosyncracy in ever greater measure as the growing forces of Socialism continue to menace their power and influence. They will find the Socialists of this country ready and eager to accept the challenge, and ere long they will regret that they ever had the hardihood of raising the issue.

We Socialists glory in the Red Flag as the symbol of kinship of all that bears human countenance; we revere it as an augury of worldwide peace, harmony, and brotherhood, we cling to it as the inspiring standard in the great international fight against corruption, exploitation, and oppression. We are proud of the Red Flag. Our allegiance to it is open and honest.

But how about you, apologists of the existing system? You, who taunt us with our flag and flaunt into our faces the Stars and Stripes? What claim do you have to the emblem of American independence, democracy, and justice? You have ruthlessly destroyed the ideal of social equality, which was fondly woven into the texture of the American flag by the revolutionary founders of the republic, and have delivered the country and its people to a gang of financial freebooters. You have reared a purse-proud aristocracy more unbearable than ever was the rule of George III. You have driven millions of American men, women, and children into industrial slavery, misery, and destitution. You have banished the American ideals of civic righteousness, and have poisoned the public life of the nation by wholesale fraud, bribery, and corruption. You have polluted and prosecuted our press, our schools, our churches and courts. You have traduced and betrayed the American people and soiled and degraded its national emblem. The Stars and Stripes are not your emblem! You have long pawned the stars to the trusts and monopolies and your stripes are the stripes of the prison garb. Your true emblem is the black flag of the pirate.

Since the fight of Socialism is a fight to reestablish equality, democracy, and social justice in this country, the Socialists alone uphold the true purity and honor of the Stars and Stripes. Since the fight of Socialism is at the same time a fight for the entire human race, the Red Flag supplements the Stars and Stripes. When Socialism will win its battles, both emblems will flutter together from all huts and palaces, gaily proclaiming in their multiform colors that mankind is free.

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Morris Hillquit, “Our Patriotism and Theirs”, 1918

One of the charges commonly made against the Socialists in this campaign is that they are devoid of patriotism. To this charge we plead NOT GUILTY. We yield to no man in the sense of our true patriotism. Patriotism means the love of one’s country, and love of the country means nothing if it does not mean love of the people. True patriotism expresses itself in honest efforts to enhance the happiness and welfare of the great masses of the people, to help them in their struggles for more food, better homes, higher education, larger freedom, brighter, happier lives.

Patriotism is a very much abused term. In this campaign the country is infested with a swarm of professional patriots, including men who are aspiring to the highest office in the land, men who have occupied the most exalted positions in the gift of the nation and other great national luminaries. They travel throughout the country prating about “true Americanism,” they wave the American flag with rivaling frenzy, they flatter our national vanity, they appeal to our basest instincts, they foment racial antagonism at home and pave the ground for strife and war with foreign nations. Their agitation is harmful to the people, it is grossly unpatriotic.

Our leading citizens, who march in the front ranks of “preparedness” parades, but build their fortunes upon the misery and oppression of their fellowmen, they, too, are thoroughly unpatriotic.

The Socialists alone stand for true and enlightened patriotism. The essence of true American patriotism has been proclaimed to the whole world 140 years ago in terms so clear and in tones so ringing that it holds as true now as ever, and the political pygmies of today may well save themselves the trouble of amending it.

I refer to the sublimest instrument produced by American genius, the Declaration of Independence.

Let me quote from it:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Life, Liberty, and Happiness for all human beings, including all workers, that is the great goal of organized labor and of the Socialist movement.

The worker’s life counts for nothing in our cruel industrial system. It is being ruthlessly crushed and destroyed in the mines, mills, and factories by violent accidents. It is being steadily sapped by inhuman overexertion.

His liberty is at best the liberty to choose and change his master. There can be no true liberty in an industrial despotism.

His pursuit of happiness is often a vain pursuit of a job to keep his body and soul together.

For the ruling classes of our country, the Tories of the 20th Century, the Declaration of Independence has become an antiquated, meaningless “scrap of paper.” To them government exists not to ensure Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but to protect Property, Authority, and the Pursuit of Profits.

The government and system maintained by American capitalism have become destructive of the lives, liberties, and happiness of the workers and the great masses of the people, and with the founders of this republic we hold that it is the right and the duty of the people “to alter or abolish” this system, and “to institute a new government”; a government organized to maintain human life and promote human happiness, a government based on industrial as well as political liberty, a true popular government for the benefit of the whole people.

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America was promises to whom?

W.E.B. Du Bois, from “The Propaganda of History”, in “Black Reconstruction in America”, 1935

What are American children taught today about Reconstruction? Helen Boardman has made a study of current textbooks and notes these three dominant theses:

1. All Negroes were ignorant.

“All were ignorant of public business.” (Woodburn and Moran, “Elementary American History and Government,” p. 397.)

“Although the Negroes were now free, they were also ignorant and unfit to govern themselves.” (Everett Barnes, “American History for Grammar Grades,” p. 334.)

‘“The Negroes got control of these states. They had been slaves all their lives, and were so ignorant they did not even know the letters of the alphabet. Yet they now sat in the state legislatures and made the laws.” (D. H. Montgomery, “The Leading Facts of American History,” p. 332.)

“In the South, the Negroes who had so suddenly gained their freedom did not know what to do with it.” (Hubert Cornish and Thomas Hughes, “History of the United States for Schools,” p. 345.)

“In the legislatures, the Negroes were so ignorant that they could only watch their white leaders — carpetbaggers, and vote aye or no as they were told.” (S. E. Forman, “Advanced American History,” Revised Edition, p. 452.)

“Some legislatures were made up of a few dishonest white men and several Negroes, many too ignorant to know anything about law-making.” (Hubert Cornish and Thomas Hughes, “History of the United States for Schools,” p. 349.)

2. All Negroes were lazy, dishonest and extravagant.

“These men knew not only nothing about the government, but also cared for nothing except what they could gain for themselves.” (Helen F. Giles, “How the United States Became a World Power,” p. 7.)

“Legislatures were often at the mercy of Negroes, childishly ignorant, who sold their votes openly, and whose ‘loyalty’ was gained by allowing them to eat, drink and clothe themselves at the state’s expense.” (William J. Long, “America — A History of Our Country,” P-392-)

“Some Negroes spent their money foolishly, and were worse off than they had been before.” (Carl Russell Fish, “History of America,” p. 385-)

“This assistance led many freed men to believe that they need no longer work. They also ignorantly believed that the lands of their former masters were to be turned over by Congress to them, and that every Negro was to have as his allotment ‘forty acres and a mule.’” (W. F. Gordy, “History of the United States,” Part II, p. 336.)

“Thinking that slavery meant toil and that freedom meant only idleness, the slave after he was set free was disposed to try out his freedom by refusing to work.” (S. E. Forman, “Advanced American History,” Revised Edition.)

“They began to wander about, stealing and plundering. In one week, in a Georgia town, 150 Negroes were arrested for thieving.” (Helen F. Giles, “How the United States Became a World Power,” p. 6.)

3. Negroes were responsible for bad government during Reconstruction.

“Foolish laws were passed by the black law-makers, the public money was wasted terribly and thousands of dollars were stolen straight. Self-respecting Southerners chafed under the horrible regime.” (Emerson David Fite, “These United States,” p. 37.)

“In the exhausted states already amply ‘punished’ by the desolation of war, the rule of the Negro and his unscrupulous carpetbagger and scalawag patrons, was an orgy of extravagance, fraud and disgusting incompetency.” (David Saville Muzzey, “History of the American People,” p. 408.)

“The picture of Reconstruction which the average pupil in these sixteen States receives is limited to the South. The South found it necessary to pass Black Codes for the control of the shiftless and sometimes vicious freedmen. The Freedmen’s Bureau caused the Negroes to look to the North rather than to the South for support and by giving them a false sense of equality did more harm than good. With the scalawags, the ignorant and non-propertyholding Negroes under the leadership of the carpetbaggers, engaged in a wild orgy of spending in the legislatures. The humiliation and distress of the Southern whites was in part relieved by the Ku Klux Klan, a secret organization which frightened the superstitious blacks.”

Grounded in such elementary and high school teaching, an American youth attending college today would learn from current textbooks of history that the Constitution recognized slavery; that the chance of getting rid of slavery by peaceful methods was ruined by the Abolitionists; that after the period of Andrew Jackson, the two sec- tions of the United States “had become fully conscious of their conflicting interests. Two irreconcilable forms of civilization … in the North, the democratic … in the South, a more stationary and aristocratic civilization.” He would read that Harriet Beecher Stowe brought on the Civil War; that the assault on Charles Sumner was due to his “coarse invective” against a South Carolina Senator; and that Negroes were the only people to achieve emancipation with no effort on their part. That Reconstruction was a disgraceful attempt to subject white people to ignorant Negro rule; and that, according to a Harvard professor of history (the italics are ours), “Legislative expenses were grotesquely extravagant; the colored members in some states engaging in a saturnalia of corrupt expenditure” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th Edition, Volume 22, p. 815, by Frederick Jackson Turner).

In other words, he would in all probability complete his education without any idea of the part which the black race has played in America; of the tremendous moral problem of abolition; of the cause and meaning of the Civil War and the relation which Reconstruction had to democratic government and the labor movement today.

Herein lies more than mere omission and difference of emphasis. The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans. The editors of the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica asked me for an article on the history of the American Negro. From my manuscript they cut out all my references to Reconstruction. I insisted on including the following statement:

“White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools.”

This the editor refused to print, although he said that the article otherwise was “in my judgment, and in the judgment of others in the office, an excellent one, and one with which it seems to me we may all be well satisfied.” I was not satisfied and refused to allow the article to appear.

War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. It is the duty of humanity to heal them. It was therefore soon conceived as neither wise nor patriotic to speak of all the causes of strife and the terrible results to which sectional differences in the United States had led. And so, first of all, we minimized the slavery controversy which convulsed the nation from the Missouri Compromise down to the Civil War. On top of that, we passed by Reconstruction with a phrase of regret or disgust.

But are these reasons of courtesy and philanthropy sufficient for denying Truth? If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with that accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations, there must be set some standards of ethics in research and interpretation.

If, on the other hand, we are going to use history for our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego, and giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment, then we must give up the idea of history either as a science or as an art using the results of science, and admit frankly that we are using a version of historic fact in order to influence and educate the new generation along the way we wish.

It is propaganda like this that has led men in the past to insist that history is “lies agreed upon”; and to point out the danger in such misinformation. It is indeed extremely doubtful if any permanent benefit comes to the world through such action. Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?

Here in the United States we have a clear example. It was morally wrong and economically retrogressive to build human slavery in the United States in the eighteenth century. We know that now, perfectly well; and there were many Americans North and South who knew this and said it in the eighteenth century. Today, in the face of new slavery established elsewhere in the world under other names and guises, we ought to emphasize this lesson of the past. Moreover, it is not well to be reticent in describing that past. Our histories tend to discuss American slavery so impartially, that in the end nobody seems to have done wrong and everybody was right. Slavery appears to have been thrust upon unwilling helpless America, while the South was blameless in becoming its center. The difference of development, North and South, is explained as a sort of working out of cosmic social and economic law.

One reads, for instance, Charles and Mary Beard’s “Rise of American Civilization,” with a comfortable feeling that nothing right or wrong is involved. Manufacturing and industry develop in the North; agrarian feudalism develops in the South. They clash, as winds and waters strive, and the stronger forces develop the tremendous industrial machine that governs us so magnificently and selfishly today.

Yet in this sweeping mechanistic interpretation, there is no room for the real plot of the story, for the clear mistake and guilt of rebuilding a new slavery of the working class in the midst of a fateful experiment in democracy; for the triumph of sheer moral courage and sacrifice in the abolition crusade; and for the hurt and struggle of degraded black millions in their fight for freedom and their attempt to enter democracy. Can all this be omitted or half suppressed in a treatise that calls itself scientific?

Or, to come nearer the center and climax of this fascinating history: What was slavery in the United States? Just what did it mean to the owner and the owned? Shall we accept the conventional story of the old slave plantation and its owner’s fine, aristocratic life of cultured leisure? Or shall we note slave biographies, like those of Charles Ball, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass; the careful observations of Olmsted and the indictment of Hinton Helper?

No one can read that first thin autobiography of Frederick Douglass and have left many illusions about slavery. And if truth is our object, no amount of flowery romance and the personal reminiscences of its protected beneficiaries can keep the world from knowing that slavery was a cruel, dirty, cosdy and inexcusable anachronism, which nearly ruined the world’s greatest experiment in democracy. No serious and unbiased student can be deceived by the fairy tale of a beautiful Southern slave civilization. If those who really had opportunity to know the South before the war wrote the truth, it was a center of widespread ignorance, undeveloped resources, suppressed humanity and unrestrained passions, with whatever veneer of manners and culture that could lie above these depths.

Coming now to the Civil War, how for a moment can anyone who reads the Congressional Globe from 1850 to 1860, the lives of contemporary statesmen and public characters, North and South, the discourses in the newspapers and accounts of meetings and speeches, doubt that Negro slavery was the cause of the Civil War? What do we gain by evading this clear fact, and talking in vague ways about “Union” and “State Rights” and differences in civilization as the cause of that catastrophe?

Of all historic facts there can be none clearer than that for four long and fearful years the South fought to perpetuate human slavery; and that the nation which “rose so bright and fair and died so pure of stain” was one that had a perfect right to be ashamed of its birth and glad of its death. Yet one monument in North Carolina achieves the impossible by recording of Confederate soldiers: “They died fighting for liberty!”

On the other hand, consider the North and the Civil War. Why should we be deliberately false, like Woodward, in “Meet General Grant,” and represent the North as magnanimously freeing the slave without any effort on his part?

“The American Negroes are the only people in the history of the world, so far as I know, that ever became free without any effort of their own. . . .

“They had not started the war nor ended it. They twanged banjos around the railroad stations, sang melodious spirituals, and believed that some Yankee would soon come along and give each of them forty acres of land and a mule.”

The North went to war without the slightest idea of freeing the slave. The great majority of Northerners from Lincoln down pledged themselves to protect slavery, and they hated and harried Abolitionists. But on the other hand, the thesis which Beale tends to support that the whole North during and after the war was chiefly interested in making money, is only half true; it was abolition and belief in democracy that gained for a time the upper hand after the war and led the North in Reconstruction; business followed abolition in order to maintain the tariff, pay the bonds and defend the banks. To call this business program “the program of the North” and ignore abolition is unhistorical. In growing ascendancy for a calculable time was a great moral movement which turned the North from its economic defense of slavery and led it to Emancipation. Abolitionists attacked slavery because it was wrong and their moral battle cannot be truthfully minimized or forgotten. Nor does this fact deny that the majority of Northerners before the war were not abolitionists, that they attacked slavery only in order to win the war and enfranchised the Negro to secure this result.

One has but to read the debates in Congress and state papers from Abraham Lincoln down to know that the decisive action which ended the Civil War was the emancipation and arming of the black slave; that, as Lincoln said: “Without the military help of black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.” The freedmen, far from being the inert recipients of freedom at the hands of philanthropists, furnished 200,000 soldiers in the Civil War who took part in nearly 200 battles and skirmishes, and in addition perhaps 300,000 others as effective laborers and helpers. In proportion to population, more Negroes than whites fought in the Civil War. These people, withdrawn from the support of the Confederacy, with threat of the withdrawal of millions more, made the opposition of the slaveholder useless, unless they themselves freed and armed their own slaves. This was exactly what they started to do; they were only restrained by realizing that such action removed the very cause for which they began righting. Yet one would search current American histories almost in vain to find a clear statement or even faint recognition of these perfectly well-authenticated facts.

All this is but preliminary to the kernel of the historic problem with which this book deals, and that is Reconstruction. The chorus of agreement concerning the attempt to reconstruct and organize the South after the Civil War and emancipation is overwhelming. There is scarce a child in the street that cannot tell you that the whole effort was a hideous mistake and an unfortunate incident, based on ignorance, revenge and the perverse determination to attempt the impossible; that the history of the United States from 1866 to 1876 is something of which the nation ought to be ashamed and which did more to retard and set back the American Negro than anything that has happened to him; while at the same time it grievously and wantonly wounded again a part of the nation already hurt to death.

True it is that the Northern historians writing just after the war had scant sympathy for the South, and wrote ruthlessly of “rebels” and “slave-drivers.” They had at least the excuse of a war psychosis.

As a young labor leader, Will Herberg, writes : “The great traditions of this period and especially of Reconstruction are shamelessly repudiated by the official heirs of Stevens and Sumner. In the last quarter of a century hardly a single book has appeared consistently championing or sympathetically interpreting the great ideals of the crusade against slavery, whereas scores and hundreds have dropped from the presses in ignoble ‘extenuation’ of the North, in open apology for the Confederacy, in measureless abuse of the Radical figures of Reconstruction. The Reconstruction period as the logical culmination of decades of previous development, has borne the brunt of the reaction.”

[…]

The chief witness in Reconstruction, the emancipated slave himself, has been almost barred from court. His written Reconstruction record has been largely destroyed and nearly always neglected. Only three or four states have preserved the debates in the Reconstruction conventions; there are few biographies of black leaders. The Negro is re- fused a hearing because he was poor and ignorant. It is therefore assumed that all Negroes in Reconstruction were ignorant and silly and that therefore a history of Reconstruction in any state can quite ignore him. The result is that most unfair caricatures of Negroes have been carefully preserved; but serious speeches, successful administration and upright character are almost universally ignored and forgotten. Wherever a black head rises to historic view, it is promptly slain by an adjective — “shrewd,” “notorious,” “cunning” — or pilloried by a sneer; or put out of view by some quite unproven charge of bad moral character. In other words, every effort has been made to treat the Negro’s part in Reconstruction with silence and contempt.

When recently a student tried to write on education in Florida, he found that the official records of the excellent administration of the colored Superintendent of Education, Gibbs, who virtually established the Florida public school, had been destroyed. Alabama has tried to obliterate all printed records of Reconstruction.

Especially noticeable is the fact that little attempt has been made to trace carefully the rise and economic development of the poor whites and their relation to the planters and to Negro labor after the war. There were five million or more non-slaveholding whites in the South in 1860 and less than two million in the families of all slaveholders. Yet one might almost gather from contemporary history that the five million left no history and had no descendants. The extraordinary history of the rise and triumph of the poor whites has been largely neglected, even by Southern white students.

The whole development of Reconstruction was primarily an economic development, but no economic history or proper material for it has been written. It has been regarded as a purely political matter, and of politics most naturally divorced from industry.

All this is reflected in the textbooks of the day and in the encyclopedias, until we have got to the place where we cannot use our experiences during and after the Civil War for the uplift and enlightenment of mankind. We have spoiled and misconceived the position of the historian. If we are going, in the future, not simply with regard to this one question, but with regard to all social problems, to be able to use human experience for the guidance of mankind, we have got clearly to distinguish between fact and desire.

In the first place, somebody in each era must make clear the facts with utter disregard to his own wish and desire and belief. What we have got to know, so far as possible, are the things that actually happened in the world. Then with that much clear and open to every reader, the philosopher and prophet has a chance to interpret these facts; but the historian has no right, posing as scientist, to conceal or distort facts; and until we distinguish between these two functions of the chronicler of human action, we are going to render it easy for a muddled world out of sheer ignorance to make the same mistake ten times over.

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner, or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children, or that Alexander Hamilton had Negro blood, and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.

No one reading the history of the United States during 1850–1860 can have the slightest doubt left in his mind that Negro slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and yet during and since we learn that a great nation murdered thousands and destroyed millions on account of abstract doctrines concerning the nature of the Federal Union. Since the attitude of the nation concerning state rights has been revolutionized by the development of the central government since the war, the whole argument becomes an astonishing reductio ad absurdum, leaving us apparently with no cause for the Civil War except the recent reiteration of statements which make the great public men on one side narrow, hypocritical fanatics and liars, while the leaders on the other side were extraordinary and unexampled for their beauty, unselfishness and fairness.

Not a single great leader of the nation during the Civil War and Reconstruction has escaped attack and libel. The magnificent figures of Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens have been besmirched almost beyond recognition. We have been cajoling and flattering the South and slurring the North, because the South is determined to re-write the history of slavery and the North is not interested in history but in wealth.

This, then, is the book basis upon which today we judge Reconstruction. In order to paint the South as a martyr to inescapable fate, to make the North the magnanimous emancipator, and to ridicule the Negro as the impossible joke in the whole development, we have in fifty years, by libel, innuendo and silence, so completely misstated and obliterated the history of the Negro in America and his relation to its work and government that today it is almost unknown. This may be fine romance, but it is not science. It may be inspiring, but it is certainly not the truth. And beyond this it is dangerous. It is not only part foundation of our present lawlessness and loss of democratic ideals; it has, more than that, led the world to embrace and worship the color bar as social salvation and it is helping to range mankind in ranks of mutual hatred and contempt, at the summons of a cheap and false myth…

Negroes have done some excellent work on their own history and defense. It suffers of course from natural partisanship and a desire to prove a case in the face of a chorus of unfair attacks. Its best work also suffers from the fact that Negroes with difficulty reach an audience. But this is also true of such white writers as Skaggs and Bancroft who could not get first-class publishers because they were saying something that the nation did not like…

I write then in a field devastated by passion and belief. Naturally, as a Negro, I cannot do this writing without believing in the essential humanity of Negroes, in their ability to be educated, to do the work of the modern world, to take their place as equal citizens with others. I cannot for a moment subscribe to that bizarre doctrine of race that makes most men inferior to the few. But, too, as a student of science, I want to be fair, objective and judicial; to let no searing of the memory by intolerable insult and cruelty make me fail to sympathize with human frailties and contradiction, in the eternal paradox of good and evil. But armed and warned by all this, and fortified by long study of the facts, I stand at the end of this writing, literally aghast at what American historians have done to this field.

What is the object of writing the history of Reconstruction? Is it to wipe out the disgrace of a people which fought to make slaves of Negroes? Is it to show that the North had higher motives than freeing black men? Is it to prove that Negroes were black angels? No, it is simply to establish the Truth, on which Right in the future may be built. We shall never have a science of history until we have in our colleges men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race, and who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to support a prejudice or buttress a lie.

Three-fourths of the testimony against the Negro in Reconstruction is on the unsupported evidence of men who hated and despised Negroes and regarded it as loyalty to blood, patriotism to country, and filial tribute to the fathers to lie, steal or kill in order to discredit these black folk. This may be a natural result when a people have been humbled and impoverished and degraded in their own life; but what is inconceivable is that another generation and another group should regard this testimony as scientific truth, when it is contradicted by logic and by fact. This chapter, therefore, which in logic should be a survey of books and sources, becomes of sheer necessity an arraignment of American historians and an indictment of their ideals. With a determination unparalleled in science, the mass of American writers have started out so to distort the facts of the greatest critical period of American history as to prove right wrong and wrong right. I am not familiar enough with the vast field of human history to pronounce on the relative guilt of these and historians of other times and fields; but I do say that if the history of the past has been written in the same fashion, it is useless as science and misleading as ethics. It simply shows that with sufficient general agreement and determination among the dominant classes, the truth of history may be utterly distorted and contradicted and changed to any convenient fairy tale that the masters of men wish.

I cannot believe that any unbiased mind, with an ideal of truth and of scientific judgment, can read the plain, authentic facts of our history, during 1860–1880, and come to conclusions essentially different from mine; and yet I stand virtually alone in this interpretation. So much so that the very cogency of my facts would make me hesitate, did I not seem to see plain reasons. Subtract from Burgess his belief that only white people can rule, and he is in essential agreement with me. Remember that Rhodes was an uneducated money-maker who hired clerks to find the facts which he needed to support his thesis, and one is convinced that the same labor and expense could easily produce quite opposite results.

One fact and one alone explains the attitude of most recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot conceive Negroes as men; in their minds the word “Negro” connotes “inferiority” and “stupidity” lightened only by unreasoning gayety and humor. Suppose the slaves of 1860 had been white folk. Stevens would have been a great statesman, Sumner a great democrat, and Schurz a keen prophet, in a mighty revolution of rising humanity. Ignorance and poverty would easily have been explained by history, and the demand for land and the franchise would have been justified as the birthright of natural freemen.

But Burgess was a slaveholder, Dunning a Copperhead and Rhodes an exploiter of wage labor. Not one of them apparently ever met an educated Negro of force and ability. Around such impressive thinkers gathered the young post-war students from the South. They had been born and reared in the bitterest period of Southern race hatred, fear and contempt. Their instinctive reactions were confirmed and encouraged in the best of American universities. Their scholarship, when it regarded black men, became deaf, dumb and blind. The clearest evidence of Negro ability, work, honesty, patience, learning and efficiency became distorted into cunning, brute toil, shrewd evasion, cowardice and imitation — a stupid effort to transcend nature’s law.

For those seven mystic years between Johnson’s “swing ‘round the circle” and the panic of 1873, a majority of thinking Americans in the North believed in the equal manhood of black folk. They acted accordingly with a clear-cut decisiveness and thorough logic, utterly incomprehensible to a day like ours which does not share this human faith; and to Southern whites this period can only be explained by deliberate vengeance and hate.

The panic of 1873 brought sudden disillusion in business enterprise, economic organization, religious belief and political standards. A flood of appeal from the white South re-enforced this reaction — appeal with no longer the arrogant bluster of slave oligarchy, but the simple moving annals of the plight of a conquered people. The resulting emotional and intellectual rebound of the nation made it nearly inconceivable in 1876 that ten years earlier most men had believed in human equality.

Assuming, therefore, as axiomatic the endless inferiority of the Negro race, these newer historians, mostly Southerners, some Northerners who deeply sympathized with the South, misinterpreted, distorted, even deliberately ignored any fact that challenged or contradicted this assumption. If the Negro was admittedly sub-human, what need to waste time delving into his Reconstruction history? Consequently historians of Reconstruction with a few exceptions ignore the Negro as completely as possible, leaving the reader wondering why an element apparently so insignificant filled the whole Southern picture at the time. The only real excuse for this attitude is loyalty to a lost cause, reverence for brave fathers and suffering mothers and sisters, and fidelity to the ideals of a clan and class. But in propaganda against the Negro since emancipation in this land, we face one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings, an effort involving universities, history, science, social life and religion.

The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why ? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future.

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell; and after its whirlwind a teacher sits in academic halls, learned in the tradition of its elms and its elders. He looks into the upturned face of youth and in him youth sees the gowned shape of wisdom and hears the voice of God. Cynically he sneers at “chinks” and “niggers.” He says that the nation “has changed its views in regard to the political relation of races and has at last virtually accepted the ideas of the South upon that subject. The white men of the South need now have no further fear that the Republican party, or Republican Administrations, will ever again give themselves over to the vain imagination of the political equality of man.”

Immediately in Africa, a black back runs red with the blood of the lash; in India, a brown girl is raped; in China, a coolie starves; in Alabama, seven darkies are more than lynched; while in London, the white limbs of a prostitute are hung with jewels and silk. Flames of jealous murder sweep the earth, while brains of little children smear the hills.

This is education in the Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-fifth year of the Christ; this is modern and exact social science; this is the university course in “History 12” set down by the Senatus academicus; ad quos hae literae pervenerint: Salutem in Domino, sempeternam!

In Babylon, dark Babylon
Who take the wage of Shame?
The scribe and singer, one by one,
That toil for gold and fame.
They grovel to their masters’ mood;
The blood upon the pen
Assigns their souls to servitude —
Yea! and the souls of men.
— George Sterling “In the Market Place”

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Martin Luther King Jr., “Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address”, 1962

If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity.

Our pride and progress could be unqualified if the story might end here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.

If we look at our history with honesty and clarity we will be forced to admit that our Federal form of government has been, from the day of its birth, weakened in its integrity, confused and confounded in its direction, by the unresolved race question. We seldom take note or give adequate significance to the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s text of the Declaration of Independence was revised by the Continental Congress to eliminate a justifiable attack on King George for encouraging slave trade. Jefferson knew that such compromises with principle struck at the heart of the nation’s security and integrity. In 1820, six years before his death, he wrote these melancholy words:

But this momentous question (slavery), like a fire bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away, and my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.

The somber picture (of the condition of the American Negro today) may induce the sober thought that there is nothing to commemorate about the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. But tragic disappointments and undeserved defeats do not put an end to life, nor do they wipe out the positive, however submerged it may have become beneath floods of negative experience.

The Emancipation Proclamation had four enduring results. First, it gave force to the executive power to change conditions in the national interest on a broad and far-reaching scale. Second, it dealt a devastating blow to the system of slaveholding and an economy built upon it, which had been muscular enough to engage in warfare on the Federal government. Third, it enabled the Negro to play a significant role in his own liberation with the ability to organize and to struggle, with less of the bestial retaliation his slave status had permitted to his masters. Fourth, it resurrected and restated the principle of equality upon which the founding of the nation rested.

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation it was not the act of an opportunistic politician issuing a hollow pronouncement to placate a pressure group.

Our truly great presidents were tortured deep in their hearts by the race question. Jefferson with keen perception saw that the festering sore of slavery debilitated white masters as well as the Negro. He feared for the future of white children who were taught a false supremacy. His concern can be summed up in one quotation, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

Lincoln’s torments are well known, his vacillations were facts. In the seething cauldron of ’62 and ’63 Lincoln was called the “Baboon President” in the North, and “coward”, “assassin” and “savage” in the South. Yet he searched his way to the conclusions embodied in these words, “In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.” On this moral foundation he personally prepared the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, and to emphasize the decisiveness of his course he called his cabinet together and declared he was not seeking their advice as to its wisdom but only suggestions on subject matter. Lincoln achieved immortality because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. His hesitation had not stayed his hand when historic necessity charted but one course. No President can be great, or even fit for office, if he attempts to accommodate to injustice to maintain his political balance.

The Emancipation Proclamation shattered in one blow the slave system, undermining the foundations of the economy of the rebellious South; and guaranteed that no slave-holding class, if permitted to exist in defeat, could prepare a new and deadlier war after resuscitation.

The Proclamation opened the door to self-liberation by the Negro upon which he immediately acted by deserting the plantations in the South and joining the Union armies in the North. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, seeing a regiment of Negroes march through Beacon Street in Boston, wrote in his diary, “An imposing sight, with something wild and strange about it, like a dream. At last the North consents to let the Negro fight for freedom.” Beyond the war years the grim and tortured struggle of Negroes to win their own freedom is an epic of battle against frightful odds. If we have failed to do enough, it was not the will for freedom that was weak, but the forces against us which were too strong.

We have spelled out a balance sheet of the Emancipation Proclamation, its contributions and its deficiencies which our lack of zeal permitted to find expression. There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

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Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at the March for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of Civil Rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No! no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to South Carolina. Go back to Georgia. Go back to Louisiana. Go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I HAVE A DREAM TODAY!

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama — with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification — one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I HAVE A DREAM TODAY!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain and the crooked places will be made straight, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brother-hood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire; let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York; let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania; let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

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A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., et al, from “A ‘Freedom Budget’ for All Americans”, 1967

Introduction by A. Philip Randolph:

I believe, and profoundly hope, that from this day forth the opponents of social progress can take comfort no longer, for not since the M a rch on Washington has there been such broad sponsorship and enthusi astic support for any undertaking as has been mobilized on behalf of “The Freedom Budget for All Americans.”

These forces have not come together to demand help for the Negro. Rather, we meet on a common ground of determination that in this, the richest and most productive society ever known to man, the scourge of poverty can and must be abolished-not in some distant future , not in this generation, but within the next ten years!

The tragedy is that the workings of our economy so often pit the white poor and the black poor against each other at the bottom of society. The tragedy is that groups only one generation removed from poverty themselves, haunted by the memory of scarcity and fearful of slipping back, step on the fingers of those struggling up the ladder.

And the tragedy is that not only the poor, the nearly poor, and the once poor, but all Americans, are the victims of our failure as a nation to distribute democratically the fruits of our abundance. For, directly or indirectly, not one of us is untouched by the steady spread of slums, the decay of our cities, the segregation and overcrowding of our public schools, the shocking deterioration of our hospitals, the violence and chaos in our streets, the idleness of able-bodied men deprived of work, and the anguished demoralization of our youth.

For better or worse, we are one nation and one people. We shall solve our problems together or together we shall enter a new era of social disorder and disintegration.

What we need is an overall plan of attack.

This is what the “Freedom Budget” is. It is not visionary or utopian. It is feasible. It is concrete. It is specific. It is quantitative. It talks dollars and cents. It sets goals and priorities. It tells how these can be achieved. And it places the responsibility for leadership with the Federal Government, which alone has the resources equal to the task.

The “Freedom Budget” is not a call for a handout. It is a challenge to the best traditions and possibilities of America. It is a call to those who have grown weary of slogans and gestures to rededicate themselves to the cause o f social reconstruction. It is a plea to men of good will to give tangible substance to long-proclaimed ideals.

Foreward by Martin Luther King Jr.:

After many years of intense struggle in the courts, in legislative halls, and on the streets, we have achieved a number of important victories. We have come far in our quest for respect and dignity. But we have far to go.

The long journey ahead requires that we emphasize the needs of all America’s poor, for there is no way merely to find work, or adequate housing, or quality-integrated schools for Negroes alone. We shall eliminate slums for Negroes when we destroy ghettos and build new cities for all. We shall eliminate unemployment for Negroes when we demand full and fair employment for all. We shall produce an educated and skilled Negro mass when we achieve a twentieth century educational system for all.

This human rights emphasis is an integral part of the Freedom Budget and sets, I believe, a new and creative tone for the great challenge we yet face.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference fully endorses the Freedom Budget and plans to expend great energy and time in working for its implementation. It is not enough to project the Freedom Budget.

We must dedicate ourselves to the legislative task to see that it is immediately and fully achieved. I pledge myself to this task and will urge all others to do likewise. The Freedom Budget is essential if the Negro people are to make further progress. It is essential if we are to maintain social peace. It is a political necessity. It is a moral commitment to the fundamental principles on which this nation was founded.

A “FREEDOM BUDGET” FOR ALL AMERICANS

The Freedom Budget is a practical, step-by-step plan for wiping out poverty in America during the next 10 yea rs. It will mean more money in your pocket. It will mean better schools for your children. It will mean better homes for you and your neighbors. It will mean clean air to breathe and comfortable cities to live in. It will mean adequate medical care when you are sick.

So where does the “Freedom” come in?

For the first time, everyone in America who is fit and able to work will have a job. For the first time, everyone who can’t work, or shouldn’t be working, will have an income adequate to live in comfort and dignity. And that is freedom. For freedom from want is the basic freedom from which all others flow.

This nation has learned that it must provide freedom for all if any of us is to be free. W e have learned that half-measures are not enough. We know that continued unfair treatment of part of our people breeds misery and waste that are both morally indefensible and a threat t o all who are better off.

As A. Philip Randolph put it : “Here in these United States, where there can be no economic or technical excuse for it, poverty is not only a private tragedy but, in a sense, a public crime. It is above all a challenge to our morality.”

The Freedom Budget would make that challenge the lever we can grasp to wipe out poverty in a decade.

Pie in the sky?

Not on your life. Just simple recognition of the fact that we as a nation never had it so good. That we have the ability and the means to provide adequately for everyone. That simple justice requires us to see that everyone — white or black; in the city or on the farm; fisherman or mountaineer — may have his share in our national wealth.

The moral case for the Freedom Budget is compelling.

In a time of unparalleled prosperity, there are 34 million Americans living in poverty. Another 28 million live just on the edge, with income so low that any unexpected expense or loss of income could thrust them into poverty.

Almost one-third of our nation lives in poverty or want. They are not getting their just share of our national wealth.

Just as compelling, this massive lump of despair stands as a threat to our future prosperity. Poverty and want breed crime, disease and social unrest. We need the potential purchasing and productive power the poor would achieve, if we are to continue to grow and prosper.

In short, for good times to continue — and get better — we must embark immediately on a program that will fairly and indiscriminately provide a decent living for all Americans.

The Freedom Budget provides seven basic objectives, which taken together will achieve this great goal within 10 years. They are:

To provide full employment for all who are willing and able to work, including those who need education or training to make them willing and able.
To assure decent and adequate wages to all who work.
To assure a decent living standard to those who cannot or should not work.
To wipe out slum ghettos and provide decent homes for all Americans.
To provide decent medical care and adequate educational opportunities to all Americans, at a cost they can afford.
To purify our air and water and develop our transportation and natural resources on a scale suitable to our growing needs.
To unite sustained full employment with sustained full production and high economic growth.

The Freedom Budget shows how to do all this without a raise in taxes and without a single make-work job — by planning prudently NOW to use the economic growth of the future, and with adequate attention to our international commitments.

The key is jobs.

We can all recognize that the major cause of poverty could be eliminated, if enough decently paying jobs were available for everyone willing and able to work. And we can also recognize that, with enough jobs for all, a basic cause of discrimination among job-seekers would automatically disappear.

What we must also recognize is that we now have the means of achieving complete employment — at no increased cost, with no radical change in our economic system, and at no cost to our present national goals — if we are willing to commit ourselves totally to this achievement.

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Fred Hampton, from “It’s A Class Struggle Goddammit!”, 1969

You know a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. And the people that have those hang-ups are opportunists, and cowards, and individualists and everything that’s anything but revolutionary. And they use these things as an excuse to justify and to alibi and to bonify their lack of participation in the real revolutionary struggle. So they say, “Well, I can’t dig the Panther Party because the Panthers they are engrossed with dealing with oppressor country radicals, or white people, or hunkies, or what have you. They said these are some of the excuses that I use to negate really why I am not in the struggle.”

We got a lot of answers for those people. First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, and Lenin, and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. It was one class — the oppressed — those other class — the oppressor. And it’s got to be a universal fact. Those that don’t admit to that are those that don’t want to get involved in a revolution, because they know that as long as they’re dealing with a race thing, they’ll never be involved in a revolution. They can talk about numbers; they can hang you up in many, many ways, but as soon as you start talking about class, then you got to start talking about some guns. And that’s what the Party had to do.

When the Party started to talk about class struggle, we found that we had to start talking about some guns. If we never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that when you, the by-product, what comes off of racism, that capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to take money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means that capitalism had to, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a by-product of that.

Anybody that doesn’t admit that is showing through their non-admittance and their non-participation in the struggle that all they are, are people who fail to make a commitment; and the only thing that they have going for them is the education that they receive in these institutions — education enough to teach them some alibis and teach them that you’ve gotta be black, and you’ve gotta change you name. And that’s crazy.

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Fred Hampton, from “Power Anywhere There’s People!”, 1969

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

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Lenin, Letter To American Workers, 1918

Comrades! A Russian Bolshevik who took part in the 1905 Revolution, and who lived in your country for many years afterwards, has offered to convey my letter to you. I have accepted his proposal all the more gladly because just at the present time the American revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally important role as uncompromising enemies of American imperialism — the freshest, strongest and latest in joining in the world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of capitalist profits. At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these modern slaveowners have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval — whether direct or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference — to the armed expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose of throttling the first socialist republic.

The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.

About 150 years have passed since then. Bourgeois civilisation has borne all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavour, in the utilisation of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. The American people, who set the world an example in waging a revolutionary war against feudal slavery, now find themselves in the latest, capitalist stage of wage-slavery to a handful of multimillionaires, and find themselves playing the role of hired thugs who, for the benefit of wealthy scoundrels, throttled the Philippines in 1898 on the pretext of “liberating” them, and are throttling the Russian Socialist Republic in 1918 on the pretext of “protecting” it from the Germans.

The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have not passed in vain. The deception of the people by the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British and the German, has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of capitalism as applied to war between robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest profited and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented, crushed and strangled.

The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of “colonial slaves”. The British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all the German colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder Russia.

The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organisation and discipline of “their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both sides! How well the robbers of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists, together with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the socialists who went over to the side of “their own ” bourgeoisie, have “defended their country”!

The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most secure. They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And every dollar is stained with blood — from that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million killed and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy war to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get most of the spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to be foremost in throttling the weak nations all over the world.

While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia from the Germans!

It does not require many words to refute this despicable and hideous lie; it is sufficient to point to one well-known fact. In October 1917, after the Russian workers had overthrown their imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government of the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just peace, a peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that fully guaranteed equal rights to all nations — and it proposed such a peace to all the belligerent countries.

It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the imperialist slaughter!

It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest Peace upon Russia!

It is difficult to imagine anything more disgusting than the hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie are now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have turned the Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a general peace are now our “accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the plunder of colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us, the Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all countries, they accuse us, who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal treaties concluded between the ex-tsar and the Anglo-French capitalists.

The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they live, greet us, sympathise with us, applaud us for breaking the iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains — for breaking through to freedom, and making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so — for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by the imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole world to see.

Small wonder that the international imperialist gang hates us for this, that it “accuses” us, that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of the world, convince us more than ever of the justice of our cause.

A real socialist would not fail to understand that for the sake of achieving victory over the bourgeoisie, for the sake of power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and mustnot hesitate to make the heaviest sacrifices, including the sacrifice of part of our territory, the sacrifice of heavy defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real socialist would have proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward to the cause of the socialist revolution.

For the sake of “their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the imperialists of Britain and Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and throttle a whole number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of liberating the working people of the whole world from the yoke of capital, of winning universal and lasting peace, until a path without sacrifice is found? Must they fear to open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”? Must they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland” above the interests of the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys who grovel to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.

The Anglo-French and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement” with German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are to slander the workers’ government while trembling because of the sympathy displayed towards us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an agreement entered into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the workers, against the working people, and an agreement entered into for the protection of the workers who have defeated their bourgeoisie, with the bourgeoisie of one national colouragainst the bourgeoisie of another colour in order that the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms between the different groups of bourgeoisie.

In actual fact, every European sees this difference very well, and, as I shall show in a moment, the American people have had a particularly striking “illustration” of it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are fagots et fagots, as the French say.

When in February 1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled their forces against unarmed, demobilised Russia, who had relied on the international solidarity of the proletariat before the world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate for a moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathised with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without saying (cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us would willingly hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the advancing rapacious Germans, we, in the interests of the Russian and the world socialist revolution, utilised the equally rapacious counter-interests of other imperialists. In this way we served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most legitimate and essential in every war, of manoeuvre, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries completely matured.

However much the Anglo-French and American imperialist sharks fume with rage, however much they slander us, no matter how many millions they spend on bribing the Right Socialist-Revolutionary, Menshevik and other social-patriotic newspapers, I shall not hesitate one second to enter into a similar “agreement” with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. And I know perfectly well that my tactics will be approved by the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, America — in short, of the whole civilised world. Such tactics will ease the task of the socialist revolution, will hasten it, will weaken the international bourgeoisie, will strengthen the position of the working class which is defeating the bourgeoisie.

The American people resorted to these tactics long ago to the advantage of their revolution. When they waged their great war of liberation against the British oppressors, they had also against them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a part of what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous war for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some oppressors against others for the purpose of weakening the oppressors and strengthening those who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against oppression, for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed people. The American people took advantage of the strife between the French, the Spanish and the British; sometimes they even fought side by side with the forces of the French and Spanish oppressors against the British oppressors; first they defeated the British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom) from the French and the Spanish.

Historical action is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said the great Russian revolutionary Chernyshevsky. A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian revolution only “on the condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined action on the part of the proletarians of different countries, that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during the march to victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed himself from the pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even (although more rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Echoing the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for the “chaos” of the revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and the food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming from those who welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who entered into an “agreement” with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the cause of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can not avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged, ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us for the “destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an inability to understand the basic conditions of the fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity that is called revolution.

Even when “accusers” of this type do “recognise” the class struggle, they limit themselves to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of civil war, and civil war is inconceivable without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons — whether Christian or “secular” in the persons of parlour, parliamentary socialists — cannot see, understand and feel this necessity. Only a life less “man in the muffler” can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle with the utmost ardour and determination at a time when history demands that the greatest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.

The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863–65!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the slaveowners, it was worth letting the country go through long years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are confronted with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist wage-slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie — now, the representatives and defenders of the bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution, cannot and do not want to understand that civil war is necessary and legitimate.

The American workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They will be with us, for civil war against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the world and of the American labour movement strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the words of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason, I believe towards the end of 1915, in the article “What Shall I Fight For” (I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers in Berne, Switzerland) — that he, Debs, would rather be shot than vote credits for the present criminal and reactionary war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from the proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against the capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.

I am not surprised that Wilson, the head of the American multimillionaires and servant of the capitalist sharks, has thrown Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are, the nearer the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are blamed for the destruction caused by our revolution. . . . Who are the accusers? The hangers-on of the bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four years of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of European culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality and starvation. These bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a revolution on these ruins, amidst this wreckage of culture, amidst the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor with the people who have been brutalised by the war. How humane and righteous the bourgeoisie are!

Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!

The international imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten million men and maimed twenty million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German vultures are to rule the world.

If our war, the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the exploiters, results in half a million or a million casualties in all countries, the bourgeoisie will say that the former casualties are justified, while the latter are criminal.

The proletariat will have something entirely different to say.

Now, amidst the horrors of the imperialist war, the proletariat is receiving a most vivid and striking illustration of the great truth taught by all revolutions and bequeathed to the workers by their best teachers, the founders of modern socialism. This truth is that no revolution can be successful unless the resistance of the exploiters is crushed. When we, the workers and toiling peasants, captured state power, it became our duty to crush the resistance of the exploiters. We are proud we have been doing this. We regret we are not doing it with sufficient firmness and determination.

We know that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and that this resistance will grow with the growth of this revolution. The proletariat will crush this resistance; during the struggle against the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for victory and for power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried. The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true — although I know such an assumption is wrong — even if we committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organisation .

Every mistake committed in the course of such work, in the course of this most conscientious and earnest work of tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in reorganising their whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and millions of “lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority — successes in swindling and duping the working people. For only through such mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for themselves — through thousands of obstacles — to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one stroke, in one night, October 25–26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the private ownership of land, and are now, month after month, overcoming tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes themselves, solving in a practical way the most difficult tasks of organising new conditions of economic life, of fighting the kulaks, providing land for the working people (and not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale agriculture.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have already, after a few months, nationalised almost all the biggest factories and plants, and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing whole branches of industry, are setting the nationalised enterprises going, overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia, petty-bourgeois mentality and selfishness, and, brick by brick, are laying the foundation of new social ties, of a new labour discipline, of a new influence of the workers’ trade unions over their members.

Mistakes are committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our Soviets, which were created as far back as 1905 by a mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of Workers and Peasants are a new type of state, a new and higher type of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of administering the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is here serving the people, the working people, and has ceased to be democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the problem of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and semi-proletariat — a problem which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.

Let the pedants, or the people whose minds are incurably stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets, about the absence of direct elections, for example. These people have forgotten nothing and have learned nothing during the period of the great upheavals of 1914–18. The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people — of civil war with the widest participation of the people in politics — such a combination cannot be brought about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy. The contours of a new world, the world of socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva from the head of Jupiter.

The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones they did not worry about formal equality between monarchists and republicans. When it is a matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only traitors or idiots can demand formal equality of rights for the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the rich and have transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly — for the working people! This is the meaning and content of our Soviet, our socialist Constitution!

That is why we are all so firmly convinced that no matter what misfortunes may still be in store for it, our Republic of Soviets is invincible.

It is invincible because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the international bourgeoisie inflict on us, rouses more and more sections of the workers and peasants to the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous sacrifice, steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.

We know that help from you will probably not come soon, comrade American workers, for the revolution is developing in different countries in different forms and at different tempos (and it cannot be otherwise). We know that although the European proletarian revolution has been maturing very rapidly lately, it may, after all, not flare up within the next few weeks. We are banking on the inevitability of the world revolution, but this does not mean that we are such fools as to bank on the revolution inevitably coming on a definite and early date. We have seen two great revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917, and we know revolutions are not made to order, or by agreement. We know that circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the socialist proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but because of the exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that before the world revolution breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.

In spite of this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And the first country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was our country. We sustained enormously heavy casualties in the struggle to break these chains, but we broke them. We are free from imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief. These detachments exist, they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining more strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The workers are breaking away from their social traitors — the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly but surely the workers are adopting communist, Bolshevik tactics and are marching towards the proletarian revolution, which alone is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.

Leon Trotsky, “If America Should Go Communist”, 1934

Should America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

At present most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward peoples of the Soviet Union.

They fear lest communism should try to fit them to a bed of Procrustes, and they point to the bulwark of Anglo-Saxon conservatism as an insuperable obstacle even to possibly desirable reforms. They argue that Great Britain and Japan would undertake military intervention against the American soviets. They shudder lest Americans be regimented in their habits of dress and diet, be compelled to subsist on famine rations, be forced to read stereotyped official propaganda in the newspapers, be coerced to serve as rubber stamps for decisions arrived at without their active participation or be required to keep their thoughts to themselves and loudly praise their soviet leaders in public, through fear of imprisonment and exile.

They fear monetary inflation, bureaucratic tyranny and intolerable red tape in obtaining the necessities of life. They fear soulless standardization in the arts and sciences, as well as in the daily necessities of life. They fear that all political spontaneity and the presumed freedom of the press will be destroyed by the dictatorship of a monstrous bureaucracy. And they shudder at the thought of being forced into an uncomprehended glibness in Marxist dialectic and disciplined social philosophies. They fear, in a word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like.

Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America. The American temperament is energetic and violent, and it will insist on breaking a good many dishes and upsetting a good many apple carts before communism is firmly established. Americans are enthusiasts and sportsmen before they are specialists and statesmen, and it would be contrary to the American tradition to make a major change without choosing sides and cracking heads.

However, the American communist revolution will be insignificant compared to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in terms of your national wealth and population, no matter how great its comparative cost. That is because civil war of a revolutionary nature isn’t fought by the handful of men at the top — the 5 or 10 percent who own nine-tenths of American wealth; this handful could recruit its counterrevolutionary armies only from among the lower middle classes. Even so, the revolution could easily attract them to its banner by showing that support of the soviets alone offers them the prospect of salvation.

Everybody below this group is already economically prepared for communism. The depression has ravaged your working class and has dealt a crushing blow to the farmers, who had already been injured by the long agricultural decline of the postwar decade. There is no reason why these groups should counterpose determined resistance to the revolution; they have nothing to lose, providing, of course, that the revolutionary leaders adopt a farsightcd and moderate policy toward them.

Who else will fight against communism? Your corporal’s guard of billionaires and multimillionaires? Your Mellons, Morgans, Fords and Rockefellers? They will cease struggling as soon as they fail to find other people to fight for them.

The American soviet government will take firm possession of the commanding heights of your business system: the banks, the key industries and the transportation and communication systems. It will then give the farmers, the small tradespeople and businessmen a good long time to think things over and see how well the nationalized section of industry is working.

Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. “Technocracy” can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.

National industry will be organized along the line of the conveyor belt in your modern continuous-production automotive factories. Scientific planning can be lifted out of the individual factory and applied to your entire economic system. The results will be stupendous.

Costs of production will be cut to 20 percent, or less, of their present figure. This, in turn, would rapidly increase your farmers’ purchasing power.

To be sure, the American soviets would establish their own gigantic farm enterprises, as schools of voluntary collectivization. Your farmers could easily calculate whether it was to their individual advantage to remain as isolated links or to join the public chain.

The same method would be used to draw small businesses and industries into the national organization of industry. By soviet control of raw materials, credits and quotas of orders, these secondary industries could be kept solvent until they were gradually and without compulsion sucked into the socialized business system.

Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians. In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants. This, in addition to your technical equipment and your wealth, is the greatest asset of your coming communist revolution. Your revolution will be smoother in character than ours; you will not waste your energies and resources in costly social conflicts after the main issues have been decided; and you will move ahead so much more rapidly in consequence.

Even the intensity and devotion of religious sentiment in America will not prove an obstacle to the revolution. If one assumes the perspective of soviets in America, none of the psychological brakes will prove firm enough to retard the pressure of the social crisis. This has been demonstrated more than once in history. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the Gospels themselves contain some pretty explosive aphorisms.

As to the comparatively few opponents of the soviet revolution, one can trust to American inventive genius. It may well be that you will take your unconvinced millionaires and send them to some picturesque island, rent-free for life, where they can do as they please.

You can do this safely, for you will not need to fear foreign interventions. Japan, Great Britain and the other capitalistic countries that intervened in Russia couldn’t do anything but take American communism lying down. As a matter of fact, the victory of communism in America — the stronghold of capitalism — will cause communism to spread to other countries. Japan will probably have joined the communistic ranks even before the establishment of the American soviets. The same is true of Great Britain.

In any case, it would be a crazy idea to send His Britannic Majesty’s fleet against Soviet America, even as a raid against the southern and more conservative half of your continent. It would be hopeless and would never get any farther than a second-rate military escapade.

Within a few weeks or months of the establishment of the American soviets, Pan-Americanism would be a political reality.

The governments of Central and South America would be pulled into your federation like iron filings to a magnet. So would Canada. The popular movements in these countries would be so strong that they would force this great unifying process within a short period and at insignificant costs. I am ready to bet that the first anniversary of the American soviets would find the Western Hemisphere transformed into the Soviet United States of North, Central and South America, with its capital at Panama. Thus for the first time the Monroe Doctrine would have a complete and positive meaning in world affairs, although not the one foreseen by its author.

In spite of the complaints of some of your arch-conservatives, Roosevelt is not preparing for a soviet transformation of the United States.

The NRA aims not to destroy but to strengthen the foundations of American capitalism by overcoming your business difficulties. Not the Blue Eagle but the difficulties that the Blue Eagle is powerless to overcome will bring about communism in America. The “radical” professors of your Brain Trust are not revolutionists: they are only frightened conservatives. Your president abhors “systems” and “generalities.” But a soviet government is the greatest of all possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.

The average man doesn’t like systems or generalities either. It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.

Most Americans have been misled by the fact that in the USSR we had to build whole new basic industries from the ground up. Such a thing could not happen in America, where you are already compelled to cut down on your farm area and to reduce your industrial production. As a matter of fact, your tremendous technological equipment has been paralyzed by the crisis and already clamors to be put to use. You will be able to make a rapid step-up of consumption by your people the starting point of your economic revival.

You are prepared to do this as is no other country. Nowhere else has the study of the internal market reached such intensity as in the United States. It has been done by your banks, trusts, individual businessmen, merchants, traveling salesmen and farmers as part of their stock-in-trade. Your soviet government will simply abolish all trade secrets, will combine all the findings of these researches for individual profit and will transform them into a scientific system of economic planning. In this your government will be helped by the existence of a large class of cultured and critical consumers. By combining the nationalized key industries, your private businesses and democratic consumer cooperation, you will quickly develop a highly flexible system for serving the needs of your population.

This system will be made to work not by bureaucracy and not by policemen but by cold, hard cash.

Your almighty dollar will play a principal part in making your new soviet system work. It is a great mistake to try to mix a “planned economy” with a “managed currency.” Your money must act as regulator with which to measure the success or failure of your planning.

Your “radical” professors are dead wrong in their devotion to “managed money.” It is an academic idea that could easily wreck your entire system of distribution and production. That is the great lesson to be derived from the Soviet Union, where bitter necessity has been converted into official virtue in the monetary realm.

There the lack of a stable gold ruble is one of the main causes of our many economic troubles and catastrophes. It is impossible to regulate wages, prices and quality of goods without a firm monetary system. An unstable ruble in a Soviet system is like having variable molds in a conveyor-belt factory. It won’t work.

Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual consumption — whether by money or administration — will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody!

Such a time has not yet come, though America will certainly reach it before any other country. Until then, the only way to reach such a state of development is to retain an effective regulator and measure for the working of your system. As a matter of fact, during the first few years a planned economy needs sound money even more than did old-fashioned capitalism. The professor who regulates the monetary unit with the aim of regulating the whole business system is like the man who tried to lift both his feet off the ground at the same time.

Soviet America will possess supplies of gold big enough to stabilize the dollar — a priceless asset. In Russia we have been expanding our industrial plant by 20 and 30 percent a year; but — owing to a weak ruble — we have not been able to distribute this increase effectively. This is partly because we have allowed our bureaucracy to subject our monetary system to administrative one-sidedness. You will be spared this evil. As a result you will greatly surpass us in both increased production and distribution, leading to a rapid advance in the comfort and welfare of your population.

In all this, you will not need to imitate our standardized production for our pitiable mass consumers. We have taken over from czarist Russia a pauper’s heritage, a culturally undeveloped peasantry with a low standard of living. We had to build our factories and dams at the expense of our consumers. We have had continual monetary inflation and a monstrous bureaucracy.

Soviet America will not have to imitate our bureaucratic methods. Among us the lack of the bare necessities has caused an intense scramble for an extra loaf of bread, an extra yard of cloth by everyone. In this struggle our bureaucracy steps forward as a conciliator, as an all-powerful court of arbitration. You, on the other hand, are much wealthier and would have little difficulty in supplying all of your people with all of the necessities of life. Moreover, your needs, tastes and habits would never permit your bureaucracy to divide the national income. Instead, when you organize your society to produce for human needs rather than private profits, your entire population will group itself around new trends and groups, which will struggle with one another and prevent an overweening bureaucracy from imposing itself upon them.

You can thus avoid growth of bureaucratism by the practice of soviets, that is to say, democracy — the most flexible form of government yet developed. Soviet organization cannot achieve miracles but must simply reflect the will of the people. With us the soviets have been bureaucratized as a result of the political monopoly of a single party, which has itself become a bureaucracy. This situation resulted from the exceptional difficulties of socialist pioneering in a poor and backward country.

The American soviets will be full-blooded and vigorous, without need or opportunity for such measures as circumstances imposed upon Russia. Your unregenerate capitalists will, of course, find no place for themselves in the new setup. It is hard to imagine Henry Ford as the head of the Detroit Soviet.

Yet a wide struggle between interests, groups and ideas is not only conceivable — it is inevitable. One-year, five-year, ten-year plans of business development; schemes for national education; construction of new basic lines of transportation; the transformation of the farms; the program for improving the technological and cultural equipment of Latin America; a program for stratosphere communication; eugenics — all of these will arouse controversy, vigorous electoral struggle and passionate debate in the newspapers and at public meetings.

For Soviet America will not imitate the monopoly of the press by the heads of Soviet Russia’s bureaucracy. While Soviet America would nationalize all printing plants, paper mills and means of distribution, this would be a purely negative measure. It would simply mean that private capital will no longer be allowed to decide what publications should be established, whether they should be progressive or reactionary, “wet” or “dry,” puritanical or pornographic. Soviet America will have to find a new solution for the question of how the power of the press is to function in a socialist regime. It might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes in each soviet election.

Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press would depend on their numerical strength — the same principle being applied to the use of meeting halls, allotment of time on the air and so forth.

Thus the management and policy of publications would be decided not by individual checkbooks but by group ideas. This may take little account of numerically small but important groups, but it simply means that each new idea will be compelled, as throughout history, to prove its right to existence.

Rich Soviet America can set aside vast funds for research and invention, discoveries and experiments in every field. You won’t neglect your bold architects and sculptors, your unconventional poets and audacious philosophers.

In fact, the Soviet Yankees of the future will give a lead to Europe in those very fields where Europe has hitherto been your master. Europeans have little conception of the power of technology to influence human destiny and have adopted an attitude of sneering superiority toward “Americanism,” particularly since the crisis. Yet Americanism marks the true dividing line between the Middle Ages and the modern world.

Hitherto America’s conquest of nature has been so violent and passionate that you have had no time to modernize your philosophies or to develop your own artistic forms. Hence you have been hostile to the doctrines of Hegel, Marx and Darwin. The burning of Darwin’s works by the Baptists of Tennessee is only a clumsy reflection of the American dislike for the doctrines of evolution. This attitude is not confined to your pulpits. It is still part of your general mental makeup.

Your atheists as well as your Quakers are determined rationalists. And your rationalism itself is weakened by empiricism and moralism. It has none of the merciless vitality of the great European rationalists. So your philosophic method is even more antiquated than your economic system and your political institutions.

Today, quite unprepared, you are being forced to face those social contradictions that grow up unsuspected in every society. You have conquered nature by means of the tools that your inventive genius has created, only to find that your tools have all but destroyed you. Contrary to all your hopes and desires, your unheard-of wealth has produced unheard-of misfortunes. You have discovered that social development does not follow a simple formula. Hence you have been thrust into the school of the dialectic — to stay.

There is no turning back from it to the mode of thinking and acting prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men — the first worthy of the name of Man.

One final prophecy: in the 3rd year of the Soviet rule in America you will no longer chew gum!

Carl Sandburg, from “The People, Yes”, 1936

The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”

The people is a tragic and comic two-face:
hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla twist-
ing to moan with a gargoyle mouth: “They
buy me and sell me . . . it’s a game . . .
sometime I’ll break loose . . . “

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step with
constellations of universal law.

The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise.
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps the people march:
“Where to? what next?”

Archibald MacLeish, “America Was Promises”, 1939

Who is the voyager in these leaves?
Who is the traveler in this journey
Deciphers the revolving night: receives
The signal from the light returning?

America was promises to whom?

East were the
Dead kings and the remembered sepulchers:
West was the grass.
The groves of the oaks were at evening.

Eastward are the nights where we have slept.

And we move on: we move down:
With the first light we push forward:
We descend from the past as a wandering people from mountains.
We cross into the day to be discovered.
The dead are left where they fall-at dark
At night late under the coverlets.
We mark the place with the shape of our teeth on our fingers.
The room is left as it was: the love
Who is the traveler in these leaves these
Annual waters and beside the doors
Jonquils: then the rose: the eaves

Heaping the thunder up: the mornings
Opening on like great valleys
Never till now approached: the familiar trees
Far off: distant with the future:
The hollyhocks beyond the afternoons:
The butterflies over the ripening fruit on the balconies:
And all beautiful
All before us

America was always promises.
From the first voyage and the first ship there were promises-
‘the tropic bird which does not sleep at sea’
‘the great mass of dark heavy clouds which is a sign’
‘the drizzle of rain without wind is a sure sign’
‘the whale which is an indication’
‘the stalk loaded with roseberries’
‘and all these signs were from the west’
‘and all night heard birds passing.’

Who is the voyager on these coasts?
Who is the traveler in these waters
Expects the future as a shore: foresees
Like Indies to the west the ending-he
The rumor of the surf intends?

America was promises-to whom?

Jefferson knew:
Declared it before God and before history:
Declares it still in the remembering tomb.
The promises were Man’s: the land was his-
Man endowed by his Creator:
Earnest in love: perfectible by reason:

Just and perceiving justice: his natural nature
Clear and sweet at the source as springs in trees are.
It was Man the promises contemplated.
The times had chosen man: no other:
Bloom on his face of every future:
Brother of stars and of all travelers:
Brother of time and of all mysteries:
Brother of grass also: of fruit trees.
It was Man who had been promised: who should have.
Man was to ride from the Tidewater: over the Gap:
West and South with the water: taking the book with him:
Taking the wheat seed: corn seed: pip of apple:
Building liberty a farmyard wide:
Breeding for useful labor: for good looks:
For husbandry: humanity: for pride-
Practising self-respect and common decency.

And Man turned into men in Philadelphia
Practising prudence on a long-term lease:
Building liberty to fit the parlor:
Bred for crystal on the frontroom shelves:
Just and perceiving justice by the dollar:
Patriotic with the bonds at par
(And their children’s children brag of their deeds for the Colonies)
Man rode up from the Tidewater: over the Gap:
Turned into men: turned into two-day settlers:
Lawyers with the land-grants in their caps:
Coon-skin voters wanting theirs and getting it.

Turned the promises to capital: invested it.

America was always promises:
‘the wheel like a sun as big as a cart wheel
with many sorts of pictures on it
the whole of fine gold’

‘twenty golden ducks
beautifully worked and very natural looking
and some like dogs of the kind they keep’

And they waved us west from the dunes: they cried out
Colua! Mexico! …Colua!

America was promises to whom?

Old Man Adams knew. He told us-
An aristocracy of compound interest
Hereditary through the common stock!
We’d have one sure before the mare was older.
“The first want of every man was his dinner:
The second his girl.” Kings were by the pocket.
Wealth made blood made wealth made blood made wealthy.
Enlightened selfishness gave lasting light.
Winners bred grandsons: losers only bred!

And the Aristocracy of politic selfishness
Bought the land up: bought the towns: the sites:
The goods: the government: the people. Bled them.
Sold them. Kept the profit. Lost itself.

The Aristocracy of Wealth and Talents
Turned its talents into wealth and lost them.
Turned enlightened selfishness to wealth.
Turned self-interest into bankbooks: balanced them.
Bred out: bred to fools: to hostlers:
Card sharps: well dressed women: dancefloor doublers.
The Aristocracy of Wealth and Talents
Sold its talents: bought the public notice:
Drank in public: went to bed in public:
Patronized the arts in public: pall’d with
Public authors public beauties: posed in
Public postures for the public page.
The Aristocracy of Wealth and Talents
Withered of talent and ashamed of wealth
Bred to sonsinlaw: insane relations:
Girls with open secrets: sailors’ Galahads:
Prurient virgins with the tales to tell:
Women with dead wombs and living wishes.

The Aristocracy of Wealth and Talents
Moved out: settled on the Coninent:
Sat beside the water at Rapallo:
Died in a rented house: unwept: unhonored.

And the child says I see the lightning on you.

The weed between the railroad tracks
Tasting of sweat: tasting of poverty:
The bitter and pure taste where the hawk hovers:
Native as the deer bone in the sand

O my America for whom?

For whom the promises? For whom the river
“It flows west! Look at the ripple of it!”
The grass “so that it was wonderful to see
And the endless without end with wind wonderful!”
The Great Lakes: landless as oceans: their beaches
Coarse sand: clean gravel: pebbles:
Their bluffs smelling of sunflowers: smelling of surf:
Of fresh water: of wild sunflowers…wilderness.
For whom the evening mountains on the sky:
The night wind from the west: the moon descending?

Tom Paine knew.
Tom Paine knew the People.
The promises were spoken to the People.
History was voyages toward the People.
Amercas were landfalls of the People.
Stars and expectations were the signals of the People.

Whatever was truly built the people built it.
Whatever was taken down they had taken it down.
Whatever was worn they had worn-ax handles: fiddle-bows:
Sills of doorways: names for children: for mountains.
Whatever was long forgotten they had forgotten-
Fame of the great: names of the rich and their mottos.
The People had the promises: they’d keep them.
They waited their time in the world: they had wise sayings.
They counted out their time by day to day.
They counted it out day after day into history.
They had time and to spare in the spill of their big fists.
They had all the time there was like a handful of wheat seed.
When the time came they would speak and the rest would listen.

And the time came and the People did not speak.

The time came: the time comes: the speakers
Come and these who speak are not the People.

These who speak with gunstocks at the doors:
These the coarse ambitious priest
Leads by the bloody fingers forward:
These who reach with stiffened arm to touch
What none who took dared touch before:
These who touch the truth are not the People.

These the savage fables of the time
Lick at the fingers as a bitch will waked at morning:
These who teach the lie are not the People.

The time came: the time comes

Comes and to whom? To these? Was it for these
The surf was secret on the new-found shore?
Was it for these the branch was on the water?-
These whom all the years were toward
The golden images the clouds the mountains?

Never before: never in any summer:
Never were days so generous: stars so mild:
Even in old men’s talk or in books or remembering
Far back in a gone childhood
Or farther still to the light where Homer wanders-
The air all lucid with the solemn blue
That hills take at the distance beyond change…
That time takes also at the distances.

Never were there promises as now:
Never was green deeper: earth warmer:
Light more beautiful to see: the sound of
Water lovelier: the many forms of
Leaves: stones: clouds: beasts: shadows
Clearer more admirable or the faces
More like answering faces or the hands
Quicker: more brotherly:

the aching taste of
Time more salt upon the tongue: more human
Never in any summer: and to whom?

At dusk: by street lights: in the rooms we ask this.

We do not ask for Truth now from John Adams.
We do not ask for Tongues from Thomas Jefferson.
We do not ask for Justice from Tom Paine.
We ask for answers.

And there is an answer.

There is Spain Austria Poland China Bohemia.
There are dead men in the pits in all those countries.
Their mouths are silent but they speak. They say
“The promises are theirs who take them.”

Listen! Brothers! Generation!
Listen! You have heard these words. Believe it!
Believe the promises are theirs who take them!

Believe unless we take them for ourselves
Others will take them for the use of others!

Believe unless we take them for ourselves
All of us: one here; another there:
Men not Man: people not the People:
Hands: mouths: arms: eyes: not syllables-
Believe unless we take them for ourselves
Others will take them not for us: for others!

Believe unless we take them for ourselves
Now: soon: by the clock: before tomorrow:
Others will take them: not for now: for longer!

Listen! Brothers! Generation!
Companions of leaves: of the sun: of the slow evenings:
Companions of the many days: of all of them:
Listen! Believe the speaking dead! Believe
The journey is our journey. O believe
The signals were to us: the signs: the birds by
Night: the breaking surf.

Believe
America is promises to
Take!

America is promises to
Us
To take them
Brutally
With love but
Take them.

O believe this!

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Archibald MacLeish, “Brave New World”, 1948

But you, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still,
You could not bear the weight of stone
On the quiet hill,

You could not keep your green grown peace
Nor hold your folded hand
If you could see your new world now,
Your new sweet land.

There was a time, Tom Jefferson,
When freedom made free men.
The new found earth and the new freed mind
Were brothers then.

There was a time when tyrants feared
The new world of the free.
Now freedom is afraid and shrieks
At tyranny.

Words have not changed their sense so soon
Nor tyranny grown new.
The truths you held, Tom Jefferson,
Will still hold true.

What’s changed is freedom in this age.
What great men dared to choose
Small men now dare neither to win
Nor lose.

Freedom, when men fear freedom’s use
But love its useful name,
Has cause and cause enough for fear
And cause for shame.

We fought a war in freedom’s name
And won it in our own.
We fought to free a world and raised
A wall of stone.

Your countrymen who could have built
The hill fires of the free
To set the dry world all ablaze
With liberty —

To burn the brutal thorn in Spain
Of bigotry and hate
And the dead lie and the brittle weed
Beyond the Plate:

Who could have heaped the bloody straw,
The dung of time, to light
The Danube in a sudden flame
Of hope by night —

Your countrymen who could have hurled
Their freedom like a brand
Have cupped it to a candle spark
In a frightened hand.

Freedom that was a thing to use
They’ve made a thing to save
And staked it in and fenced it round
Like a dead man’s grave.

You, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still,
You could not bear the weight of stone
On your green hill,

You could not hold your angry tongue
If you could see how bold
The old stale bitter world plays new —
And the new world old.

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Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”, 1938

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek —
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean —
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today — O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home —
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay —
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME —
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!

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Socialism and the American Revolution

A Dossier

Preface

“THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!”

The great task remaining before us

The last stand of Providence

America was promises to whom?

“THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!”

Black Panther Party, “The Ten-Point Program”, 1966

Thomas Paine, from the Appendix to the third edition of “Common Sense”, 1776

Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”, 1883

Chief Joseph, from his Speech at Lincoln Hall, 1879

Frederick Douglass, from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, 1852

Benjamin Rush, from his Address to the People of the United States, 1787

Thomas Jefferson, from “Notes on the State of Virginia”, 1781

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Frances Wright, August 7, 1825

The great task remaining before us

Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions”: Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, 1838

Alexander Stephens, The “Corner Stone” Speech, March 1861

Abraham Lincoln, Special Session Message on July 4th, 1861

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “American Civilization”, 1862

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Robert Frost, from “The Black Cottage”, 1915

Abraham Lincoln, from his First Annual Message, December 1861

Karl Marx, from Capital Volume 1, 1867

Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln, 1865

Address of the International Working Men’s Association to the People of the United States of America, 1865

Address of the International Working Men’s Association to the National Labor Union of the United States, 1869

The last stand of Providence

Eugene Debs, “The Fourth of July”, 1894

Eugene Debs, “Liberty’s Anniversary”, July 4, 1895

Eugene Debs, “Liberty”: Speech at Battery D, Chicago, On Release from Woodstock Jail, November 22, 1895

George Herron, “Why I Am a Socialist”: Address at a Mass Meeting of the Social Democratic Party at Central Music Hall, Chicago, September 29, 1900.

Platform of the Social Democratic Party of America, 1900

Eugene Debs, “The Mission of Socialism is Wide as the World”: Speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 4, 1901

Eugene Debs, “The Negro In The Class Struggle”, 1903

Eugene Debs, “The Negro and His Nemesis”, 1904

Socialist Party of America Platform, 1904

Eugene Debs, Speech of Acceptance of the Presidential Nomination of the Socialist Party: Chicago, May 6, 1904

Eugene Debs, “Socialist Ideals”, 1908

Morris Hillquit, “The Red Flag and the Stars & Stripes”, 1912

Morris Hillquit, “Our Patriotism and Theirs”, 1918

America was promises to whom?

W.E.B. Du Bois, from “The Propaganda of History”, in “Black Reconstruction in America”, 1935

Martin Luther King Jr., “Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address”, 1962

Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at the March for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., et al, from “A ‘Freedom Budget’ for All Americans”, 1967

Fred Hampton, from “It’s A Class Struggle Goddammit!”, 1969

Fred Hampton, from “Power Anywhere There’s People!”, 1969

Lenin, Letter To American Workers, 1918

Leon Trotsky, “If America Should Go Communist”, 1934

Carl Sandburg, from “The People, Yes”, 1936

Archibald MacLeish, “America Was Promises”, 1939

Archibald MacLeish, “Brave New World”, 1948

Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”, 1938

Written by Reid Kane