Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress

Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward

No. 844.]

Legation of the United States, London, December 23, 1864.

Sir: I now have the honor to transmit the address of the Central Council of the International Workingmen’s Association, together with a copy of a note of the secretary of that association to me, which best explains its character.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Hon. William H. Seward Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.

Mr. Cremer to Mr. Adams

International Workingmen’s Associaton, 18 Greek street, Soho W., December 23, 1864.

Sir: I am instructed by the central council of the above respectfully to ask that you will forward the accompanying address to the President of the United States of America, the sentiments therein expressed being the spontaneously expressed views of the central council, which council but represents the sentiments of the workingmen of Europe—the council being constituted by representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and England. With best thanks for the prompt and courteous replies you have forwarded to my every communication,

I remain your excellency’s, very respectfully,

W. R. CREMER, Honorary General Secretary.

Hon. C. F. Adams, United States Minister.

[Enclosure.]

Sir: 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 destinies 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 18th century; when on those very spots counter revolution 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 only solution of the great problem of the relation of labor to capital,” and cynically proclaimed property in man “the corner-stone 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 toscin 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 pro-slavery intervention importunities of their “fetters,” and from most parts of Europe contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political power 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 ascendency for the middle class, so the American anti-slavery 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 simple 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.

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association.

THE CENTRAL COUNCIL.

Le Luber, (French,) corresponding secretary.	Henry Bolleter.	G. Howell.
F. Rybezinsky, (Pole.)	Ludurg Otto.	J. Osborne.
Emile Halbork, (Pole.)	N. P. Hansen, (Dane.)	J. D. Stainsby.
B. Bocquet.	Carl Flaender.	J. Grosmith.
H. Jung, corresponding secretary for Switzerland.	George Lochner.	J. Whitlock.
Morisot.	Peter Petersen.	J. Carter.
George William Wheeler.	Carl Marx, corresponding secretary for Germany.	Francis Morgan.
J. Denoval.	A. Dick.	William Dell.
P. Bordage.	J. Wolf.	John Aleston.
Le Ronk.	D. Lawra.	Peter Fox.
Tallandier.	C. Setacci.	Robert Shaw.
Jourdain.	F. Solustus.	John H. Longwaist.
Dupont.	J. Aldevrand.	Robert Henry Side.
R. Gray.	D. G. Bagnagatti.	William C. Worley.
G. Eocarius.	M. M. Weeler.	William Blockmoor.
Frederick Lessner.	G. R. Toutana, corresponding secretary for Italy.	R. Hartwell.
V. Wolff.	T. Lake.	W. Pidgeon.
K. Kaub.	S. Buckley.	B. Leuraft.
		J. Nicass.

GEORGE ADGER, President of Council.

WILLIAM R. CREMER, Honorary General Secretary.

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America.