国际工人协会致美国总统阿伯拉罕·林肯的信
送呈美国公使查尔斯·法拉西斯·阿当斯
1865年1月28日
阁下：
您以一个很大的多数票获得连任，请让我们向美国人民表示祝贺。如果说“抗拒奴隶主权力”是您第一次获选专用的口号，那“去死吧，奴隶制！”是您获选再任的战斗凯旋声。
从美国这场轰轰烈烈的决斗一开始，欧洲的工人就本能地预感到星条旗帜的命运也就是他们的命运。争夺领地是美国悲壮史诗的开端，它所定夺的难道不正是广袤的处女地到底应归移民的劳动所享有还是任由奴隶监工们去蹂躏？
当30万奴隶主的寡头统治胆敢在世界史上首次将“保护奴隶制”写在武装叛乱的旗帜上的时候，当在大约一个世纪之前在同样的地方一个伟大的民主共和国的构想最先产生出来时——其颁布了人类的第一个人权宣言并最先推动了欧洲18世纪的革命，当在同样的地方反革命势力为系统且彻底地取消“建立老宪法时期所持有的思想主张”而欢欣雀跃并坚持认为奴隶制是一个“仁爱的制度”（不错，是一个解决“资本与劳动关系”这个重大问题的老办法），还荒谬地宣称人身所有制是“新社会大厦的基石”时，这时候，欧洲的工人阶级当下就理解——甚至在狂热地站在南部联盟豪绅那边的上层阶级发出他们可怕的警告之前就已理解，奴隶主的暴动拉响的将是一场财产对抗劳动的圣战的警钟，而且对劳动者来说，不要说对未来的展望，就是以前获得的斗争成果也将在大西洋彼岸的那场波澜壮阔的搏斗中受到冲击。因此，工人到处耐心地忍受着棉花危机所带给他们的种种生活困难，他们积极地反对他们的有产当权者采取有利于奴隶主的干预行动；在欧洲大部分地区，工人都为美国的正义事业捐献了他们应献出的鲜血。
只要美国北部真正拥有政治力量的工人容许奴隶制玷污他们的共和国，只要他们在那些被占有和随意被买卖的黑人面前夸称白皮肤的劳动者享有自己出售自己和选择主人的最高特权，他们就无法争取到真正的劳动自由，也无法支援他们欧洲兄弟的解放斗争；不过，这走向进步的障碍现在已被内战的红色血海给清除了。
欧洲的工人坚信，正如美国的独立战争开创了美国中产阶级地位上升的新纪元，美国反奴隶制的战争也将开创美国工人阶级地位上升的新纪元。欧洲工人认为，一个新纪元到来的预兆就是天降大任于阿伯拉罕·林肯——这位工人阶级忠诚的儿子，要他领导他的国家为拯救一个被套上锁链的种族、为重建一个有社会良心的世界而进行一场史无前例的斗争。
马克思和57名人士代表国际工人协会中央委员会在信上署名
美国公使亚当姆斯回复
美利坚合众国公使馆
伦敦，1865年1月28日
阁下：
我受命通知您，贵协会中央委员会的信函已按时由本公使馆转呈美国合众国的总统，他已经收妥。
总统表示，他接受贵函中对他个人所表示的善意。他诚惶诚恐和衷心地希望他不会辜负他自己的同胞以及全世界许多爱好人道主义和进步的朋友最近对他所表示的信任。
美国政府十分清楚地意识到它的政策不是而且不可能是反动的，同时它坚守它一开始就执行的方针，即避免在世界任何地区进行政治宣传或非法干涉。美国将竭尽全力公平和正确地对待所有国家和所有人类，并依赖此项努力所获得良好成果来赢得国内的支持和国际的尊重和善意。
任何国家都不是为了自己独自一国的生存而存在的，而是为了通过睿智仁爱的交流和榜样来促进人类的幸福安康。美利坚合众国就是在这种关系下看待他们目前所从事的有关处理奴隶纠纷的事业，把叛乱视为人性使然。从欧洲工人对我们国家人民的立场所表示的开明的支持和真诚的同情中，我们的联邦获得了新的鼓励，我们将坚持不懈地推进我们的事业。
谨启
查尔斯·法兰西斯·阿当斯敬上
德国法兰克福 胡祖庶 2009年2月18日
Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, Ambassador
The International Workingmen's Association 1864
Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865 [A]
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Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, November 7, 1865;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Basgen;
Online Version: Marx & Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000.
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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 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. [B]
Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, the Central Council:
Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;
George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.
18 Greek Street, Soho.
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Ambassador Adams Replies
Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865
Sir:
I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.
So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.
The Government of the United States has a clear consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.
Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
