"The secessionist conspiracy, organised, patronised and supported long before its outbreak by Buchanan's administration, gave the South a head-start, by which alone it could hope to achieve its aim."
Articles by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in Die Presse 1862 The American Civil War http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/03/26.htm ________________________________ Source: MECW Volume 19, p. 186 Written: between March 7 and 22, 1862; First published: in Die Presse, 85, March 26 and 27, 1862. ________________________________ >From whatever standpoint one regards it, the American Civil War presents a spectacle without parallel in the annals of military history. The vast extent of the disputed territory; the far-flung front of the lines of operation; the numerical strength of the hostile armies, the creation of which hardly drew any support from a prior organisational basis; the fabulous cost of these armies; the manner of commanding them and the general tactical and strategic principles in accordance with which the war is being waged, are all new in the eyes of the European onlooker. The secessionist conspiracy, organised, patronised and supported long before its outbreak by Buchanan's administration, gave the South a head-start, by which alone it could hope to achieve its aim. Endangered by its slave population and by a strong Unionist element among the whites themselves, with two-thirds less free men than in the North, but readier to attack, thanks to the multitude of adventurous idlers that it harbours - for the South everything depended on a swift, bold, almost foolhardy offensive. If the Southerners succeeded in taking St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington, Baltimore, and perhaps Philadelphia, they might then count on a panic, during which diplomacy and bribery could secure recognition of the independence of all the slave states. If this first onslaught failed, at least at the decisive points, their position must then become worse from day to day, while the North was gaining in strength. This point was rightly understood by the men who in truly Bonapartist spirit had organised the secessionist conspiracy. They opened the campaign in the corresponding manner. Their bands of adventurers overran Missouri and Tennessee, while their more regular troops invaded eastern Virginia and prepared a coup de main against Washington. If this coup were to miscarry, the Southern campaign was lost from a military point of view. -clip-
