Letter to Karl Marx, May 29, 1862

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 May 1862


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913. Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Manchester, 29 May 1862

Dear Moor,

Herewith the POST OFFICE ORDER for £2, payable Kentish Town, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the office closest to you.

Siebel has been blessed with a baby daughter. Anneke is with Buell's Army and, as from today, will be writing for the Augsburg paper.[2] I feel somewhat anxious about Halleck's troops; the thing's been dragging on so long and he would not seem to be getting any reinforcements after all,[3] although Spence's lies in The Times certainly do not mean anything.[4] Willich is colonel (THE ETERNAL COLONEL!) commanding the 32nd Indiana Regiment.

As for the business of Klein,[5] I am heartily glad for his sake, poor devil. I'll return Eichhoff's letter to you as soon as I've read it to Lupus, but I can't go and see him at the moment, as I have a swollen tonsil, which has kept me at home these past few evenings.

It now seems as though some kind of guerrilla warfare has started up after all, but certainly nothing of any significance and, should there be just one victory, reinforcements will move up together with some cavalry and soon put paid to the thing. A defeat might well prove disastrous.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ An extract from this letter was first published in English in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, New York, 1937
  2. ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung
  3. ↑ Engels means the advance of the Northern troops under General Halleck on Corinth, Mississippi, in April and May 1862. Its very slow progress gave rise to press allegations by pro-Secessionist correspondents (including James Spence) about Halleck's army finding itself in dire straits.
  4. ↑ J. Spence's letter to the Times editor of 26 May 1862, The Times, No. 24258, 29 May 1862.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 369.