Tag: Dixie

Southern Men Arise!

How Great Britain Assisted the Formation of the Confederate Post Office [1861-1863]! (8.1.2025)

The internationally-known London, England printing firm of “Thomas De La Rue & Co.”, prepared plates and stamps for the CSA until a Southern firm was found to take over the work. That firm, Archer & Daly, began producing stamps in 1863. The US blockade of as many Confederate ports as possible often meant that British ships carrying supplies from London, the UK, or the British Empire to the Confederacy – were often intercepted via acts of piracy on the high seas by the US Navy – with the goods confiscated and/or destroyed. The US government was continuously irritated by the continuous (undeclared) British support for the Confederacy – which for at least two-years extended into the realms of Post Office support! Of course, many of the best weapons the Confederate Army possessed were supplied by the UK. The Postmaster General of the Confederate Post Office Department (POD) – John Reagan (whilst traveling with President Jefferson Davis) – was arrested on the 8th May 1865, and imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Reagan was pardoned and released from prison almost two years later. Jefferson Davis “refused” a Pardon (on the grounds that he had done nothing wrong) – and was subsequently released anyway.

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Karl Marx: Newspaper Article: ‘The North American Civil War’! (5.4.2023)

Having assessed this difference over a number of days – I developed the dialectical understanding that whereas ‘The German Ideology’ was a free expression of the unhindered thought of Marx and Engels regarding their Scientific Socialist understanding (and an open attack upon the capitalist system) – his newspaper article (for which he was being ‘paid’) – had to conform to the general ideas that prevailed throughout the (Federalist) ‘Union’ of Northern States! Marx had to cleverly compromise by moulding his opinions into those acceptable to the thinking of those who were ‘paying’ him for his journalistic services! If he was writing for newspapers based in Charleston or Richmond (lying within the ‘Confederate’ Southern States) – then I think we would have seen Marx formulate a very different take on events (not only reflecting the views of his audience – but also a more specific statement of the dialectical reality of the time)! Whatever the case, The German Ideology was written by Marx and Engels in 1845 – some sixteen years BEFORE Marx penned his 1861 article – and yet it contains a much deeper and far more thorough understanding of the human condition and the concept and reality of ‘slavery’! This example demonstrates why the working-class must be literate – we must be able to read and write – and in so doing ‘educate’ our own way out of the quagmire of Bourgeois branwashing, disinformation and deliberate misrepresentation!

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