Comment

Comment by suzie on May 26, 2015 at 6:24pm

Delete Comment
The Lincoln Putsch: America's Bolshevik Revolution:
http://codoh.com/library/document/610/

A forgotten chapter in the history of America is the influence of German communists in the Midwest in the years following 1848. Refugees numbering in the many thousands from the failed communist Revolution of 1848 settled there, bringing with them social ist ideas favoring large central government, land redistribution, and abolitionism.
These people avidly supported the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, providing what many believe was the margin of victory. In response to Lincoln's call for troops, they joined the Union Army in large numbers, forming perhaps one out of eight of all Union troops in the field, a great many of them under German officers, themselves communist veterans. In the civilian sphere, socialists and communists formed a powerful element in the Republican Party, and Lincoln, himself a midwesterner who shared much of their worldview, awarded them with major appointments.