Karl Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer  
in Saint Louis  
London, Tuesday, 29 November 1864  

29 November, 1864.  
1, Modena Villas, Maitland Park,  
Haverstock Hill. N. W. London.  

Dear Weiwi,  

I and the whole household were extraordinarily pleased to hear from you and your family again. My wife maintains that she wrote to your wife last, and therefore expects the first letter back from her.  

I am sending you at the same time by post 4 copies of a printed address, drawn up by me. The recently established International Working Men’s Committee, in whose name it was issued, is not without significance. Its English members, you see, consist for the most part of the heads of the trades unions here, hence the actual working-class kings of London, the very people who prepared the gigantic reception for Garibaldi and who, by means of the monster meeting in St. James’ Hall (under Bright’s chairmanship), prevented Palmerston from declaring war against the United States, which he was on the point of doing. On the French side, the members are insignificant, but they are the direct spokesmen of the leading “workers” in Paris. Likewise, a connection exists with the Italian societies, which recently held their congress at Naples. Although || for years I systematically declined all participation in all “organisations,” etc., I accepted this time, because it involved a matter in which it is possible to be of significant influence.  

For 14 months I have been almost constantly and often dangerously ill with carbuncles. Now fairly healed.  

Engels will have written to you that we have lost our Lupus.  

Oddly enough, I received a letter from Berlin last Friday in which the old Hatzfeldt approached me to defend Lassalle against Blind’s “Republican Protest.” The following day I received your letter to Engels, containing the very altered American version of the same scribble. By a third coincidence, I was simultaneously sent 2 numbers of the Swabian “Beobachter” (Stuttgart) which otherwise never come into my hands. In the first number, the editor poked fun at a letter addressed to him and other South German editors, translated from the English of “Herr Blind”—a letter from Herr Blind to the American nation, in which, as he says, at “almost official request,” he gives his incompetent opinion on the election of Lincoln, etc. In the same number, the editor remarked that from my book against Vogt one can see what Blind’s vanity leads to, etc. Thereupon Blind sent, via Dr. Bronner of Bradford, his straw man, the enclosed reply, in which he 1) expounds his immense weight in America and 2) has the impudence to say that the Vogt affair is “settled.” This then enabled me (making use of and printing the passages in your letter referring to Blind) to give old Hatzfeldt the desired declaration against the buffoon, without identifying myself with the repugnant aspects of the Lassallean agitation. Write soon.  
Yours,  
K. Marx.  

The number of the “Beobachter” (Stuttgart), from which I am copying Blind’s boasting letter for you, is No. 268, of 17 Nov. 1864.  

It is absolutely necessary that you write me a few lines for public use concerning Herr Blind’s American influence.