Joseph Weydemeyer Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer ( February 2 , 1818 , Münster – August 26 , 1866 , St . Louis , Missouri ) was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States , as well as a journalist , politician and Marxist revolutionary . At first a supporter of " true socialism " he became , in 1845 - 46 , a follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . He became a member of the League of Communists . From 1849 to 1851 he headed its Frankfurt chapter . He visited Marx in Brussel s , staying there for a time to attend Marx ’ s lectures . He participated in the 1848 Revolution . He was one of the " responsible editors " of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from 1849 to 1850 . He was involved in the writing of the manuscript of the Deutsche Ideologie ( German Ideology ) . He worked on two socialist periodicals which were the Westphälisches Dampfboot ( Westphalian Steamboat ) and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung . In 1851 he emigrated from Germany to the United States and worked there as a journalist . " The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon " , written by Karl Marx , was published in 1852 in " Die Revolution " , a German - language monthly magazine in New York , established by Weydemeyer . Weydemeyer took part in the US Civil War as a colonel in the Union Army . Biography . Born in 1818 , the same year as Karl Marx , Weydemeyer was the son of a Prussia n civil servant residing in Münster in Westphalia . Sent to a gymnasium and the Berlin military Academy , he received his commission as a Leutnant in the Prussian artillery ( 1 . Westfälisches Feldartillerie - Regiment Nr . 7 ) in 1838 . At the beginning of his short career , he was stationed in the Westphalian town of Minden . He began to read the bourgeois radical and socialist newspaper " Rheinische Zeitung " , the Cologne paper Marx became editor and which was suppressed by Prussian censorship in 1843 . But it inspired many soldiers in the Rhineland and Westphalia . In the Minden garrison , the paper inspired revolutionaries like Fritz Anneke , August Willich , Hermann Korff and Friedrich von Beust , all of whom , like Weydemeyer , will become prominent Forty - Eighters and after that officers of the Union army in the Civil War . The leftist officers in Minden formed a circle in which Weydemeyer took part . He also went frequently to Cologne and took part to discussions of social problems with the journalists of the " Rheinische Zeitung " . In 1844 , Weydemeyer resigned from the Prussian army . He then became assistant editor of the " Trierische Zeitung " , a paper which advocated the Phalansteries of Charles Fourier and the True Socialism of Karl Gruen . In 1845 , he joined the " Westphaelische Dampfboot " after paying a visit to Marx , exiled in Paris . Marx , as well as Engels , were publishing in the " Dampfboot " . The paper was edited by Otto Luening in Bielefeld and Paderborn . Luening ' s sister Luise became Weydemeyer ' s wife in 1845 . 1848 . After a second visit to Marx in Brussels in 1846 , Weydemeyer went back to Germany to organize the Communist League in Cologne . This was the organization for which Marx and Engels wrote the " Communist Manifesto " in 1847 . He continued to work on the " Dampfboot " . At the same time , he made a career as a construction engineer for the Cologne - Minden Railroad , but he quit the job soon after the beginning in 1848 because the company ordered its employees to stay out of political demonstration . During the rest of the year , he was a full - time revolutionary journalist . In June 1848 , he was invited to Darmstadt by the socialist publisher C . W . Leske to be co - editor with Otto Luening of the " Neue Deutsche Zeitung " . Near to Frankfurt , where the German National Assembly was meeting at the time , the newspaper intended to be a link between the left - wing of the Assembly and the extra - parliamentary movement . But in 1849 , the counter - revolution succeeded and the Prussian absolutism crushed the Frankfurt Parliament , the armed democracy in Baden and the Electorate of the Palatinate and all the democratic papers . Marx ' s " Neue Rheinische Zeitung " disappeared under the censorship and the " Neue Deutsche Zeitung " survived by moving from Darmstadt to Frankfurt in the spring of 1849 . The paper would be finally banished in December 1850 by the senate of the city . Weydemeyer remained in the country for half a year , underground . In July 1851 , with his wife and two children , he went to Switzerland where he did not find a job . On July 27 , he wrote to Marx that he had no alternative than migrating to the United States . In his answer to Weydemeyer , Marx recommend New York City for his settlement , a place where Weydemeyer could have the chance to create a German - speaking revolutionary paper . At the same time , it was , in the idea of Marx , the city where the migrants were less likely to be touched by the Far West adventures . Marx also remarked that the United States would be a difficult country for the development of socialism , the surplus of population , being drained off by the farms and the fast growing prosperity of the country , the Germans being easily Americanized and forgetting of their homeland . Weydemeyer and his family sailed from Le Havre on September 29 , 1851 , and arrived in New York on November 7 . New York . A Marxist journalist . In December 1851 , Weydemeyer issues a paper , named " Die Revolution " , a German - language revolutionary paper , which purpose was to make picture of the class struggle in the Old World . The paper first appeared on January 6 but was suspended on January 13 . In a letter to Marx at the end of January , he attributed his failure because of the corrupting effect on the people of the American soil . He also pointed out the dominance of the liberal bourgeois - nationalist ideology on the people , among them Gottfried Kinkel and Lajos Kossuth . German immigrants were simply not sensitive to Marx ideas and analyses of the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and of the triumph of European reaction . In spring 1852 , Weydemeyer brought out Marx ' s " Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte " as a final number of " Die Revolution " , after arranging for serial publication of Engels " Peasant War in Germany " in the New York " Turn - Zeitung " between January 1852 and February 1853 . He began to write for the " Turn - Zeitung " about different political issues , as the American aversion of the proletarian dictatorship , the calling of liberal American groups for free election in Europe and their silence about the conditions of the workers , the political immaturity of forty - eighters who raised money in the United States to foment revolution in Europe . To sum up , he wrote many articles which counterposed Marxism to liberalism for the German immigrants . In the July number of " Turn - Zeitung " , he began a discussion of American labor issues and the free trade versus protection debate , where he took a traditional Marxist stand for the industrial development . In the " Turn - Zeitung " of September 1 , Weydemeyer analyzed the relationship between Australian cotton and American slavery . The development of American monopoly on the world market , in his point of view , promotes the rise of national economical development rather than regional and the rise of national parties in American politics rather than regional . He saw the shift from an agricultural dominance over the industrial to an industrial dominance over the latter . In the " Turn - Zeitung " of November 15 , Weydemeyer wrote a review of the election campaign of 1852 , pointing the absence of labor issues in the platforms of the Whig and Democratic parties . In December , in a two - part " Political - Economic Survey " , he attempted to project a platform for American labor . He stands for organizations of the workers on a large scale political as well as economical , and urged the workers to adopt internationalism . The foundation of the American Workers League . With four of his friends , Weydemeyer formed a tiny organization , the first Marxist organization in the United States , formed in the summer of 1852 . The group , called " Proletarierbund " , won the attention of German immigrants with the organization of a meeting on March 20 , 1853 , in New York , where eight hundred German Americans assembled in Mechanics Hall and founded the American Workers League . This was an organization of mixed union and party functions , and presented a programm of immediate issues for the working class and the socialist goal at the same time . The program was for immediate naturalization of all immigrants who wished to gain American citizenship , it favored federal , rather than state , labor legislation , stood for guaranteed payment of wages to workers whose employers went bankrupt , assumption by government of all costs of litigation with free choice of counsel , reducing the working day to ten hours , banning labor for children under sixteen , compulsory education with government maintenance for children whose families were too poor , against all Sunday and temperance laws , for the formation of tuition - colleges and for state acquisition of existing private colleges , for keeping the national lands on the frontier inalienable , etc . Beside the immediate demands , the League ' s platform stated some revolutionary principles . The preamble charged the capitalists of the everyday worse situation of the workers , the need of an independent political party for the workers , " without respect to occupation , language , color or sex " , and the task of overthrowing the capital leadership with it as a way to solve social and political problems . It also leaned on the American Constitution of the Founding Fathers . The American Workers League functioned for several years under a central committee made up of delegates from wards clubs and trade unions . Member of its committee , Weydemeyer tried to wide the influence of the League to non German Americans but the League served primarily as a German recreation and mutual aid society , in isolation from the English - speaking workers . When in the context of the Know - Nothing agitation , in 1855 , the members began forming a secret military organization to defend themselves against nativist attacks , Weydemeyer withdrew from the League . He devoted himself to study the American Economy and to writing and lecturing of Marxists ideas . American Civil War . As the country was moving toward a civil war , German Americans played an important part in the emergence of the Republican Party , so did Weydemeyer , who was one the men who drew the German community toward the Republicans and the antislavery cause . Hence , Weydemeyer stand for the Republicans was in contradiction with the influence of the most prominent labor radicals at the time , as Wilhelm Weitling , who showed affinity for the Democrats and avoided attacks on slavery in his labor paper . William Sylvis , leading native - born trade unionist , didn ' t stand for the Republicans as well . The Republican Party gained also influence through the free - soil movement . According to his Marxist opinion against the parceling out of government lands to small farmers , Weydemeyer denounced the Homestead Act agitation in 1854 as contrary to the interest of the workers and was in favor of large - scale agriculture . But in the 1860s , together with other German Republicans , he urged the party to campaign for " immediate passage by Congress of a Homestead law by which the public lands of the Union may be secured for homesteads of the people , and secured from the greed of speculators . " Weydemeyer back of the free - soil movement and shift of position about that issue wasn ' t a stand for the free - soil movement as a social progress ( as Hermann Kriege endorsement in this movement in 1845 ) , but a question of tactic , backing the free - soil movement at that moment being a support for the antislavery cause , the main issue at the time in his point of view . Shortly after dropping the American Workers League , Weydemeyer left New York and settled down in the Midwest , where he lived for four years , first in Milwaukee and then in Chicago , where he worked a journalist and also as a surveyor . He tried to establish in Chicago , another independent German labor paper , and contributed to the " Illinois Staats - Zeitung " , a famous German Republican daily of the Midwest . He took part in the " Deutsches Haus " conference of German - American societies in Chicago in May 1860 to influence the Republican convention ' s platform and candidates . Back in New York at the end of 1860 , he found a job as a surveyor of Central Park and became active in the election campaign for Abraham Lincoln . Eight months later , he was in the army . Thanks to his background as a Prussian military officer and surveyor , he became a technical aide on the staff of General John C . Frémont , the commander of the department of the West . He superintended the erection of ten forts around St . Louis . After Frémont was removed from his command in November 1861 , Weydemeyer was made a lieutenant colonel and given command of a Missouri volunteer artillery regiment which took the field against Confederate guerillas in southern Missouri in 1862 . At the end of the year , he was hospitalized for a nervous disorder and transferred to garrison duty in St . Louis , which he left in September 1863 . Politically active in Missouri , Weydemeyer was facing two main issues : the extension of emancipation to Missouri and the prevention of a split between the Lincoln and Frémont faction of the Republican Party . Despite his own sympathy for the Frémont straight position , he tried to conciliate the factions and keep safe the victory in the 1864 election and in the war . In September 1864 , Weydemeyer joined the army as colonel of the Forty - first Infantry Missouri Volunteers charged with the defense of St . Louis . While doing his military duty , he distributed copies of the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen ' s Association , exchanged letters with Engels on military and political issues , contributed to local papers , as the " Daily St Louis Press " where he wrote an editorial greeting the founding of the First International . In July 1865 , he demobilized his regiment and left the Army . At the end of the war , he began to write regularly for the " Westliche Post " and the " Neue Zeit " , two St . Louis papers . He won the election as county auditor , holding his office from January , 1st 1866 until his death . He worked for harsher tax laws and collecting unpaid taxes of men who used the war to become rich . The same day William S . Sylvis inaugurated the National Labor Union in Baltimore , Weydemeyer died of cholera in St . Louis , Missouri at the age of 48 .