Abraham Lincoln’s Deep Pink Assistant Secretary of War

Should you happen to run across the name of Charles A. Dana in a “history” book somewhere it will probably tell you that he was assistant secretary of war in the Lincoln administration–and that’s probably all it will tell you. Or you may find, in an exceptional “history” book that he was associated with Horace Greeley in the publication of Greeley’s newspaper, the “New York Tribune.” Again, they probably won’t tell you any more than that. The educational rationale seems to be, in our day, that people don’t really need to know this stuff–it’s only old history and who needs old history? The educational elites would rather have you remain ignorant of old history. That way you can’t connect too many of the dots and figure out what really went on.

The fly in that buttermilk, though, is that old history comes back to haunt us–even today. Admittedly we can’t go back and change it, but if we are aware of what really happened, we can work to make sure we don’t repeat the same stupid errors.

Walter Kennedy and I, in our book “Lincoln’s Marxists, last published in 2011, showed conclusively that socialism and communism has been alive and well in this country long before anyone believed it was.

Charles A. Dana, Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war is a prime example of this. In his earlier years Dana had been associated with Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Brook Farm was a communistic endeavor in this country (one of several) in the 1840s that didn’t make it. It folded in 1847. However, one of Brook Farm’s projects had been a left-of-center publication called “The Harbinger.” Among those leftist luminaries that wrote for that periodical were George Ripley and Charles, A. Dana.

After Brook Farm had folded, Dana went to work for Horace Greeley’s “New York Tribune”. As part of his work for Greeley, Dana went to Europe in 1848, where he covered the socialist and communist revolts, not only for the Tribune but for other papers as well. At that time, he became well acquainted with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and who knows who else in the Forty-Eighter movement. Upon his return to this country in 1849 he was made managing editor under Greeley. Should you wonder why a friend of Karl Marx was made managing editor for Greeley’s paper you could do a bit of digging and learn that Horace Greeley was also a socialist–another little fact your history books probably didn’t pass along to you. I remember seeing Greeley’s name in history books all through my growing up years and nowhere was there ever a mention of his socialist proclivities.

Arthur Thompson, in his informative history book “To the Victors Go the Myths and Monuments” deals with Dana in some detail as I recall and points out his extreme leftist leanings.

As proof of his affinity for Marx and his worldview Dana hired Karl Marx to write columns for Greeley’s paper in 1851. Marx was to be a regular correspondent. Now Marx’s command of the English language wasn’t the greatest and so his friend, Engels, ended up writing many of his columns for him. Marx, however, was the one that got paid for them. So typical of the Marxist mindset in general–you do the work and I get the rewards! Since Greeley’s newspaper was one of the most influential in this country, what Dana had done was to give Karl Marx an open pipeline to reach the people of America with Marxist propaganda.

To be continued.