Bakunin in America

"George Sumner and Mr. Bakounin to dinner. Mr. B. is a Russian gentleman of education and ability — a giant of a man, with a most ardent, seething temperament. He was in the Revolution of Forty-eight; has seen the inside of prisons — of Olmiitz, even, where he had Lafayette's room. Was afterwards four years in Siberia; whence he escaped in June last, down the Amoor, and then in an American vessel by way of Japan to California, and across the isthmus, hitherward. An interesting man."--Diary Of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, November 27, 1861 https://books.google.com/books?id=-gtuVkUVBPQC&pg=PA423

"Bakunin spent four years in Siberia, from 1857 to 1861. He broke his word to [Governor] Muravev's successor while acting as an agent for a trading company. On an expedition to the river Amur, he took an American ship to Japan and then to San Francisco. He crossed the United States, and mingled with the leading lights of the progressive and abolitionist circles in Boston. He liked the country and was impressed by its federalist system, but he left no discernible impact on the embryonic labour movement. Only later did Benjamin Tucker publicize his ideas. Bakunin stayed little more than a month in America, and eventually reached England at the end of 1861.." Peter Marshall, *Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism,* p. 274. https://books.google.com/books?id=QDWIOL_KtGYC&pg=PA274

See Paul Avrich https://libcom.org/…/BAKUNIN%20AND%20THE%20UNITED%20STATES.… for an account of Bakunin's two-month sojourn in the US in 1861:

"Around November 21st or 22nd, Bakunin interrupted his stay in New York to visit Boston, where he remained a little over a week. It proved to be the high point of his sojourn in America. Armed with letters of introduction from Solger and Kapp, he called on a number of influential figures, among them the Governor of Massachusetts, John Andrew, a friend of Solger's and a radical Republican who had spoken out against slavery and raised funds for the defense of John Brown. Bakunin also carried letters to General George B. McClellan, Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army, who had visited Russia in 1855-56 as an observer of the Crimean War, and to both Massachusetts Senators, Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, radical Republicans and abolitionists like Governor Andrew. A few years later, Bakunin was to praise Sumner, "the eminent Boston senator", for espousing a form of "socialism" by favoring the distribution of land among the freed slaves of the South."...

"Throughout his sojourn in America, he moved in abolitionist circles, defended the anti-slavery movement and, unlike Proudhon, supported the Union in the struggle between the states. The Civil War "interests me in the highest degree", he wrote to Herzen and Ogarev from San Francisco. "My sympathies are all with the North".25 So strong were his feelings on the slavery issue that had circumstances permitted, according to Kennard, "he would have cast his future fortune with Americans and heartily joined in the events of the War."26 In later years he condemned the Northern apologists of slavery, along with "the ferocious oligarchy" of Southern planters, as being "demagogues without faith or conscience, capable of sacrificing everything to their greed, to their malignant ambition". Such men, he said, had "greatly contributed to the corruption of political morality in North America."

"Not that the South was totally devoid of merit. No less than Proudhon, Bakunin distrusted the growing centralization of Union power and cherished the waning agrarian virtues of the Confederacy, whose political structure he considered in some ways freer and more democratic than that of the North.28 In reaching this conclusion, we learn from Kennard, Bakunin was probably influenced by Senator Gwin, "whose acquaintance he had made on his voyage from San Francisco via Panama, and who has sometimes been mentioned in the newspapers as 'Duke Gwin'".29 Southern federalism, however, Bakunin was quick to point out, had been tarnished by the "black spot" of slavery, with the result that the Confederate states had "drawn upon themselves the condemnation of all friends of freedom and humanity". Moreover, with "the iniquitous and dishonorable war which they fomented against the republican states of the North, they nearly overthrew and destroyed the finest political organization that ever existed in history".30

Bakunin was however anxious to get to London as quickly as possible to be reunited with his wife. But suppose he wasn't. Suppose Bakunin decides to stay in the US? (Remember that political restrictions on "anarchist" immigrants were decades away.) He could help organize one of the stronger anti-authoritarian, anti-Marxist sections of the First International here. Even from Europe in OTL, he had some disciples in America:

"The International Working Men's Association, for example, was not founded until 1864, and its first American section was formed only in 1867. Bakunin himself did not become a member of the International until 1868, after which, however, his influence spread rapidly. By the early 1870's, at the height of his conflict with Marx, he could count on substantial support within the American branch of the International, which was far from being an exclusively Marxist organization, as historians sometimes portray it. Between 1870 and 1872, federalist sections of the International were established in New York, Boston and other American cities. In New York, for example, Sections 9 and 12 were organized by such prominent libertarians as William West, Victoria Woodhull, her sister Tennessee Claflin, and Stephen Pearl Andrews, who hailed Bakunin as "a profound thinker, an original genius, a scholar and a philosopher".62 William B. Greene, the leading American disciple of Proudhon, helped start a libertarian section of the International in Boston, while his colleague Ezra Heywood addressed Internationalist meetings in New York and other cities. In 1872, moreover, Heywood launched a monthly magazine, The Word, in Princeton, Massachusetts, one of the first American journals to publish Bakunin's writings.63 Together with Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly in New York, The Word became the unofficial organ of the International's libertarian wing in the United States, defending the principles of decentralist socialism and criticizing the Marxist-controlled General Council for its authoritarian orientation. "It is not pleasant to see Dr. Marx and other leaders of this great and growing fraternity lean so strongly towards compulsory politics", declared The Word in May 1872. "Let us be governed by the laws of nature until we can make better. If the International would succeed it must be true to its bottom idea — voluntary association in behalf of our common humanity."64. In addition to the native American groups, a number of foreign-language (principally French) sections of the International in America adhered to the Bakuninist rather than the Marxist wing..." (Avrich)

Any thoughts? BTW, in his last years in Switzerland, Bakunin again considered emigrating to America...

(He will presumably die years before he can be blamed for the Haymarket bombing.)
 
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