Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part IV, Appendix to diplomatic correspondence of 1865; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, late president of the United States of America, and the attempted assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and Frederick W. Seward, Assistant Secretary, on the evening of the 14th of April, 1865; expressions of condolence and sympathy inspired by these events

St. Augustus the Beneficent Lodge

undated

[Translation]

Lodge of St. Augustus, the Beneficent, to the Grand Lodge of New York.

In a solemn session on the 21st of April last, our lodge expressed its sympathies for the United States. It decreed to wear mourning for three months in Mr. Lincoln’s memory, and to send funds to purchase tools and clothing for the colored freedmen,

We have always been for your cause, dear brethren, because it is that of humanity. The curse of excommunication is now taken from the blacks. Lincoln has followed Washington.

No threatening cloud now hangs over that glorious country, justly called the Republic of the United States. Its coat of arms has now no bar sinister to disfigure it. We mourn over the heroic victim of the struggle that has ended so gloriously. Mothers are shedding their last tears; entire families are ruined; widows are deranged with grief; orphans seek with hagard eyes those whom they called their parents; all are mourning.

Terrible hate has separated provinces, families, and citizens. Men who used to give their hands turned to take each other’s hearts, and hundreds of thousands of their pale bodies repose under the earth that has been fecundated with their generous blood. Let us mourn.

This dividing gulf has at last been filled up by the body of a great man. Alas! you had to make the greatest sacrifice. Abraham Lincoln was struck by a madman; a master-piece of nature has been destroyed by a horrid being, the vilest piece of nature’s work.

Your sublime cause has had the sublimest martyr. Let us lament him. But he who came into the world, like Jesus of Bethlehem, to take away its sins, has not given his life in vain for the good of his countrymen. Slavery is dead, as well as Lincoln, and is now reposing in its final tomb. With its mortal memory human dignity is raised to immortality. The ancient institution may leave its traces here and there in savage lands, but slavery will soon disappear from the face of the earth, and the spirit of the great martyr will aid in its destruction.

And you dear brothers, will imitate the example of the model man, that has been left for the good of the world. His head and heart were perfect. First: the son of a laboring man, he was an apprentice; then he became a journeyman, and last a master, thus realizing our masonic symbols. He learned, he loved, he worked, he suffered, he persevered. Glory be to his memory forever!

In the work of emancipation, his intelligence has been shown in traits of fire his heart is protected by the halo of martyrdom. One can do good by imitating Lincoln, and more good by circulating his biography, which is a second gospel. It began in America, and will spread abroad in the world.

Accept, dear brethren, the expression of our most fraternal sentiments.

• Venerable, DELABY.
• 1st Warden, JACQUIN.
• 2d Warden, BEAUGRAND.
• JOBLOT, Keeper of the Seals.
• A. CARETTE, Orator.
• L. DIZIER, Secretary.