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

[From La Patrie, April 28, 1865.]

April 28, 1865

THE DEATH OF MR. LINCOLN.

The violent death of Mr. Lincoln has thrown the mind of every one into profound stupefaction. Nobody knows what to think of this assassination, which invests the American question with new complications. We dare not venture to think that this crime is the work of a political party, and one hesitates to admit that private revenge can have thus encompassed in its fury two statesmen—the two veritable heads of the government of the North.

Fatality weighs upon this unhappy country, which for four years has been devastated by an unjust war, and which, in the day when peace appeared to be possible, saw itself suddenly plunged into the most terrible eventualities.

The first feeling inspired by such a catastrophe can be nothing but one of horror. Whatever may have been the motive of these assassins, there is in this act too much baseness not to fill the whole of Europe with indignation. But there is another feeling, arising from the thought of the troubles which the murder of Mr. Lincoln and his minister may give rise to, as well in the North as in the South, and that feeling is one of mingled apprehension and sorrow.

ERNEST DREOLLE.