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

Earl Russell to Mr. Adams.

Foreign Office, May 1, 1865.

Sir: I have had the honor to receive your note of this day’s date, officially communicating to me the melancholy intelligence of the death by the hand of an assassin of the late President of the United States.

When the first intelligence of this sad calamity reached this country I conveyed to you by letter and in person the deep impression of horror and indignation which so atrocious a crime on the President of the United States had made upon me and on the several members of her Majesty’s government, and it only remains for me now, in acknowledging your letter, to acquaint you that, by the command of the Queen, I have directed her Majesty’s minister at Washington to convey to the government of the United States the assurance that her Majesty sincerely condoles with the family of the late President, and that her Majesty’s government and the British Parliament and the British nation are affected by a unanimous feeling of abhorrence of the criminal guilty of this cowardly and atrocious assassination, and their sympathy with the government and people of the United States under the great calamity which has befallen them.

I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

RUSSELL.

Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.