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

Municipal Council of Arbroath

May 25, 1865

To his excellency the honorable Charles Francis Adams, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary for the United States of America.

We, the provost, magistrates, and town council of the royal burgh of Arbroath, beg to convey to you, as the representative in this country of the government and people of the United States of America, that expression of the feelings of profound sorrow and indignation with which we received the melancholy intelligence of the assassination of the President of the United States. We deeply sympathize with the government and people of the United States in the loss they have sustained by the death, so much to be deplored, of their late President, who was so well fitted by his character and the confidence reposed in him to heal those divisions by which his country had been torn asunder.

We join in expressing our best wishes for the welfare of the United States, and the hope that the termination of the war will enable them to make that rapid progress for which their country presents so great advantages.

Signed in name and by appointment of the magistrates and town council of Arbroath, and the common seal of the said burgh affixed hereto, on Thursday, the 25th day of May, eighteen hundred and sixty-five.

[seal.]

JOHN LUMGAIR,

Provost and Chief Magistrate of Arbroath.