American Residents of Calcutta
Meeting of the American community.
The American merchants and ship-masters of Calcutta assembled, to the number of thirty or forty, at the counting-house of Messrs. Atkinson, Tilton & Co., on Wednesday afternoon, June 7, to do honor to the memory of their deceased President, Lincoln. The meeting was opened by the appointment of the American consul general for India, Nathaniel P. Jacobs, esq., to preside, and of the reverend Mr. Dall as secretary.
A committee was then appointed to draft resolutions embodying the sense of the meeting. It consisted of Messrs. Eldridge, Whitney, Dall, Hamlin, and Knowles. The following were, after a brief conference in the committee-room, presented, and received a unanimous approval:
Resolved, That we, Americans of Calcutta, India, desire to add our testimony of respect and of sorrow to that which has been, and is now being, expressed in various parts of the world for Abraham Lincoln, the justly honored and beloved President of the United States of America, murdered while on duty, martyred in the hour of the triumph of his arduous and successful labors for us and for humanity. We mourn, in his death, the unreturning departure of a true patriot, ruler, and friend.
Resolved, That with our grief is mingled a grateful and deep satisfaction at the general outburst of sympathy in this our national bereavement, and at the expression of fellow-feeling which seems to come to our native land from every region in which Christianity has found a home or a mission.
Resolved, That we recognize the hand of the Ruler of all nations in the loss which we have sustained; and while, to us, the blow comes with double force at this particular time when his wisdom and abilities were peculiarly needed, we bow to the Divine will, and doubt not that God’s protecting hand will be extended to our suffering country, and that goodwill come out of what now seems to us an irreparable loss.
Resolved, That, in these expressions of sorrow, we specially desire to remember [Page 186] the widow and family of our late President, and to convey to them, as to our fellow-countrymen, our earnest sympathy at the calamity which has befallen them.
Resolved, That, as a token of our present relation to the deceased, and out of respect to his memory, we will wear crape on the left arm for the next thirty days; and that the masters of American ships in port be requested to set their colors at half mast for one week from this date.
Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be handed to the consul general of the United States of America for British India, with the request that he will have them transmitted to the proper authorities at home.
F. F. Wills, esq., moved that the resolutions, as now read, be accepted and adopted as an expression of American feeling in Calcutta; and, on the seconding of Mr. H. B. Goodwin, they were carried unanimously, and the meeting was dissolved.