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

Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Council of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, May 2, 1865

Resolutions passed at a meeting held by the provost, magistrates, and council of Edinburgh.

At Edinburgh, the second day of May, in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-five, which day the right honorable the lord provost, magistrates, and council of the city of Edinburgh being in special meeting assembled, on motion of the lord provost, it was unanimously—

Resolved, That this council do record an expression of the sorrow with which they and the entire community of the city of Edinburgh have learned of the assassination of President Lincoln—an act the foul atrocity of which has excited the horror and indignation of the whole civilized world. That, warmly participating in the feeling of profound sympathy entertained by the people of this country towards the people of the United States of America, under the circumstances of unprecedented trial and difficulty in which they are placed, the council desire very respectfully to offer them the expression of that sympathy, the spontaneity and universality of which the council trust will be accepted by the great people to whom it is addressed as the best evidence of the existence in this country of that feeling of brotherhood which should ever hallow the relations between the two great branches of the same race. That the council also sympathize most deeply with Mrs. Lincoln and the family of the late President and earnestly pray that the terrible event which has caused them so much suffering may, in the hands of Him who in His inscrutable providence often “causes the wrath of man to praise Him” be so ordered as to facilitate the re-establishment of peace and order in the United States, and to strengthen feelings of amity and good will towards them all over the world.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to his excellency the minister of the United States, with a request that he will take the earliest opportunity of communicating them to his government, and to the widow of the late President.

Extracted from the council record upon this and the two preceding pages by—

J. DENARWICK,

City Clerk.