Friends of Union and Emancipation
Address to President Johnson by the friends of union and emancipation in Hawick.
Address unanimously adopted at a public meeting of the friends of union and emancipation, held at Hawick, Scotland, May 5, 1865:
His Excellency, Andrew Johnson,
President of the United States of America:
Having heard with profound sorrow of the assassination of his Excellency President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of the Hon. Mr. Seward, we tender to you this expression of our deep sense of the wickedness of the atrocious crime that has been perpetrated, and of our heartfelt sympathy with the American people under the heavy loss they have sustained in the untimely close of Mr. Lincoln’s great career.
While feeling deep sorrow for the death of that great and good man, to whose inflexibility of purpose and unswerving fidelity to great principles the American people have been so much indebted throughout the gigantic struggle in which they have been engaged, we cannot help expressing, at the same time, our high satisfaction at the recent great victories of your armies, under General Grant, over the confederates at Richmond and Petersburg, the capture of these cities, the surrender of General Lee with the shattered remnant of his once formidable rebel army, and the subsequent successes of the army under General Sherman, resulting, as that brilliant series of events does, in the entire overthrow of one of the most gigantic conspiracies against the rights of mankind of which history contains any record, and giving confident hope of the complete restoration of the Union and of the emancipation of the negro race.
[Page 231]We cannot doubt that the same policy which was so steadfastly and ably carried out by Mr. Lincoln will be continued by yourself, on whom the highest responsibilities of the state have now devolved; and we trust that ere long the great issues of Union and emancipation may be fully and happily consummated; and that the United States, emancipated from the evil and disorganizing institution of slavery, and from the dominating power of a slave aristocracy, may come out of this great crisis a yet purer, stronger, and freer nation, and that between her government and ours, and her people and ours, feelings of amity and brotherhood may ever be maintained, and that the two nations advancing together in righteousness, in commerce, and in moral power, may lead forward the nations of the world to higher conditions of prosperity, happiness, and justice than any that have yet been attained.