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

Hon. Miles Gerald Keon to C. M. Allen, Esq., U. S. C.

Bermuda, Hamilton, April 28, 1865.

Dear Sir: Although you will need no assurance of this kind for your own information, I can keep silence no longer, and am constrained both by my principles and by my feelings, (and certainly not prohibited by the commission which I hold from her Majesty, as one of her principal servants in this community,) to express to you, however feebly and inadequately, the grief and indignation with which the horrible crime of the 14th instant has filled me. I trust we shall have a public meeting, at which we can attest solemnly before the world the sentiments which this community entertains respecting so foul and detestable a deed.

I speak only the feelings everywhere paramount, nay the natural language of human society itself, and beyond a question in that fragment of it in which I am living, when I beg you to believe that the deepest reprobation of every man who dares to look his fellow-creatures in the face awaits the wretch who has deprived a great nation of its Chief Magistrate, just when he had shown that he was as merciful in victory as he had been stern in conflict, and at a moment of cruel public difficulty, by one of the most doltish and objectless, as well as wicked and truculent murders, that history has ever had to record.

I have been urging all my friends to hold a meeting, and say jointly before the world what they are saying severally in their homes. Men of all parties, of all countries, can unite in this. During a struggle which could not be settled save by Americans, and on American principles, some of us felt commiseration and sympathy for the gallant few fighting so splendidly on the defensive; others for the cause of obvious political order and central authority; but all remained officially neutral. When, however, Providence has decided the conflict, and assassination is introduced among the factors of political science, I trust no British gentleman and no honest man will ever show neutrality.

I have the honor to be, dear sir, your most obedient servant,

MILES GERALD KEON.

Charles M. Allen, Esq.,
Consul of the U. S. of America in Bermuda.