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

Hartlepool Town Commissioners

To Mrs. Lincoln.

We, the town commissioners of West Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, desire to express to you our earnest sympathy in your recent great and irreparable bereavement. So foul an outrage against the life of the illustrious President is received by us with but one united feeling of abhorrence and detestation. All classes and creeds unite in one common expression of mingled grief and indignation at the foul and dastardly assassination.

We desire to convey to you our deepest condolence in this your great trial and affliction, and our earnest hope that if anything will tend to assuage your great grief, it will be the united sympathy of all classes and all countries, and your consciousness that the life so dear to you was sacrificed while engaged in the honest and noble discharge of his duty in that high sphere to which, under God’s providence, he had been elected by his fellow-countrymen.

Given under our common seal this third day of May, 1865.

The common seal of the West Hartlepool commissioners was hereunto affixed in the presence of—
[seal.]

WILLIAM B. BRUNTER,

Clerk to the Board.