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

Union and Emancipation Society of Manchester

51 Piccadilly, Manchester, April 27, 1865.

Address of the Union and Emancipation Society of Manchester to Mrs. Lincoln.

Madam: It is not for us to invade the privacy of domestic sorrow, nor fitting that we should add to the sharpness of your grief by characterizing as it deserves the deed which has deprived you of a husband, and your country of its Chief Magistrate. We desire, however, to express our deep sympathy with you in this mournful affliction, and our earnest hope that you may be supported through the trial by the consciousness that your husband, though called to the helm in the midst of tempest and storm, never failed to respond to the call of duty, and that throughout a period of unparalleled difficulty he has guided the affairs of the nation in a manner which will ever connect his name with all that is noble, magnanimous, and great in your country’s history. His name will be associated with the cause of human freedom throughout all time, and generations yet unborn will learn to lisp his name as synonymous with liberty itself, and to connect the atrocious deed by which his career was closed with the expiring throes of that foul system of slavery against which his life was a standing protest, and the fate of which he had sealed.

For and on behalf of the Union and Emancipation Society of Manchester:

• THOMAS BAYLEY POTTER,
  President.
• FRANCIS TAYLOR,
  For self and other Vice-Presidents.
• SAMUEL WATTS, Treasurer.
• JOHN H. EASTCOURT,
  Chairman of Executive.
• JOHN C. EDWARD,
• EDWARD OWEN GREENING,
  Honorary Secretaries.

Mrs. Lincoln.

At a public meeting held at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, April 28, 1865, it was moved by the Rev. G. W. Conder, seconded by Jacob Bright, esq,, and passed unanimously—

That the address of sympathy and condolence with Mrs. Lincoln, now read, be adopted, and that the chairman be authorized to sign it on behalf of this meeting.

FRANCIS TAYLOR,

Chairman.