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

Inhabitants of Woodstock

Woodstock, April 20, 1865.

May it please your Excellency: In accordance with a resolution adopted at a public meeting held yesterday in this town for the purpose of expressing horror at the committal of a deed which makes every civilized mind shudder, and sympathy for the bereaved family and the people in the neighboring republic in the lamentable and untimely death of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by the hand of a cruel and relentless assassin, I beg, respectfully, to transmit a copy of the proceedings of said meeting, with the respectful request that your excellency may be pleased to transmit the resolutions to the proper authorities of the United States of America.

Yours, &c.,

T. McWHENNIE,

Mayor.

His Excellency the Rt. Hon. Charles Stanley Monck,
Baron Monck of Ballytrammore, in the county of Wexford,
Governor General of the Province of Canada:

Moved by the Rev. Wm. J. McMullen, seconded by the Rev. U. S. Griffen, and

Resolved, That we, the citizens of Woodstock, having heard of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby record our sincere grief and inexpressible horror at the unnatural tragedy by which our neighbors of the American republic have been deprived of a President who has proved himself so well qualified to fill in such a national crisis the distinguished position to which his fellow-countrymen had a second time called him. We deplore his untimely end by a hand so worthless, not only as a great public calamity, falling at a time so critical on a friendly neighboring nation, but also as a heavy blow inflicted on the cause of humauity itself, with which the name of Abraham Lincoln must ever be associated.

Moved by the Rev. D. McDermot, seconded by the Rev. J. Lacy, and

Resolved, That the occurrences of Friday last, in the capital of the neighboring republic, by which the Chief Magistrate of the American people met his death at the hands of an assassin, prostrating in the gloom of bitterest despair an exalted family and bowing a nation in tears of deepest grief, evokes our heartfelt commisseration as well for the sorrowing family as the afflicted people. It is, therefore,

Resolved, That the ministers of the various churches in Woodstock be requested to utilize the occasion on Sabbath next by a service special and pertinent to the terrible calamity, and indicative of the abhorrence felt by this community at the commission of an act so revolting to all Christian men, and so subversive of that obedience to constituted authority which is the keystone of individual liberty.