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

Forli Mechanics’ Society and the Society of Progress

[Translation.]

Forli, May 1, 1865.

The Mechanic’s Society and the Society of Progress of Forli to the American people.

Brothers of America: Our soul is grieved because our first utterance to you must consist of words of sorrow and consolation; and our grief is more poignant as the personage whose death we mourn was the idol of a respectful worship, and deserved the homage of the civilized world. The real design of his assassination is a secret still hidden in the mysteries of a deep policy, and we have not the divining power to find it out; but we must trust that the finger of Providence was concerned in it, and permitted it to be done that some great good might arise out of it.

The illustrious deceased has left you his glorious principles as an inheritance, and if you obey them you will not fail to consummate the great aim of freedom, and will extend its influence to Europe, the only country on the globe that is called civilized, while the descendants of your great discoverer are enslaved in spite of your efforts to establish liberty and independence in every corner of the earth.

Lincoln and Booth! these are two names forming different periods of history; the first promises a future; the second belongs to the horrid past; is a concentration of all villany past and present—the wickedness of a Nero and a Caligula combined, or of other monsters cast up from hell to seek the most illustrious victims.

Lincoln’s is a great name, that will ever be remembered as the name of the champion of all democratic virtues. He has unmasked monarchy by giving true liberty and independence to a weary world. His martyrdom will be a baptism more powerful than that required by the Roman church; it is a sacrament of blood—the other is of water. Lincoln and progress are synonymous; his course was but the great principles proposed by Washington.

Brothers, your President was one of those wonderful men, like our Mazzini or Garibaldi, who tower above the meanness of common humanity, and show how great a true man can become. All nations ought now to join with one assent, and inscribe this epitaph upon the stone that covers the remains of your distinguished President: “Here lies buried all the wisdom, all the virtue, all the patriotism that ever lived.”

Americans, accept, in fine, these words of sincere sorrow, of fraternal love, of congratulation to a people with whom we sympathize and to whom we wish a lasting peace.

Committee of the Mechanic’s Society:

• AMADIO CAMILLO.
• GIUSEPPE MURATORI.
• VINCENZO DANIELE.
• GIOVANNI TRASFINETTI.
• GIUSEPPE PAZZI, Secretary.

• PANCIATICHI POMPEO.
• GIUSEPPE CAPOCCINI.
• FEDERICO BONDI.
• FABIO CORTESE.
• LIVIO BARBIANI, Secretary.