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

Montanelli Democratic Society

[Translation.]

Pisa, May 12, 1865.

The Montanelli Association for Mutual Education and Assistance, G. Garibaldi, honorary president, to Mr. Andrew J. Stevens, United States consul in Leghorn.

Sir: Have the kindness to send the enclosed letter to your President. It was unanimously approved by the Montanelli Society of Pisa, on the 10th instant, at 9 p.m.

ALFONSO GIARRIZZO BUETTO.

[Translation.]

To the President of the United States of America:

Excellent Sir: The thunderbolt’s revenge prepares the poetic rainbow that glimmers in a cloudless sky; so a baptism of blood prepares a regeneration which is a fatal symptom in the poetry of the age, but will beam forth on the morrow in glorious magnificence and sovereign splendor.

Abraham Lincoln fell a victim to a sacrilegious assassin, but his name is fixed among the stars as the saviour of a nation. We lament his death, but a century of hope and not of mourning is inscribed upon the tablet of his tomb by the unerring hand of fate. Lincoln left a testament of indignation and not of tears; let it be received as an encouragement to reform. “My grave demonstrates the justice of war,” he says; “lay flowers upon it without a thought of revenge, and warm your hearts to a resolution of reform. Then will a pleasant day dawn for all—a day of fraternity and peace.”

Your martyr while living was the apostle soldier; and now dead, he is the guardian angel of your liberties; he had no other ambition. You cannot bring, him back, but you can imitate his heroic patriotism and sound the fame of one who gave the greatest blessing to the whites as well as the blacks. We sing our feeble elegy to the memory of a man who fulfilled his holy mission. Receive it and make jt known to the American people, and tell them we join in their general sorrow.

The above address was unanimously adopted by the council, and a resolution was passed to send it to the President of the United States of America, through the consul in Leghorn. It was also resolved to open a subscription to erect a monument in Pisa to the memory of the great man.

A true extract from the original:

ALFONSO GIARRIZZO BUETTO,

President.

F. Gagliardi Sforza, Secretary.

Unity, liberty, fraternity! The Montanelli democratic society in Pisa.