Mr. Motley to Mr. Hunter
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 139, of date April 18, by which the news is officially confirmed of the capture of Selma and of Mobile, and of the proposed surrender by Johnston, Mosby, and Imboden, of the insurgent armies.
You further inform me that “Mr. Seward, senior, is decidedly improving, and that Mr. F. W. Seward’s case has shown more favorable symptoms,”
For this most consoling intelligence I am sincerely grateful, and I beg through you to offer to our eminent statesman and his excellent son my congratulations and my fervent hopes for their complete recovery.
You instruct me in the same despatch to notify all United States consuls within the Austrian dominions that all the usual forms of national mourning for the President are to be observed, and I beg to say that this instruction has already been complied with.
I have the honor to remain, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William Hunter, Acting Secretary of State.