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

Young Men of France

[Translation.]

Paris, May 1, 1865.

Citizen Minister: President Lincoln has fallen by the assassin’s pistol; the representative of a democracy of noble and consistent virtues has fallen in the hour of his triumph—has fallen at a happy time, after a hundred battles, as calm in victory as he was firm in defeat, and, like a new Washington, has saved the great republic.

A glorious and enviable death! Lincoln died a victim of his great idea, that of safety to his country and liberty for all. He belonged to the race of strong men; he is now numbered among the martyrs.

Let America know that all enthusiasm is not extinct in the youth of France; the blow that destroyed Lincoln still agitates their hearts.

American democracy has lost only one of its greatest citizens; in that land of liberty, if a hero falls, whether he be named Washington or Lincoln, the country is not lost; its destinies depend not on a single man; the living virtue of democracy is in itself.

We must not be concerned; we are sure, in spite of what has happened, in spite of traitor Davis, whose malign influence has been exorcised by the great and good man, that the patriotic idea of a country in peril, the idea of Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, supported by liberty, will finish the work begun by Abraham Lincoln.

Be assured, that the bloody drama of which America has just been the scene, awakens the warmest sympathies of the youth of France.

May the double crime that has just laid President Lincoln in the tomb, and Mr. Seward upon a painful bed of sickness, be soon avenged by the complete establishment of the American Union.

In the name of the young men of France.

The selected reporters.

• ETIENNE HANAU,
  No. 28, Prince Street.
• V. MARCHAI.

Mr. Bigelow,
United States Minister in Paris.