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 South Shields

South Shields, May 10, 1865

Resolutions passed at a meeting held by the inhabitants of the borough of South Shields.

At a public meeting of the inhabitants of the borough of South Shields, in the county of Durham, duly convened by his worship the mayor at the request of the town council, and held on the 10th of May, 1865, William James, esq., mayor, in the chair, the following resolutions were unanimously passed, viz:

1. On the motion of James C. Stevenson, esq., seconded by the Rev. Robert E. Hoopell: That the dastardly and wicked crimes so recently perpetrated in the United States of America by the assassination of the President and the cowardly attack upon Mr. Seward, the Secretary, have been received with horror and indignation by the people of this country from one end of the kingdom to to the other, a feeling in which the inhabitants of this, the borough of South Shields, most sympathetically concur, in common with the Crown, the Parliament, and the people at large.

2. Upon the motion of James Mather, esq., seconded by Mr. Alderman Glover: That great as the loss of their President would have been to the United States at any period of the civil strife in which that country has been so unhappily engaged, it is especially how to be deplored, in the present eventful crisis of the contest, when, by his experience, moderation, character, and prudence, the pain and animosity engendered by the war might have been alleviated, and its attendant exasperation tempered and removed, to the probable advantage and satisfaction not only of the northern but the southern States.

3. Upon the motion of the Rev. Samuel B. Brasher, seconded by Mr. Alderman Moffett: That therefore these the sentiments and resolutions of the meeting, and the sympathy of the inhabitants of South Shields with the government and people of the United States on their sad deprivation, be conveyed by the mayor to Mr. Adams, the American minister in London, for transmission through him to the proper authority in America; accompanied at the same time with an offer of our heartfelt condolence to the unhappily bereaved widow of the murdered President on the irreparable loss which she has sustained, under circumstances of such sudden and peculiar atrocity.

WM. JAMES,

Mayor.