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

[Extract from the West Surrey Times, Saturday, April 29, 1865.]

West Surrey, April 29, 1865

Abraham Lincoln, the kind and good President of the United States, has been assassinated, and amongst ail the news of startling import which reaches us this week—the death of the amiable Czarowitz of Russia, the uncertain state of the health of the king of the Belgians, the assassination of the assistant secretary of the Russian legation at Paris, the capitulation of his army by General Lee, and the confession of the murder of her little brother, five years ago, by Constance Kent—that is the one subject which engrosses public attention and occupies the minds of all thinking men. A full account, so far as it has yet reached us, of the assassinatin of the President will be found in another column. Let us briefly recapitulate a few of (he events which have been hurrying forward with such terrific rapidity in the United States within the last few weeks, and drop a tear to the memory of a man who, in circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, did as much for his country as any of his predecessors in the high office which he held—Washington or Adams, Jefferson or Madison, Monroe or Quincy Adams, Jackson or Van Buren, Harrison or Tyler, Polk or Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, or Buchanan; and these names constitute the whole of the men who have presided over the United States of North America since their government was fairly established on its present basis in 1789.

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Lincoln was, withal, so good a man; his country looked to him so earnestly in her hour of need; his patriotism was so great; his honesty so sterling; his clemency so marked; his piety so pure; his firmness so inexhaustible, that none but miscreants such as these could have entertained for a moment the atrocious idea of a crime like this. In the magnificent language of Macbeth, when soliloquizing upon the proposed murder of the gentle Duncan—

“He hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity, like a naked, new-born babe,

Striding the blast, on Heaven’s cherubim horsed,

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind.”