Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1878

No. 483.
Mr. Evarts to Mr. Mantilla.

Department of State,
Washington, June 27, 1878.

Sir: I have had the honor to receive through Count Brunetti, first secretary of your legation, who called in person to deliver it, your note of the 26th instant, conveying to me, for the information of the President and Government of the United States, the melancholy tidings of the death of Her Majesty the Queen Doña Maria de las Mercedes de Orleans y Borbon, on the 26th, of a gastro-nervous fever.

The sad bereavement which has thus fallen upon His Majesty the King, Don Alfonso XII, and upon the whole Spanish people, could not but awaken on the part of the President and people of the United States feelings of the deepest regret and sympathy, the expression of which was at once manifested upon the receipt of a telegram from Minister Lowell, announcing the afflictive event, by the dispatch of a telegraphic instruction at an early hour to-day to the representative of the United States at Madrid, directing him to express, through the minister of state, the President’s profound sympathy with the King and people of Spain in their deep affliction.

Accept, &c.,

WM. M. EVARTS.