Trustees of Columbia College, New York City, New York
Resolutions passed at a meeting held by the trustees of Columbia College, New York.
At a meeting of the trustees of Columbia College, in the city of New York on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, the following resolutions were passed.
Whereas, in the midst of universal exultation and gladness at the brilliant successes of the national arms, and at the prospect of the speedy extinction of the existing great rebellion, and of the restoration of Union and peace to our distracted country the nation has been suddenly shocked, and the hearts of the people have been wrung with anguish, by the foul assassination of our venerated and beloved Chief Magistrate, and by a simultaneous attempt upon the life of the honored Secretary of State of the United States: Therefore be it
Resolved, By the board of trustees of Columbia College, that by the death of Abraham Lincoln the American nation has lost a man whose simplicity and native energy of character, honesty and tenacity of purpose, pure and disinterested patriotism, and a rare combination of justice and humanity, made him honored, beloved and revered, and whose career as a Magistrate of a free people, will render him illustrious, wherever free institutions and universal emancipation shall exist through all ages.
Resolved, That the act by which Abraham Lincoln has been stricken down in the midst of his usefulness, is one which, for fiendish atrocity, is without a parallel in the annals of history, and which stamps its author, its instigators, and all who approve the crime or shelter the criminal, as deserving the detestation and abhorrence of all mankind to the latest generations.
[Page 676]Resolved, That a like abhorrence and execration must pursue the wretch who aimed the assassin’s dagger at the heart of William H. Seward, as he lay helpless upon a bed of suffering, and who only desisted from his dastardly attack when he supposed that his diabolical purpose had been accomplished.
Resolved, That this board recognize in these acts of stupendous and unprecedented malignity only the legitimate manifestations of that spirit of hostility to all law, human or divine, which originally prompted and has since continued to sustain the nefarious attempt upon the life of the nation which, for four years, has made our once happy land a scene of such horrors as the world has never before witnessed.
Resolved, That a cause identified in its inception, by the avowals of its own supporters, with the perpetuation of the crudest form of human bondage; which has employed in its support practises so shocking to humanity and so abhorrent to every precept of religion as to partake rather of the ferocity of wild beasts and savages than of the spirit of an enlightened Christian civilization; practises such as the deliberate starvation of prisoners of war, the brutal massacre of prostrate garrisons, the sacrilegious desecration of the remains of the dead, the persecution, torture and murder of unhappy recusants, and the inhuman hunting down, with bloodhounds, of miserable refugees; and which finally sends into the heart of our populous towns, and into our national capital, the midnight incendiary with his torch and the dastardly assassin with his knife, is one which cannot much longer continue to receive the countenance or encouragement of any people which calls itself Christian, but must compel all good men and all good governments everywhere to make common cause against its maintainers and abettors as common scourges of mankind and enemies of the human race.
Resolved, That this board tenders its most respectful sympathy and condolence to the bereaved family of the lamented Chief Magistrate, assuring them that the terrible calamity which has deprived them of their natural protector and support has only the more endeared them to the hearts of the American people, and has entitled them to receive, and made it sure that they shall receive, every tender care and every generous provision in the power of a great and magnanimous nation to afford to soften to them the bitterness of their affliction.
Resolved, That this body extend also a sympathy equally sincere to the suffering Secretary of State, preserved, as by a miracle, from death at the assassin’s hand, and to his family, outraged by this demoniac violence, and soon possibly to be shrouded in mourning for the loss of one of its cherished members fallen a victim to his filial devotion, and earnestly trusts and prays that God in his mercy may soon restore to renewed strength and usefulness this tried and faithful public servant, that he may continue long in the future, as he has done in the past, by his sagacity and wisdom, to guide our ship of state safely among the perils to which, in the present trying time, the complications of diplomacy are continually exposing it.
Resolved, That the fiendish ferocity which has marked the conduct of the people of the insurgent States throughout the progress of this nefarious attempt to subvert the foundations of the government and to extinguish popular liberty upon the American continent is, in the opinion of this board, but the natural and necessary fruit of that half-barbarous social system which boasts as its distinguishing feature and chief corner-stone the hopeless enslavement of a weak and helpless race of human beings; and that, if upon this subject any difference of opinion among loyal men has heretofore existed, this crowning act of deliberate, premeditated, malignant atrocity must, from this hour henceforth, unite all sensible men, all good citizens, all honest patriots, and all sincere Christians, in the fixed and unalterable determination to wash out and exterminate from the land every trace of an institution which, after so long disgracing our civilization and brutalizing large communities of our people, has at length generated crimes at [Page 677] which the whole world must stand amazed, and whose frightful enormity will make them forever fearfully and unapproachably pre-eminent in the annals of human wickedness.
- HAMILTON FISH,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees. - J. WILLIAM BETTS, Clerk.