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

[From The Monde, April 27, 1865.]

April 27, 1865

We have no desire to pronounce a precipitate judgment; what is to be wished for the sake of honor and humanity is, that this odious outrage may have been the work of some isolated fanatic. It would be too sad a spectacle to see a lost cause replying by assassination to the magnanimity of its conquerors.

It may be affirmed, moreover, that this odious deed is also a useless crime. Mr. Lincoln dies surrounded with the purest glory that ever crowned a statesman; but his work will survive him, and the greatest victory of liberty will not have been won in vain. The mission designed by Providence for the United States does not depend upon the life of one man, and that liberty which created Mr. Lincoln, and which he has served so well, will infallibly raise up worthy successors to him.

EUSTASE IVAMBERT.