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

Swiss Society of Locle

[Translation.]

Locle, May 2, 1865.

To his Excellency Andrew Johnson,
Vice-President of the United States in Washington:

On hearing of the conclusion of the American war, the undersigned, inhabitants of Locle, a mountain village of Neufchatel, in Switzerland, were preparing to express their joy for the signal triumph of the cause of liberty, in an address to their brothers of America, and especially to President Lincoln, the true democratic statesman, and to manifest their fall and perfect sympathy for the principles of republican rule and free labor that now prevail throughout the entire Union; but at that moment the terrible news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, reached them. Permit them now to express their saddest regrets and most profound sorrow for that horrid crime, and be assured they detest from the bottom of their hearts that kind of combat now used by southern partisans.

Although the new accident may tend to disturb the hope of a speedy pacification, the undersigned have a perfect conviction that the cause of the North and the democratic republic will triumph more completely and gloriously.

In the name of the Swiss society of Locle, composed of one hundred and five members, assembled this second day of May, 1865:

• VANKÜNEL, President.
• J. GAVEREL-HUGUENIN, Secretary.