Temperance Society
Resolutions passed at a meeting held by the Temperance Society of Ashton-under Lyne.
The president, vice-president, officers, and members of the Ashton-under-Lyne Temperance Society, in meeting assembled, have heard with profound grief of the brutal and cowardly assassination of Mr. Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States of America, and hereby record their feelings of horror and detestation at the malignity and treachery of the act which has deprived that great country of its Chief Magistrate, and express their heartfelt sympathy with the people of that country in their time of all-absorbing sorrow.
This meeting beg to offer their tribute of reverence for the memory of a great ruler, whose ripened experience and humanity pre-eminently fitted to reconcile the animosities of a divide people and heal the wounds of a distracted nation. This meeting feel all the more earnest in their attachment to Mr. Abraham Lincoln because he had for more than fifty years adopted and carried out those great principles of temperance and total abstinence (from all intoxicating drinks) for which we are contending. That, whether he enjoyed the privacy of home, or sustained the dignities of a palace; that, whether he performed the duties of a citizen, or the more difficult duties of governing a great nation, he had the wisdom to see, and the moral courage to adopt, the great principles of temperance, truth, and progress.
This meeting also respectfully offer to Mrs. Lincoln and family their genuine affection and sympathy for their irreparable loss, and trust they may find sweet consolation in witnessing the grand results of the wise, unselfish, and patriotic career of their martyred husband and father.
Signed on behalf of the committee and society by
- MARTIN PARKINSON, President.
- EDWIN WILLIAMSON, Vice-President.
His Excellency Andrew Johnson,
President of the United States of America, and through
him to Mrs. Lincoln.