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

Grand Master Masons of Scotland

His Excellency Charles Francis Adams,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States of America at the Court of Great Britain and Ireland:

Sir: We, John Whyte Melville, esquire, of Bennochy and Strathkinness, most worshipful Grand Master Mason, the right worshipful the office-bearer, and the worshipful the members of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland, beg leave to assure your excellency that the very sudden and atrocious crime which has plunged the American nation into grief and mourning has produced a feeling of the utmost horror and indignation, not only in the masonic craft of Scotland, and the great Mystic family of the world, but also, we doubt not, throughout the enlightened portion of the civilized globe.

We seize the earliest opportunity afforded to us of expressing these our sentiments and the sorrow we so deeply feel at the loss sustained by the American people in the cowardly assassination of their late President Lincoln.

While we offer our fraternal sympathies with the distress occasioned to our brethren of the United States and the “people in general by this melancholy event, we would request your excellency to convey to Mrs. Lincoln and her family our sincere and heartfelt condolences on their afflicting bereavement, assuring that lady how deeply she has become, in her sudden misfortune, the object of our earnest and warmest sympathy.

Trusting it may graciously please the Great Architect of the Universe to take her and her family into His sure keeping, and bestow upon them every consolation, and strengthen them to bear up against their present affliction, is the united prayer of the Freemasons of Scotland.

Given at Freemansons’ Hall, in the city of Edinburgh, in full Grand Lodge assembled, the eighth day of May, in the year of our Lord 1865, and of light 5865.

[seal.]

• J. WHYTE MELVILLE,
  Grand Master Mason of Scotland.
• WM. H. LAWRIE,
  Grand Secretary Grand Lodge of Scotland.