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

Mr. Wood to Mr. Seward .

[Extract.]

Legation of the United States,
Copenhagen , May 1, 1865.

No. 194.]

Sir: There was but one feeling of horror here on learning the assassination of President Lincoln and the attempt on your life. As soon as it was authoritatively known, the diplomatic corps and the ministers of state called to express their sympathy, and the King, in a note from Mr. Blumhe, the foreign minister, (who is still confined to his house from illness,) feelingly expressed his; and this on the day of the funeral services for the deceased Czarowitch, his intended son-in-law, and at which all the foreign ministers assisted. I congratulate you on your narrow escape. I hope I can on your son’s, but the news is contradictory, and I fear the worst.

This terrible tragedy at Washington is a natural sequence of this rebellion, and in keeping with the murder of Union prisoners by starvation. It is a consequence of slavery. Well if the nation now rouse to the conviction (as I have long since have, as you well know) that there is a class at the south, (of whom Booth was one,) the plotters of this rebellion, and their brigands, who must, as a political necessity, be expatriated, or in some way annihilated from our soil, if the freedman and the northern emigrant are to dwell in peace and safety at the south. The future of the south demands this. * * *

I remain, very truly, your obedient servant,

BRADFORD R. WOOD,

Minister Resident, &c.

Hon. William H. Seward.
Secretary of State.