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

Governor Birch to Mr. Perkins .

Government House,
St. Croix , June 14, 1865.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 3d instant, in which you has informed me of the assassination of the President of the United States.

President Lincoln’s sudden death has everywhere in the civilized world called forth a profound sympathy, and the nefarious act, a deed in foul atrocity scarcely ever equalled, to which he fell a victim, has awakened a vivid horror and indignation.

I am aware that these sentiments have been fully participated in in Denmark; and here in his Majesty’s West India colonies, connected as they are with the United States by many and near interests, the tidings of the abhorrent crime must necessarily seize all minds.

I beg, sir, to express to you the sincere sorrow I have felt at the great calamity that has befallen the American nation.

About the same time we had received the sad intelligence of the murder of President Lincoln, we also received the account of those achievements that finally terminated that disunion which, for more than four years, has split the United States; and it has given me great joy, through every new information which has reached us from America, to find expressed an unshaken faith in the future, and a full confidence in the new President, Mr. Johnson. I can, therefore, to the expression of my deep concern at President Lincoln’s tragic fate, fully add the expression of my best and heartfelt wishes for the United States and President Johnson’s prosperity and welfare, which I beg you in behalf of your government and your country to accept.

It gives me much pleasure to know that the Hon. William H. Seward, the Secretary of State, and his son, Mr. F. W. Seward, the Assistant Secretary, will soon have completely recovered from the wounds inflicted upon them by a murderous hand, extended from the same villainous plot that destroyed the President’s life.

I have the honor to be, sir, with the highest consideration,

W. BIRCH.

E. H. Perkins, Esq.,
Consul of the United States of America.