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. Van Limburg to Mr. Hunter .

[Translation.]

Detroit, May 25, 1865.

Sir: The minister of the King for foreign affairs has just given in charge to me, to communicate to you, a resolution passed on the 2d instant by the Second Chamber of the States General, tending to invite the royal government to make known to the government of the United States the sorrow and indignation the Chamber has felt on learning the perfidious and base outrage of which President Abraham Lincoln has been the victim.

On the occasion of this resolution, its mover, Mr. de Zuylen de Nywelt, remarked that in the Netherlands it was caused, more perhaps than any like resolution could be elsewhere, not alone by the ties of friendship and of alliance which for a long period have existed between the two countries, but moreover by the circumstance that a great many old families of Holland have established themselves in the United States, and that our country at a period already remote contributed much to the sowing of the seed from which the great American nation has sprung forth at a later day.

The minister of foreign affairs, fully adopting this principle, expresses anew the general indignation at the horrible crimes by which the President of the United States was snatched away from his great task at the moment when achieving the object of his efforts, and by which the lives of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of State were put in peril.

It was in the nature of things, said Mr. Cremers, that the assassination of a man whose character bore so great a resemblance to that of the noble founder of our liberties should make a profound impression. Here, where the name of Balthazar Gerard (the assassin of William of Orange) is, even now, never pronounced without horror, a crime resembling his must excite extraordinary sympathy and indignation.

I take pride, sir, in being again instructed to express to you similar sentiments; they cannot but convince you, as well as the President and people of the United States, of the lively and sincere friendship which attaches the Netherlands to the United States of America.

Please accept, sir, the fresh assurance of my very high consideration.

ROEST VAN LIMBURG.

Hon. William Hunter,
Acting Secretary of State, &c., &c., &c.