Count Manderström to Baron de Wetterstedt
[Translation.]
Monsieur le Baron: We are astounded by the horrible news that has just reached us from Washington. A telegram from Hamburg yesterday gave us the intelligence of the attacks on the President and Mr. Seward. I wrote immediately to Mr. Campbell, asking him if the report was confirmed, hoping it might be untrue or exaggerated. A telegram from London that night gave the particulars, with the names of the assassins, and reported the death of Mr. Seward, junior. Early this morning Mr. Campbell showed me a dispatch from Mr. Adams, in London, in which the report is officially confirmed. Thereupon I sent the enclosed note to Mr. Campbell, expressing the sentiments of the King and his subjects in regard to the affair.
[Page 547]The odious crime, unheard of till now in the annals of the United States, inspires general horror and evokes universal condemnation, hut it is the great and irreparable loss to the country that causes the greatest regret.
Mr. Lincoln’s firm and resolute character, his good common sense, and his associations, acquired general esteem for him in Europe, and I fear it will be hard to find his equal at the time of a crisis like that which prevailed at the moment of his death. And it is still more distressing to the United States to lose at the same time the eminent statesman at the head of its foreign affairs, and whose demise I am sure will be most earnestly felt. We wait impatiently to hear from you, though we cannot hope for an authentic report under a week.
We hear that the murderer Booth has been arrested, but the report is hardly correct as it comes on the same day with the other rumors.
No words can express the horror felt here at the announcement of the execrable crime.
Accept my regards, &c., &c., &c.,