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At the monthly meeting of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society, held on Thursday, May 4, 1865, the following minute was adopted and recorded:
It is with sentiments of profound grief and indignation that we have received the tidings of the death, by the hand of an assassin, of Abraham Lincoln, the noble President of the United States.
We desire to record an expression of our sympathy with Mrs. Lincoln and the American people in the terrible calamity they have sustained. We feel as if a great personal loss had befallen ourselves, for we have long believed that the interests of the slave were safe in the hands of President Lincoln, and had fondly hoped that the cause we have so long had at heart was about to be brought to a triumphant issue by him who has thus suddenly been laid low.
We the more deeply deplore this mysterious event from its occurring at a crisis of the nation’s history, when the wise, magnanimous, and merciful policy of President Lincoln was so peculiarly needed to readjust the sorely troubled elements of the republic, and to effect a reconciliation between the north and the south, with freedom for its basis.
We can only Low before this awful dispensation, knowing that the Most High still ruleth in the kingdoms of men, and that He who raised up Abraham Lincoln can raise up other instruments for his work.
We earnestly desire that the just and generous policy initiated by the late President may be pursued by his successor, and that the great republic may be again united in the bonds of peace, the plague spot of slavery (the true secret of its past weakness) forever wiped from its escutcheon.
Then, in connexion with this glorious consummation, the name of Abraham Lincoln will be held in grateful and loving remembrance by generations yet unborn.
ELIZABETH PEASE NICHOL,
President.
AGNES LILLIE,
ELIZA WIGHAM,
Secretaries.