Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland to Charles Francis Adams

Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland to Charles Francis Adams

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

Presidents--Assassination

Condolence notes

Freemasonry

Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland, Edinburgh

Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763-2002, Entry 177: Foreign Messages on the Death of Abraham Lincoln, 1865, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

1865-05-08

pdf

eng

RG59E177-137

55.9500, -3.2000

Edinburgh

Scotland

United Kingdom

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Late President of the United States of America, and the Attempted Assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of State (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866), 215.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Late President of the United States of America, and the Attempted Assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of State (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), 282-83.

His Excellency Charles Francis Adams,
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States of America at the Court of Great Britain and Ireland:

Sir: We, John Whyte Melville, esquire, of Bennochy and Strathkinness, most worshipful Grand Master Mason, the right worshipful the office-bearer, and the worshipful the members of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland, beg leave to assure your excellency that the very sudden and atrocious crime which has plunged the American nation into grief and mourning has produced a feeling of the utmost horror and indignation, not only in the masonic craft of Scotland, and the great Mystic family of the world, but also, we doubt not, throughout the enlightened portion of the civilized globe.

We seize the earliest opportunity afforded to us of expressing these our sentiments and the sorrow we so deeply feel at the loss sustained by the American people in the cowardly assassination of their late President Lincoln.

While we offer our fraternal sympathies with the distress occasioned to our brethren of the United States and the “people in general by this melancholy event, we would request your excellency to convey to Mrs. Lincoln and her family our sincere and heartfelt condolences on their afflicting bereavement, assuring that lady how deeply she has become, in her sudden misfortune, the object of our earnest and warmest sympathy.

Trusting it may graciously please the Great Architect of the Universe to take her and her family into His sure keeping, and bestow upon them every consolation, and strengthen them to bear up against their present affliction, is the united prayer of the Freemasons of Scotland.

Given at Freemansons’ Hall, in the city of Edinburgh, in full Grand Lodge assembled, the eighth day of May, in the year of our Lord 1865, and of light 5865.

[seal.]

J. WHYTE MELVILLE,
 Grand Master Mason of Scotland.

WM. H. LAWRIE,
 Grand Secretary Grand Lodge of Scotland.

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