ACTION OF CONGRESS.

[From Appendix to Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln.]

President Johnson, in his annual message to Congress at the commencement of the session of 1865-66, thus announced the death of his predecessor: 

To express gratitude to God in the name of the people for the preservation of the United States is my first duty in addressing you.  Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason.  The grief of the nation is still fresh.  It finds some solace in the consideration that he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed term of the Chief Magistracy to which he had been elected; that he brought the civil war substantially to a close; that his loss was deplored in all parts of the Union, and that foreign nations have rendered justice to his memory.

Hon. E.B.  Washburne, of Illinois, immediately after the President’s message had been read in the House of Representatives, offered the following joint resolution, which was unanimously adopted: 

Resolved, That a committee of one member from each State represented in this House be appointed on the part of this House, to join such committee as may be appointed on the part of the Senate, to consider and report by what token of respect and affection it may be proper for the Congress of the United States to express the deep sensibility of the nation to the event of the decease of their late President, Abraham Lincoln, and that so much of the message of the President as refers to that melancholy event be referred to said committee.

On motion of Hon. Solomon Foot, the Senate unanimously concurred in the passage of the resolution, and the following joint committee was appointed, thirteen on the part of the Senate and one for every State represented (twenty-four) on the part of the House of Representatives: 

Senate:  Hon. Solomon Foot, Vermont; Hon. Richard Yates, Illinois; Hon.
Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; Hon. William Pitt Fessenden, Maine; Hon. Henry
Wilson, Massachusetts; Hon. James R. Doolittle, Wisconsin; Hon. James H.
Lane, Kansas; Hon. Ira Harris, New York; Hon. James W. Nesmith, Oregon;
Hon. Henry S. Lane, Indiana; Hon. Waitman T. Willey, West Virginia; Hon.
Charles R. Buckalew, Pennsylvania; Hon. John B. Henderson, Missouri.

House of Representatives:  Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, Illinois; Hon. James
G. Blaine, Maine; Hon. James W. Patterson, New Hampshire; Hon. Justin S.
Morrill, Vermont; Hon. Nathaniel P. Banks, Massachusetts; Hon. Thomas A.
Jenckes, Rhode Island; Hon. Henry C. Deming, Connecticut; Hon. John A.
Griswold, New York; Hon. Edwin R.V.  Wright, New Jersey; Hon. Thaddeus
Stevens, Pennsylvania; Hon. John A. Nicholson, Delaware; Hon. Francis
Thomas, Maryland; Hon. Robert C. Schenck, Ohio; Hon.