“There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings that generally speaking, are supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to form the happy privilege of private life; and this is one.  Under all circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under all circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished.  But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes as it were the subject out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.

“Sir, whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally on the policy of the late President of the United States, on this, I think, all must agree, that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man, he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength.  Nor is it possible for the people of England, at such a moment, to forget that he sprang from the same fatherland, and spoke the same mother tongue.

“When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity; for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds.  But it is one of our duties to reassure the country under unreasoning panic or despondency.  Assassination has never changed the history of the world....

“In expressing our unaffected and profound sympathy with the citizens of the United States at the untimely end of their elected Chief, let us not, therefore, sanction any feeling of depression, but rather let us express a fervent hope that from out the awful trials of the last four years, of which not the least is this violent demise, the various populations of North America may issue elevated and chastened; rich in that accumulated wisdom, and strong in that disciplined energy which a young nation can only acquire in a protracted and perilous struggle.  Then they will be enabled not merely to renew their career of power and prosperity, but they will renew it to contribute to the general happiness of mankind.  It is with these feelings, Sir, that I second the Address to the Crown[1304].”

Lincoln’s assassination served to bring out not only British popular sympathy, but also the certitude that the war was over and the North victorious.  But officially the Government had not yet recognized this.  Even as early as January, 1865, Seward had returned to the old proposal that the nations of Europe should withdraw their recognition of Southern belligerent rights[1305], and in March he had asked Stoeckl, the Russian Minister, whether Russia would not lead in the suggestion of this measure to England and France[1306].  Meanwhile Sherman’s army was rapidly advancing northward and reports were arriving