Condolences from Italy

The excerpts below are taken from The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Late President of the United States of America, and the Attempted Assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and Frederick W. Seward, Assistant Secretary, on the Evening of the 14th of April, 1865. Expressions of Condolences and Sympathy Inspired by These Events, published by the U.S. State Department in 1867—two years after Lincoln was assassinated. These excerpts are all found within the section containing condolences from Italy on pages 567-618.

From: Democratic Association of Florence to the free people of the United States of America. (Translation)
May 8, 1865

[...]

The furies of despotism and of servitude, deceived in their infamous hopes, incapable of sustaining any longer their combat against liberty, before falling into the abyss which threatened them, strengthened the arm of a murderer, and as they opened the fratricidal war with the gibbet of the martyr of the cause of abolition, John Brown, so they ended it, worthy of themselves, in the most ferocious and stupid of all crimes, the murder of a great citizen.

Now liberty, in stigmatizing the cause of her enemies, will have only to show to the world this gibbet and this murderer, and the people looking upon them cannot do otherwise than recollect that despots have had a share in this; that in some courts of Europe Mason, Slidell, and the ferocious pirates of the Alabama found protection, encouragement, and applause, and finally the wicked instigator of the civil war, Jefferson Davis, obtained consolation, praises, and hope even in the paternal benediction of the Pope.

[...] pp. 583-84

From: Fraternity of the artisans of Italy to the people of the United States. (Translation)
April 27, 1865

... the fraternal love which unites to you, free citizens, every heart which beats for and desires the complete triumph of the rights of humanity. But, alas! The hand of an infamous assassin (the agent, doubtless, of a mysterious and iniquitous plot prepared against the national liberty) has taken away the precious life of your Chief Magistrate ...
pp. 584-85

From: American meeting in Florence on account of the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Florence, Italy, May 2, 1865

[...]

That while we see in the assassination of President Lincoln an act of barbarity unparallelled in the annals of crime, yet we are constrained to regard and denounce it as naturally and logically related to the grand conspiracy which has aimed at the overthrow of our republican institutions.

[...] pp. 586-87

From: The Mechanics' Society and the Society of Progress of Forli to the American people. (Translation)
Forli, May 1, 1865

... The real design of his assassination is a secret still hidden in the mysteries of a deep policy, and we have not the divining power to find it out; ...

Lincoln's is a great name, that will ever be remembered as the name of the champion of all democratic virtues. He has unmasked monarchy by giving true liberty and independence to a weary world. His martyrdom will be a baptism more powerful than that required by the Roman church; it is sacrament of blood—the other is of water. Lincoln and progress are synonymous; ...
pp.587-88

From: The Union of Operatives, Genoa, May 4, 1865 (Translation)

[...]

We feel certain that your great republic, which in a few years has displayed so many miracles of valor, constancy and sacrifice, as to fill the world with surprise, purified from the foul stain of slavery, regenerated in blood, and blessed by all humanity, will be more glorious and powerful than before the war, furnish a model for European nations, and lift up the beacon of hope for oppressed people.

Faithful to the Monroe doctrine, you will not, we are sure, tolerate the planting of a foreign monarchy on the borders of your own land, which is the sacred asylum of liberty.

We beg you to convey to your government and fellow-citizens these sentiments of admiration and affection which we cherish for your country and her cause.

Note: The Union of Operatives has unanimously voted this address, and further resolved to drape its flag in mourning for one year.
pp. 589-90

From: Workingmen's Benevolent Society of Naples
Naples, May 4, 1865 (Translation)

[...]

... We are glad that so much glory falls to the lot of a people who jealously guarded the light-house of liberty, a divinity banished from the Old World to find refuge in the New, whose once vast solicitudes are now filled with inhabitants. Our eyes have long been turned to that beacon, and are bent on it now hoping to see that torrent of light shed its blessings upon this old and corrupt hemisphere.

[...] pp. 596-97

From: The studious youths of Naples. (Translation)

Americans of the Union: Despotism, priestly and political, diplomatic hypocrisy, and a tradition of blood have fettered the Italian emancipation with so many snares that we, overwhelmed with grief and disgusted with this depraved Old World, turn with confiding looks to the New one, and our souls rejoice at the grand spectacle you show us. Oh, Americans! you who have conquered your own independence by your virtue only—in the sacredness of the laws constitutes only one a free family, without kings or myrmidons, without priests or deceitful idols.
p. 597-98

From: Italian Electoral Association—General Garibaldi, Honorary President.
Naples, May 2, 1865 (Translation)

... This event has moved the world more than it has ever done before, or will ever do at the death of a pope or reigning emperor, by will of God, because the man whose loss we deplore was not raised in virtue of chimerical rights, but by the free vote of the people.

[...] p. 599

From: Union of Operatives at San Pier d'Arena Genoa, May 7, 1865 (Translation)

[...]

Happy, O American people, are you who secured your liberties with your own blood, and have had the courage to maintain them at the same great sacrifice. Firm as a rock in the sea, you may defy those of your enemies who still govern in the name of divine right in every corner of the world, and especially in our Europe, where they are stronger than elsewhere, and fear that the blessing of liberty enjoyed in your country may stimulate the people to imitate your examples and overturn those rotten edifices which are called thrones.

To us, who enjoy a shadow of liberty, there remains no other path to the blessings which you possess than to take you for guide, and move after you towards a true democracy.

[...] pp. 606-7

From: Italian Union Committee of Sienna (Translation)
May 18, 1865

[...]

The free fatherland of Washington and of Benjamin Franklin, a hospitable soil to all who emigrate from the despotisms of ancient Europe, mourns, in the murder of its new liberator, an event the equal of which does not exist.

[...] p. 608

From: The Italian Society of United Mechanics of Turin (Translation)
30 April, 1865

[...]

May free America find a successor worthy of Abraham Lincoln, and may the Monroe doctrine prevail for the good of the country.

[...] p. 616

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