This was first reaction. Two days later, commenting on the far warmer expressions of horror and sympathy emanating from all England, there appeared another and longer editorial:
"If anything could mitigate the distress of the American people in their present affliction, it might surely be the sympathy which is expressed by the people of this country. We are not using the language of hyperbole in describing the manifestation of feeling as unexampled. Nothing like it has been witnessed in our generation.... But President Lincoln was only the chief of a foreign State, and of a State with which we were not infrequently in diplomatic or political collision. He might have been regarded as not much more to us than the head of any friendly Government, and yet his end has already stirred the feelings of the public to their uttermost depths."
"... a space of twenty-four hours has sufficed not only to fill the country with grief and indignation, but to evoke almost unprecedented expressions of feeling from constituted bodies. It was but on Wednesday that the intelligence of the murder reached us, and on Thursday the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Corporation of the City of London, and the people of our chief manufacturing towns in public meeting assembled had recorded their sentiments or expressed their views. In the House of Lords the absence of precedent for such a manifestation was actually made the subject of remark.
"That much of this extraordinary feeling is due to the tragical character of the event and the horror with which the crime is regarded is doubtless true, nor need we dissemble the the fact that the loss which the Americans have sustained is also thought our own loss in so far as one valuable guarantee for the amity of the two nations may have been thus removed. But, upon the whole, it is neither the possible embarrassment of international relations nor the infamous wickedness of the act itself which has determined public feeling. The preponderating sentiment is sincere and genuine sympathy--- sorrow for the chief of a great people struck down by an assassin, and sympathy for that people in the trouble which at a crisis of their destinies such a catastrophe must bring. Abraham Lincoln was as little of a tyrant as any man who ever lived. He could have been a tyrant had he pleased, but he never uttered so much as an ill-natured speech.... In all America there was, perhaps, not one man who less deserved to be the victim of this revolution than he who has just fallen[1296]."
The Ministry did not wait for public pressure. Immediately on receipt of the news, motions were made, April 27, in both Lords and Commons for an address to the Queen, to be debated "Monday next," expressing "sorrow and indignation" at the assassination of Lincoln[1297]. April 28, Russell instructed Bruce to express at Washington that "the Government, the Parliament, and the Nation are affected by a unanimous feeling of abhorrence of the criminals guilty of these cowardly and atrocious crimes, and sympathy for the Government and People of the United States[1298]...." Russell wrote here of both Lincoln and Seward. The Queen wrote a personal letter of sympathy to Mrs. Lincoln. Already Bruce had written from Washington that Lincoln "was the only friend of the South in his party[1299]," and he was extremely anxious that Seward's recovery might be hastened, fearing the possibility of Sumner's assumption of the Secretaryship of State. "We miss terribly the comparative moderation of Lincoln and Seward[1300]."
The American Minister naturally became the centre toward which the public outpouring of sympathy was directed. "The excitement in this country has been deep and wide, spreading through all classes of society. My table is piled high with cards, letters and resolutions[1301]...." Indeed all the old sources of "addresses" to Adams on emancipation and many organizations having no professed interest in that subject now sent to him resolutions--the emancipation societies, of horror, indignation, and even accusation against the South; the others of sympathy, more moderate in tone, yet all evincing an appreciation of the great qualities of Lincoln and of the justice of the cause of the North, now victorious. Within two weeks Adams reported over four hundred such addresses from Emancipation Societies, Chambers of Commerce, Trades Unions, municipalities, boroughs, churches, indeed from every known type of British organizations[1302].
On May 1 the motion for the address to the Crown came up for debate. In the Lords, Russell emphasized the kindly and forgiving qualities of Lincoln as just those needed in America, and now lost by his death. Derby, for the Opposition, expressed the horror of the world at Booth's act, joined in expressions of sympathy to the United States, but repeated the old phrase about the "North fighting for empire, the South for independence," and hinted that the unusual step now being taken by Parliament had in it a "political object," meaning that the motion had been introduced in the hope of easing American irritation with Great Britain[1303]. It was not a tactful speech, but Derby's lieutenant in the Commons, Disraeli, saved his party from criticism by what was distinctly the most thoughtful and best-prepared utterance of the day. Palmerston was ill. The Government speech was made by Grey, who incautiously began by asserting that the majority of the people of Great Britain had always been on the side of the North and was met by cries of "No, no" and "Hear, hear." Disraeli concluded the debate. He said:
"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 of its pillagings and burnings. March 20, Gregory asked in the Commons whether the Government was taking any steps to prevent the destruction of British property and received from Layard an evasive reply. Merely a "confident hope" had been expressed to the United States that "every facility will be given" to British subjects to prove ownership of property[1307]. Evidently the Government was not eager to raise irritating questions at a moment when all eyes were strained to observe the concluding events of the war.