Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

LETTER FROM THE DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION

OF FLORENCE.

To the Free People of the United States of America.

MAY 18, 1865.

BROTHERS OF THE AMERICAN UNION, — A few

days have passed since your people prepared themselves to celebrate, in the decisive victory of Richmond, the proximate, infallible triumph of liberty and of the Union over servitude and division, when sad intelligence troubled the sincere joy of all the friends of liberty, and stopped on our lips the festive expressions of triumph, and our glad wishes for the future.

Lincoln, the honest, the magnanimous, citizen, the most worthy chief magistrate of your glorious Federation, a victim of an execrable treason, is no more.

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 point out this deed, and the masses of the people everywhere cannot fail to remember that European despots have

had a share in it; that in some courts of Europe, Mason, Slidell, and the infamous pirates of the " Alabama," found protection and encouragement, and the wicked instigator of the civil war, Jefferson Davis, obtained praises and applause. Brothers of the American Union, Courage! The great cause for which you have supported four years of titanic combat is the cause of humanity; its triumph can never more be doubted, and has been delayed only for a moment by the worst of actions, committed by an abject murderer.

Tyranny, it is true, could sometimes be destroyed by the murder of the tyrant, because it has life only in him; but liberty, which lives in the people, has, like the people, an immortal origin and destiny.

For the Committee.
(Signed)

P. D. ANNIBALE, President.
A. CORTI, Secretary.

To the Democratic Association of Florence.

UNITED CONSULATE-GENERAL FOR THE Kingdom of ITALY,

FLORENCE, May 23, 1865.

GENTLEMEN,I have had the gratification of transmitting to my Government the address to the people of the United States, · presented to me last week by your Association; and I have requested that this gratifying evidence of your sympathy and good feeling may be made known to my countrymen through the public journals.

In the profound sorrow which the American nation has been called upon to endure through the death of our beloved President, it is a source of the greatest consolation to know how highly his public acts were appreciated by the liberal citizens of all nations, and especially by those of Italy, whose people have done

so much to prove their devotion to the great principles of freedom. Italy, beyond any other nation, knows how to fraternize with the United States; for "Liberty and Union" have been alike the watchwords of the people of both countries.

The history of your own renowned land proves that in a divided country liberty exists but in name. Your ancient republics were rivals to each other; and, while city took up arms against city, and family against family, the people were enslaved.

Six centuries ago, your glorious poet, the immortal Dante (to whose fame you have just rendered a tribute and an homage worthy of his countrymen), with a divine inspiration, foresaw that in the union of Italy could real liberty only be found; and while his descendants of the nineteenth century are proving his dream to be a reality, the lesson conveyed by the past experience of Italy has not been lost upon the American nation.

For the union of the States and the liberty of the people, the American war has been waged; and although in its prosecution blood has been shed like water, and treasure lavished without stint, yet we deem its vast cost as trifling in comparison with the grand result obtained in the preservation of our Union, and the enfranchising of four millions of slaves.

Well, as in Italy you justly idolize the noble Garibaldi, as the paladin and hero of Italian emancipation; so we in America honor the martyr, Abraham Lincoln, as the Saviour of his Country. Alike in their entire freedom from private or political selfishness; alike in their pure and spotless patriotism; alike in holding the first place in the hearts of their countrymen, - posterity will regard them as apostles of liberty, second to none that the annals of history record.

I have the honor to be, gentlemen,

(Signed)

Your obedient servant,

T. B. LAWRENCE, Consul-General.

SPEECH OF EDOUARD LABOULAYE:

ON THE DEATH.OF MR. LINCOLN.

TH

HE murder of Mr. Lincoln has excited a profound emotion through all Europe. The atrocity of such a cold-blooded murder; the honesty and innocence of the victim; the death which arrested, in the very midst of victory, the man who seemed to have conquered the right of finishing the work of pacification which he had so nobly begun,-explain but too well the universal sympathy in the presence of this cruel and unexpected end. Friends, enemies, and indifferent persons, all to-day render full justice to the prudence, firmness, and moderation of Mr. Lincoln; all execrate the wretch who cut off so beautiful a life. Far from me be the thought of casting on the South the weight of such a crime. A people of soldiers is not a people of assassins; and I am not astonished that at the news of the assassination Lee was unable to resist his grief, and the brave Ewell wept like a child. War teaches us to respect, and often even to love an enemy. But if I do not accuse the South, I accuse slavery, and the passions which it lets loose. All those acts of violence, which, for forty years past, have disturbed America, and rejoiced those who hate liberty, -street duels, negroes burned alive, the beating of Mr. Sumner, the plots against Mr. Lincoln, all these misdeeds have come from the same poisoned source: they have been brought forth by the pride of dominion.

Slavery ends as it began, by a crime. May this crime be the last! May this abominable institution, once more dishonored, disappear at last before the contempt and abhorrence of the human race! It would be the noblest homage that could be rendered to the memory of Lincoln.

I shall not make the eulogy of the. President: I have neither the time nor the strength; but I would like to recall some of his words and actions, and to show what was the unity and simplicity of his life. Death sets each one in his place: it plunges into forgetfulness those minions of fortune who have lived only to achieve their ambition, or to satisfy their wretched vanity; but it elevates the truly great men, and casts over these noble figures an indescribable splendor and serenity. Disdained and insulted yesterday, they are respected and admired on the morrow: they are more powerful in their tomb than in their palace. Mr. Lincoln was one of these heroes, who are ignorant of themselves; his thoughts will reign after him. The name of Washington has already been pronounced, and I think with reason. Doubtless Mr. Lincoln resembled Franklin more than Washington. By his origin, his arch good nature, his ironical good sense, and his love of anecdote and jesting, he was of the same blood as the printer of Philadelphia. But it is nevertheless true, that, in less than a century, America has passed through two crises in which its liberty might have been lost, if it had not had honest men at its head; and that each time it has had the happiness to meet the man best fitted to serve it. If Washington founded the Union, Lincoln has saved it. History will draw together and unite those two

names.

A single word explains Mr. Lincoln's whole life; it was duty. Never did he put himself forward; never did he think of himself; never did he seek one of those ingenious combinations which puts the head of a State in bold relief, and enhances his import

« AnteriorContinuar »