MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL. In accordance with a request from His Honor the Mayor, the citizens of Boston assembled in Faneuil Hall on the seventeenth of April, 1865, at three o'clock in the afternoon, for the purpose of uniting in a public expression of their sense of the bereavement which the nation had sustained in the death of Abraham Lincoln. The hall was darkened and heavily draped with emblems of mourning. The meeting was called to order by the Mayor, and prayer was offered by Rev. S. K. Lothrop, D. D. His Honor Mayor Lincoln then addressed the assembly as follows: FELLOW CITIZENS: On the morning of the 15th of January a revered and distinguished citizen, then engaged in the pursuits of private life, died suddenly at his residence in Boston. As the news of the sad occurrence extended, it produced a profound impression over the whole country; and the President of the United States immediately took notice of the event as a national bereavement. On the morning of the 15th of April, just three months after the decease of the retired statesman, — on a day solemnly set apart by a portion of the Christian church to commemorate the death of our blessed Lord, the Presi dent himself, invested with all the cares and prerogatives of official station, was summoned to depart this life, and to join the vast assembly of good and great of other days. On that occasion in January, this venerable hall was arrayed in its habiliments of woe; and to-day, again putting on its emblems of mourning, we are assembled to condole with each other in this new grief, and to take counsel together on this new sorrow which has fallen upon our country. The last time the citizens of Boston assembled within these halls, it was to give an expression of the exulting joys of a happy people over the recent victories; to-day we meet, bowed down by a common affliction, seeking comfort and consolation from each other in that depression of spirits which every heart feels. Yesterday we went up to our several houses of worship, and before the altars of Almighty God, gathered those lessons of resignation for ourselves, and that confidence in the wisdom of the Great Disposer of events, which it is the mission of our holy religion to inspire. To-day we meet in the accustomed place for the great gatherings of the people, to pay our feeble tribute to the memory of the distinguished dead, and to renew our vows of unfaltering fidelity to our country in this hour of its extreme peril. The death of the Chief Magistrate of the nation, who has been set apart as its Ruler by the free suffrages of its citizens, always awakens the most tender sympathies and the profoundest regrets; how much more so in the recent crisis of our national affairs, when the events of the last four years are so fresh in our remembrance. |