We have lately received with all kindness, as was meet, the gentlemen sent by your Excellency to present to us your
 letter dated on the 23d of last September. We have received certainly no small pleasure in learning both from these
 gentlemen and from your letter the feelings of gratification and of very warm appreciation with which you, illustrious
 and honorable sir, were moved when you first had knowledge written in October of the preceding year to the venerable
 brethren, John, archbishop of New York, and John, archbishop of New Orleans, in which we again and again urged and
 exhorted those venerable brethren that because of their exemplary piety and episcopal zeal they should employ their
 most earnest efforts, in our name also, in order that the fatal civil war which had arisen in the States should end,
 and that the people of America might again enjoy mutual peace and concord, and love each other with mutual charity.
 
    And it has been very gratifying to us to recognize illustrious and honorable sir, that you and your people are
 animated by the same desire for peace and tranquillity, which we had so earnestly inculcated in our aforesaid letters
 to the venerable brethren above named. Oh, that the other people also of the States and their rulers, considering
 seriously how cruel and how deplorable is this internecine war, would receive and embrace the counsels of peace and
 tranquillity. We indeed shall not cease with most fervent prayer to beseech God, the best and highest, and to implore
 Him to pour out the spirit of Christian love and peace upon all the people of America, and to rescue them from the great
 calamities with which they are afflicted. And we also pray the same most merciful Lord that he will illumine your
 Excellency with the light of His divine grace and unite you with ourselves in perfect charity.