President Lincoln's letter of condolence was delivered to Lydia Bixby on

November 25, 1864 and was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript and Boston
Evening Traveller that afternoon.[1][2][3] The following is the text of the letter as
first published:[4]

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the
Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who
have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic
they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn
pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of
Freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
History[edit]
Lydia Parker married shoemaker Cromwell Bixby on September 26, 1826,
in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. The couple had at least six sons and three
daughters before Cromwell's death in 1854. Sometime prior to the Civil War,
Bixby and her family settled in Boston.[5]

William Schouler, Massachusetts Adjutant General during the Civil War.

Meeting with Adjutant General Schouler[edit]
On September 24, 1864, Massachusetts Adjutant General William Schouler wrote
to Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew about adischarge request sent to
the governor by Otis Newhall, the father of five Union soldiers. In the letter,
Schouler mentioned that about ten days earlier he had been visited by Lydia
Bixby, a poor widow who claimed five of her sons had died fighting for the Union.
Governor Andrew forwarded Newhall's request to the U.S. War Department with a
note requesting that the president honor Bixby with a letter.[6]
In response to a War Department request of October 1, Schouler sent a
messenger to Bixby's home six days later, asking for the names and units of her
sons. He sent a report to the War Department on October 12, which was
delivered to President Lincoln by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sometime after
October 28.[7][8]
On November 21, the Boston Evening Traveller published an appeal by Schouler
for contributions to assist soldiers' families at Thanksgiving; and this appeal
alluded to a widow who had lost five sons in the war. On Thanksgiving, November
24, Schouler visited Bixby's home and gave her some of the donations. The letter
from the President arrived the next morning.[2][9]
Military record of the Bixby sons[edit]
Nevertheless, at least two of Lydia Bixby's sons survived the war. The record of
her sons' military service is as follows:
Private Arthur Edward Bixby Company C, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
Artillery (enlisted June 24, 1861). Deserted from Ft. Richardson,Virginia on May
28, 1862.[10] Trying to secure a discharge for him, his mother filed an affidavit
on October 17, 1864 which claimed Edward had enlisted underage without her
permission.[11] Born July 13, 1843 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Returned to
Boston after the war.[12]

Sergeant Charles N. Bixby Company D, 20th Massachusetts Infantry (served

July 18, 1861 May 3, 1863). Killed in action near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Born
c.1841 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.[13][14]
Corporal Henry Cromwell Bixby 1st enlistment, Company G, 20th
Massachusetts Infantry (served July 18, 1861 May 29, 1862).[15][14] 2nd
enlistment, Company K, 32nd Massachusetts Infantry (served August 5, 1862
December 17, 1864). Captured at Gettysburg and sent to Richmond,
Virginia. Paroled on March 7, 1864 at City Point, Virginia.[13][16] Born March 30,
1830 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Died November 8, 1871 in Milford,
Massachusetts.[17]
Private Oliver Cromwell Bixby, Jr. Company E, 58th Massachusetts Infantry
(served February 26, 1864 July 30, 1864). Wounded at Spotsylvania on May 12,
1864. Killed in action near Petersburg, Virginia. Born February 1, 1828 in
Hopkinton, Massachusetts.[17][10]
Private George Way Bixby Company B, 56th Massachusetts Infantry (served
March 16, 1864 ?). Enlisted under the name "George Way," apparently to
conceal his enlistment from his wife. Captured at Petersburg on July 30, 1864.
First held prisoner at Richmond but later transferred to Salisbury Prison in North
Carolina, arriving there on October 9, 1864. His fate after that remains uncertain.
Military records report conflicting accounts of him either dying at Salisbury or
deserting to the Confederate Army.[a][19][20]Born June 22, 1836 in Hopkinton,
Massachusetts.[12]
Schouler's report to the War Department erroneously listed Edward as a member
of the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry who had died of his wounds at Folly
Island, South Carolina.[21][2] Bixby may have been trying to concealpossibly
from embarrassment or hope of further financial aidEdward's 1862 desertion.
(She had received a pension after Charles's death in 1863.)[22]
At the time of her September meeting with Schouler, Bixby's son George had
been a prisoner of war for just over a month, and Henry was still hospitalized
following his exchange.[23] The War Department failed to use its own records to
correct errors in the Schouler report.[24]
Questions of character[edit]
Lydia Bixby died in Boston on October 27, 1878, while a patient at Massachusetts
General Hospital. In his initial letter to Governor Andrew, Schouler called Bixby
"the best specimen of a true-hearted Union woman I have yet seen,"[25] but in
the years following her death both her character and loyalty were questioned.
[26][27]
Writing to her daughter in 1904, Boston socialite Sarah Cabot Wheelwright
claimed she had met and had given charitable aid to Lydia Bixby during the war,
hoping that one of her sons, in Boston on leave, might help deliver packages to
Union prisoners of war. Later Wheelwright heard gossip that Bixby "kept a house
of ill-fame, was perfectly untrustworthy and as bad as she could be".[28][29]
On August 12, 1925, Mrs. George M. Towers, a daughter of Oliver Bixby, told
the Boston Herald that her grandmother had "great sympathy for the South" and
that her mother recalled that Bixby had had "little good to say of President

Lincoln" and had been "highly indignant" about the letter.[30][31] In 1949,
Towers's nephew, Arthur March Bixby, claimed that Lydia Bixby had moved to
Massachusetts from Richmond, Virginia;[32] though this assertion is contradicted
by contemporary records that list her birthplace as Rhode Island.[b][5]
Copies[edit]
The original[edit]
The fate of the original letter given to Bixby is unknown. William A. Bixby, a son
of Oliver, told The New York Times in an August 9, 1925 interview that he did not
know what happened to the letter after his grandmother received it, though he
doubted it still survived.[33] A few days later, William's sister, Mrs. Towers told
the Boston Herald that she also did not know the letter's fate but speculated
Bixby may have torn it up, resenting that it incorrectly said five of her sons had
been killed.[31] William's son, Arthur March Bixby, told the New York Sun in 1949
that he recalled his father telling him that she had angrily destroyed the letter
after receiving it.[34][35]
In the early 20th century, it was sometimes claimed that the original letter could
be found on display at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford along with
other great works in the English language. Lincoln scholar F. Lauriston
Bullard investigated this claim in 1925, discovering that it was untrue and the
college had never heard of the Bixby letter.[36]
The Tobin facsimile[edit]

Lithographic facsimile of the Bixby letter sold by Huber's Museum in New York
City.
Christie's auction house receives numerous supposed original Bixby letters every
year,[37] including copies of a lithographic facsimile of the letter in widespread
circulation. These first appeared in 1891, when New York City print dealer
Michael F. Tobin applied for a copyright to sell souvenir copies for $2 each.
[38] Soon, Huber's Museum, a dime museum in Manhattan began displaying a
copy of Tobin's facsimile as "the original Bixby letter" and selling their own copies
of it for $1 each.[39][40]

Charles Hamilton, an autograph dealer and handwriting expert, examined a copy

of the Tobin facsimile; concluding it was a poorly executed forgery that had
originally been written in pencil and retraced in ink. He called the facsimile's
handwriting "halting and awkward and makes his (Lincoln's) forceful hand appear
like a child's scrawl".[41]
The Tobin facsimile also has several errors when compared to the original version
of the letter published in Boston newspapers; adding the salutation "To Mrs
Bixby, Boston Mass", omitting the word "to" after the word "tendering", not
capitalizing the words "freedom" and "republic", and combining the original three
paragraphs into one.[42][4]
Authorship[edit]

John Hay, Lincoln's personal secretary.

Scholars have debated whether the Bixby letter was written by Lincoln himself or
by his assistant private secretary, John Hay.[43]November 1864 was a busy
month for Lincoln, possibly forcing him to delegate the task to Hay.[35]
Second and third-hand recollections of acquaintances suggest Hay may have
claimed to friends that he wrote it,[44] but his children could not recall him ever
mentioning composing the letter.[45] Writing to William E. Chandler in 1904, Hay
said "the letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine",[46] but he may only have
been referring to its text.[47] In a 1917 letter to historian Isaac Markens, Robert
Todd Lincoln said Hay had told him that he did not have "any special knowledge
of the letter at the time" it was written.[43][48]
Historian Michael Burlingame, who believes Hay is the author, has pointed out
that Hay's scrapbooks have two newspaper clippings of the letter while largely
containing Hay's own writing.[49] However, they also contain material written by
Lincoln including the Gettysburg Addressand the Second Inaugural.[43]
Scholars favoring Lincoln's authorship, including Edward Steers, note that the
Gettysburg Address and the Farewell Address are similar examples of Lincoln's
highly regarded style.[43][50] Other scholars, such as Burlingame, have
countered that Hay wrote pieces that compare favorably to the Bixby letter and

note words and phrases in the letter that appear more frequently in Hay's
writings than those of Lincoln.[51]For instance, the word beguile appears 30
times in the works of Hay but not once in the other collected works of Lincoln.
[35] Still, in the letter, the word beguile seems to mean "to divert" rather than
"to charm," the sense in which Hay frequently employed it.[43] In 1988, at the
request of investigator Joe Nickell, University of Kentucky professor of English
Jean G. Pival studied the vocabulary, syntax, and other stylistic characteristics of
the letter and concluded that it more closely resembled Lincoln's style of writing
than Hay's.[52][53]

Inscription quoting the Bixby letter at the National Memorial Cemetery of the
Pacific
Legacy[edit]
The letter's passage "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly
a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom" is inscribed on the base of the statue
of Lady Columbia at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.[54]
Discussions on the topic of siblings dying in war have frequently mentioned the
letter; such as the Sullivan brothers, the Niland brothers, theBorgstrom brothers,
and the Sole Survivor Policy of the United States military.[55]
In the 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan, General George Marshall (played
by Harve Presnell) reads the Bixby letter to his officers before giving the order to
find and send home Private James Francis Ryan after Ryan's three brothers died
in battle.[56]
On September 11, 2011, former U.S. President George W. Bush read the Bixby
letter during the memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center site on the tenth
anniversary of the September 11 attacks.[57]
Notes[edit]
Jump up^ A "George Bixby, nephew of Cuba" is also mentioned in an 1878 estate
record of Albert Bixby, an uncle who died in Milford, Massachusetts.[12]However,
this George was not included on the estate's list of surviving heirs of Cromwell

Bixby. Milford relatives later admitted confusing Lydia Bixby's sons with cousins
having the same name.[18]
Jump up^ Lydia Bixby's own 1878 death record listed her birthplace as
Hopkinton, Massachusetts, but census records and death records of surviving
children listed her birthplace as Rhode Island.[5]