Bixby Letter

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 words 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

Some deem the Bixby letter, written to Mrs. Lydia A. Bixby and signed by President Lincoln, "the most beautiful letter ever written." Others rank the letter, along with the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address, as "Lincoln's three greatest writings" (Burlingame2 1). The Boston Herald published the text of the letter on the same day that it was delivered to Mrs. Bixby, November 25, 1864. The letter was widely published because its message resonated with the many mothers and families across the country who had loved ones fighting in the raging Civil War. Ever since the publication of the letter more than 100 years ago, there has been an enduring controversy, not over the quality of the extraordinary letter, but over the author. Today many scholars would argue that John Hay, Lincoln's Assistant Private Secretary, was the true author of the letter based on stylistic evidence and a scrapbook of John Hay's writings.

One major clue in the controversy is missing - the original copy of the letter that was sent to Mrs. Bixby. Lincoln only chose to write to Mrs. Bixby after being sent a letter by Adjutant General Schouler describing her exceptional loss of five sons. In truth, the case was far more complex than a grieving mother. It was later found that only two of her sons were actually killed in battle, one deserted to the enemy, another may have, and a third was dishonorably discharged (Burlingame 3 2). Adjutant General Schouler is said to have delivered the letter to Mrs. Bixby himself, and this was the last time that the letter was seen. Second-hand accounts divulge that Mrs. Bixby may have been a Southern sympathizer and unsurprisingly it is believed that she destroyed the letter soon after receiving it. None of the facsimiles that have shown up over the years match Lincoln's writing exactly, so it is still uncertain if the original letter was in his handwriting.

At the time the letter was written, John Hay was 26 years old. Born in Salem, Indiana, Hay grew up in Illinois and befriended John G. Nicolay during his childhood there. After graduating from Brown University in 1858, Hay tagged along on Lincoln's trip to Washington as Assistant Secretary to the president (Burlingame 1 X). As Lincoln struggled to respond to all of the demands of the Civil War, Hay's responsibilities grew to include letter writing for the president. As Hay wrote in his "Letter to William H. Herndon, Paris 5 Sept. 1866," as cited in Burlingame's At Lincoln's Side, He[Lincoln] wrote very few letters. He did not read one in fifty that he received. At first we tried to bring them to his notice, but at last he gave the whole thing over to me, and signed without reading them the letters I wrote in his name.

Hay must have been a powerful letter writer, even at the young age of 26, to obtain Lincoln's full confidence in his abilities. Theodore Roosevelt went so far as to call Hay "without exception, the best letter-writer of his age" (Burlingame 1 xii).

Although there is no record that Hay told any members of his direct family that he wrote the Bixby letter, there have been several second and third-hand accounts that claim Hay stated that he wrote the letter. Three of these men are John Morely, Walter Hines Page, and W.C. Brownell. As Nicolas Murray Butler describes in his book Across the Busy Years, John Hay told Morely that he had himself written the Bixby letter and that this was the reason that it could not be found among Lincoln's papers and why no original copy of it had ever been forthcoming. Hay asked Morely to treat this information as strictly confidential until after his (Hay's) death.

Keeping his authorship of the letter a secret would have been in character for John Hay, who did not keep copies of his correspondences and did not even like his correspondents to keep them after reading them. According to Clara Stone Hay, John Hay's wife, " '[T]here are very few letters written by Mr. Hay from the White House in existence - he destroyed all that he wrote to his family' "(Burlingame 1 xii).

It is difficult to compare the Bixby letter directly to the writings of both men because Hay would have been trying to imitate Lincoln's style in the letter. Despite this dilemma, analysis of the text reveals words more commonly used in writing by Hay than by Lincoln. Some of the words or phrases common to both Hay's writings and the Bixby letter include: "our Heavenly Father," "gloriously," "republic," "cherished," "I pray that our Heavenly father," and I "cannot refrain from tendering." The most convincing word in favor of John Hay as the author is the term "beguile." Hay used the word more than thirty times in his various writings while it does not appear even once in Lincoln's collection of writings (Burlingame1 180). For example, in the obituary of Edward D. Baker, Hay wrote, "And who was so qualified as Baker for a strife like this? His geniality beguiled as much as his courage impressed" (Burlingame1 158).

The clinching piece of evidence in favor of Hay was only discovered by scholars in 1954 when it was donated to the John Hay Library at Brown University. The collection of John Hay's personal writings, newspaper and journal clippings of his works included a newspaper clipping of the Bixby letter. Even scholars that believe Lincoln to be the true author of the Bixby letter agree that the scrapbook is a strong piece of evidence for Hay's authorship. These Lincoln proponents do not believe that Hay had the skill to construct the masterpiece at such a young age.

There may never be a universally-accepted conclusion to this controversy unless further evidence is uncovered. Attributing the Bixby letter to John Hay would not take away from Lincoln's impressive legacy as a writer, but rather it would confer proper credit to Hay. Following his time as Assistant Secretary to Abraham Lincoln, Hay went on to serve as ambassador to Great Britain, and as U.S. Secretary of State under presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. In addition to his public service career, Hay established himself as a writer by co-authoring, with fellow Lincoln Secretary John G. Nicolay, the definitive, multi-volume biography of Lincoln. During his lifetime he attained fame as an essayist, novelist, editor, and poet. His Pike County Ballads pioneered the use of American dialect in literature. Some of his other works include: The Bread-winners, A Social Study, and Castilian Days.