Copy of famed Lincoln letter found
Published 10:17 pm Monday, November 17, 2008
DALLAS — A Texas museum hopes a document found in its archives turns out to be an authentic government copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent letter consoling a mother thought to have lost five sons in the Civil War.
The famed Bixby Letter, which the Dallas Historical Society is getting appraised, has a fascinating history.
The original has never been found. Historians debate whether Lincoln wrote it. And not all the sons of the letter’s recipient, Lydia Bixby, died in the war.
The letter, written 144 years ago Friday, is “considered one of the finest pieces of American presidential prose,” said Alan Olson, curator for the Dallas group. “It’s still a great piece of writing, regardless of the truth in the back story.”
Historians say Lincoln wrote the letter at the request of a Massachusetts official, who passed along news of a Boston woman, a Mrs. Bixby, grieving the loss of her five sons. (Read the text in the story below.)
“It is so beautifully written,” said James Cornelius, curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. “It is an extraordinarily sensitive expression of condolence.”
There was renewed interest in the letter after it was read in the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.” It also sparked a new round of debate on Lincoln’s authorship and the fate of Bixby’s sons.
Evidence indicates two of Bixby’s sons died, a third was a deserter and a fourth ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp, Cornelius said. A fifth is believed to have received a discharge, but his fate is unknown.
Historians have also argued that John Hay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, wrote the letter. Hay was an accomplished writer who wrote a biography of Lincoln.
“Lincoln probably wrote it,” Cornelius said. “Hay did on some occasions write letters in Lincoln’s name and sign them — or have Lincoln sign them — but probably not something like this that purports to be so personal and individual and heartfelt.”
Bixby either sent it to the Boston Evening Transcript or a postal worker intercepted it and tipped off the newspaper, which reprinted the letter, Cornelius said.
The paper and ink appear authentic to the Civil War era, Olson said. The historical society has asked an expert at Christie’s auction house for an opinion.
Stacy McDermott, an assistant editor at The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, estimated that an official government copy of the Bixby Letter would fetch millions.
But Cornelius doubts the letter is authentic. He said the Lincoln White House would have been unlikely to make a copy of such a personal letter and points out that a pair of rival New York companies sold copies of the letter as keepsakes beginning in the 1890s.
