The Bixby Letter
Background
In the fall of 1864 the adjutant general of Massachusetts told the War Department about a Boston widow, Lydia Bixby, who he said had lost five sons fighting for the Union. Lincoln wrote to her. The letter was delivered on November 25 and printed in the Boston newspapers the same day.
The record turned out to be wrong: two of her sons died in the war, not five. The original letter has never been found, and historians still argue over whether Lincoln wrote it himself or his secretary John Hay did. None of it has dimmed the letter. It has been read at memorials for a century and a half, and aloud in Saving Private Ryan.
Whoever held the pen, it does the hardest thing a letter can do: it admits that no words are enough, and then finds a few that help.
The letter
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.
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 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.
Text from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. Lincoln wrote it four months before his Second Inaugural, with its “malice toward none.” More in the Abraham Lincoln Quote Library.