Lincoln's Bixby Letter: A Study in Authenticity
by Joe Nickell
Lincoln Herald, Volume 91, Number 4 (Winter 1989)
Among the best known - yet greatly disputed and controversial - of the writings attributed to Abraham Lincoln is the epistle allegedly sent to a Mrs. Bixby at the height of the Civil War. The letter consoles the Boston lady on the reported loss of five sons, all of whom had supposedly died battling for the Union cause. Published widely, the letter reads:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864
To 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 a 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.
Although a facsimile of the handwritten letter (Fig. 1) was published in the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by the slain President's former secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, it is now known that the handwriting was forged. Charles Hamilton, the internationally known authority on autographs who once owned that "original" manuscript, states that it was "Retraced, labored, erased and thoroughly unconvincing," adding:
In it, the forger had stumbled badly. The paper was not of the variety used by Lincoln, the ink was modern, the folds were not correct to accommodate envelopes of Lincoln's era and the letter itself had first been drawn in pencil and then traced in ink. Yet this forged missive has been published in facsimile in scores of history books and hung in the parlors of half a million homes.
Hamilton states he is offered a Bixby fake as an "original" several times a year.
My own interest in the letter was rekindled not long ago when an antique dealer asked me to examine a document he had acquired. Because it was imprinted with the engraved portrait of Lincoln, I knew - even from a dozen feet away - that it was spurious, but I nevertheless examined it carefully with a strong magnifier. Cheaply printed on cheap paper, it was, of course, merely another example of the proliferating fake - a facsimile of a forgery.
But had there been a genuine letter that provided the text for the forgery, or was even that completely bogus? (Lincoln's fame invited just such fabrications, including the silly letters to his apocryphal sweetheart Ann Rutledge which were signed "Abe," a nickname he despised and never allowed, and the one to a Pennsylvania Dutchman written in German, a language Lincoln could not even read.) Hamilton says of the Bixby epistle: "Nobody knows whether Lincoln really composed this great letter or whether, if he did write it, it was ever mailed."
Nevertheless, in an 1894 essay, "Lincoln as a Writer," Richard Watson Gilder implicitly accepted the authenticity of the letter's text and stated it "may well be associated with the Gettysburg Address." He added:
This letter of consolation in its simplicity again recalls the Greek spirit. It is like one of those calm monuments of grief which the traveler may still behold in that small cemetery under the deep Athenian sky, where those who have been dead so many centuries are kept alive in the memories of men by an art which is immortal.
Another who accepts the genuineness of the text is manuscript dealer Mary A. Benjamin. As she has written:
These words are practically universally accepted as those of Abraham Lincoln ...Librarians and experts in the autograph field have for many years accepted the fact that an original Lincoln-Bixby letter existed. The core of the authorities question is: Was the Bixby letter originally an L. S. [letter signed] or an A.L.S. [autograph letter signed]? Was it written in the handwriting of Lincoln at all? Was it even signed by him?
She continues, echoing Gilder:
There is nothing in their [the authorities] position which throws any doubt on the fact that the words are Lincoln's. These superbly expressed thoughts, both from the standpoint of their nature and their phrasing, are as typical of him as are those of the Gettysburg Address. Equally certain are the authorities that all reproductions which have come forward have definitely been facsimiles of a forgery. The years have kept silence on this enigma, and perhaps it may never be solved.
Not surprising, however, there have been dissenters - notably Sherman Day Wakefield, author of two articles and as many pamphlets on the subject. He compared the Bixby text to that of a letter of condolence Lincoln wrote to the daughter of a slain officer, Lieutenant Colonel William McCullough. Stated Wakefield:
Now style is a difficult thing to describe; it is rather something to be felt, and I do not feel that the Bixby letter and the McCullough letter are in the same category.
Following that subjective judgment, Wakefield conceded" Of course the former is written to a stranger and the latter to an old friend, which would, I suppose, make some difference." Yet, he must ask:
But why would Lincoln, if he believed in a "Heavenly Father," fail to give the consolation of religion to a loved friend in his letter of condolence and then extend it to an utter stranger? That is not like Lincoln, and the comparison only serves to throw further doubt on the genuineness of the Bixby letter.
(Actually, in a letter to the bereaved parents of a slain soldier, a young Colonel Ellsworth, Lincoln did write: "May God give you the consolation which is beyond all earthly power.")
More significant to Wakefield is the "fact" that Lincoln's secretary, John Hay, twice confided to others that he had written the Bixby letter.The first source was a Mr. Lucas, who published (1934) a letter received from Reverend Jackson, who had heard from Lady Strafford, who had learned from an Ambassador Page, who had been told by John Hay.
The second source (a 1940 autobiography) was only at third hand, but it was couched in secrecy: Supposedly Hay asked that the fact of his authorship be kept secret until his death, and the person he confided in made a similar request of the person he in turn told. As Mary Benjamin comments"Where there is secrecy on matters which cannot be substantiated by records, suspicion is inevitable." Moreover, both of these accounts contain a similar motif - both were supposedly elicited by the seeing of framed copies of the letter - which suggests the possibility that the hearsay accounts are merely variant folk tales.
In any event historian William E. barton stated: "I have made diligent inquiry of the family of John Hay, and ... they, who ought to know of this if anyone knows, profess to have no knowledge that supports such a claim." In addition, the accounts are effectively challenged by a letter written by Hay on January 19, 1904, that states:
The letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine, is printed in our edition of his Works, and has been frequently republished; but the engraved copy of Mr. Lincoln's alleged manuscript, which is extensively sold is, in my opinion, a very ingenious forgery.
There should be no doubt that a letter addressed to Mrs. Bixby was actually sent from the Lincoln White House. First of all, there really was a Mrs. Lydia (Parker) Bixby (ca. 1801-1878) who lived at various addresses in Boston where she was alternately described as "nurse" and "widow." She indeed had five sons who fought for the Union.
Actually, however, only two died in battle (Charles N. Bixby on May 3, 1863, and Oliver Cromwell Bixby on July 30, 1864). Another son (Henry Cromwell Bixby) was erroneously reported killed at Gettysburg, but he had actually been captured, was later paroled, and finally received an honorable discharge. Mrs. Bixby's other two sons (Edward and George Way) deserted to the enemy. Edward later repatriated himself, but George sought exile in Cuba where his brothers and sisters last heard from him in 1879.
Precisely how the misunderstanding arose - that five of Mrs. Bixby's sons had been killed - is not known, but the result is reflected in the title of the definitive work on the subject by Barton, A Beautiful Blunder. He cites a letter written to the governor of Massachusetts by Adjutant-General Schouler which stated in part:
About ten days ago Mrs. Bixby came to my office and showed me five letters from five company commanders, and each letter informed the poor woman of the death of one of her sons. Her last remaining son was recently killed in the fight on the Weldon railroad.
Whether Schouler misunderstood the details, Mrs. Bixby misrepresented the facts, or there is still some other explanation is unknown.
Nevertheless, confirming the important fact that President Lincoln had sent the Boston widow the now famous letter are the November 25, 1864, issues of the Boston Transcript and Traveler, in which the text first appeared. This was the day after Adjutant-General Schouler delivered the letter to Mrs. Bixby.
Whether Lincoln had also composed the letter was a question I addressed in a lengthy study of the text. As Wakefield said, style is difficult to describe, but there are modern techniques that facilitate an objective study. Unfortunately, these usually involve a statistical tabulation of identifiable writing habits - for example, sentences beginning with "The," passive negative construction, or the like - and the length of the Bixby letter's text (only 130 words between the salutation and the closing) was less than desirable for such an analysis.
However, it was possible to look for distinctive words and phrases, comparable expressions of thought, similar rhythms, and the like - forms that might then be exhibited in side-by-side comparison, in the manner of demonstrating similarity of handwriting characteristics or fingerprinting patterns.
To see how such an approach might work, we can look at its application in an example in which Lincoln's authorship is unquestioned: the Gettysburg Address, of which we have Lincoln's actual drafts in his own handwriting. The accompanying chart (Table 1) compares excerpts from the famous speech with specimens of Lincoln's phraseology from his other writings. The numbers in parentheses refer to the volume and page in the Collected Works. As can be seen, the excerpts are sufficiently distinctive to have evidential value and are quite similar.
Of course, someone with the intelligence, vocabulary, and creativity of a Lincoln may be expected to employ phrases that are unique. One looks in vain, for example, for another use of "Four score and seven years ago." The closest match would seem to be the opening of his 1852 "Eulogy on Henry Clay": "On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people ...." Yet the historical referent is the same, as is its function as the opening of an oration. And the difference can be attributed to the overall heightening of the language in the Gettysburg speech, no doubt influenced by Lincoln's intuitive evocation of the style of the King James Bible.
Turning now to the questioned text, the Bixby letter, we again find comparable wording in Lincoln's letters and speeches (the Bixby letter having features of both) as shown in Table 2.
Some traits were especially noteworthy, such as lincoln's frequent use of the verb to tender. Just as the Bixby letter uses "tendering," Lincoln - in a few pages of his writings from December 24, 1860, to February 8, 1861 - employed the following: "tender you my sincere thanks," "that it was tendered you," "so kindly tendered," "cordially tendered him," tendering me," "so generously tendered," "cordially tendered me," "tendered this invitation," and "the tendered honor."
The use of alliteration for rhetorical effect (Lincoln wrote some competent verse) is another evidential feature. In the Bixby letter, such alliterative forms as "beguile you from the grief," "assuage the anguish," and "loved and lost," are matched by instances from known writings of Lincoln, as "for weal or for woe" (VIII, 217), "sadness of your sorrow" (VI, 288), "scorned and scouted" (II, 167), "blows and bloodshed" (II, 239), "lamp of liberty" (III, 52), and loved ones lost" (I, 291).
Following my own study, I asked Professor Jean Prival, a specialist in English linguistics and rhetoric, to compare the Bixby text with the writings of both Lincoln and Hay. Having assisted me in solving other literary cases, Professor Prival readily agreed. Upon completion of her analysis of the two men's styles, she wrote:
There is more than a generational difference in their syntax and vocabulary; it is a well-known fact that Lincoln's style was strongly influenced by his intensive reading of Elizabethan literature, particularly Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible. Consequently, he integrated Elizabethan syntactical structures which, in all probability, had disappeared even in the frontier of his youth. Certainly they were supplanted by more modern usages in the speech and writings of formally educated Easterners. Although both Lincoln and Hay grew up in Indiana, Hay went to the east where he attended and graduated from Brown University. True, Hay studied law in Illinois for a short time after his graduation, but Lincoln was a certified lawyer who actively practiced law for over twenty years. Legal usages and formal argument structures abound even in his personal letters, while Hay's writings show little or no influence of such background. Whereas Hay's personal writings are full of the slang contemporary to his youth, Lincoln's letters are more formal in character - even old-fashioned.
For instance, Lincoln's writings (particularly his earlier ones) are rampant with Elizabethan conditionals (conditionals without a conditional conjunction and with the subjunctive verb form):
Examples: "should she be destined...", "But should I be mistaken in this ...," "in case my mind were not exactly right ..."
Even when he used conditional conjunctions, he tended to pair them with "shall," "should," "be," or "were":
Examples: "When they shall be safe...," if I shall determine ... ," "lest you should think ...,"that the delegates all be instructed ...," "that the military were ..."
I found none of these usages in the Hay letters I examined.
Lincoln preferred "shall" and "should" over "will" and "would" throughout all his writings; hay almost always used the latter. This fact is significant to the Bixby letter in the phrase "which should attempt to beguile you." Hay, even if trying to emulate Lincoln's style, would almost certainly have used "would."
She continued:
One striking contrast in the stylistic options of the two men was in their choice of verb phrases; Hay's writing exhibits an unusually high frequency of the perfect aspect, i.e. have shown (his April 10, 1863, letter to Lincoln is the most glaring). Lincoln used this aspect sparingly and only when no other aspect would work, preferring instead to use past tense or progressive aspect, i.e. ".is going." Similarly, Hay's use of passive far exceeds Lincoln's who preferred active voice (except when avoiding "I" as the subject in passages dealing with his accomplishments (as in a Thanksgiving Proclamation). Note that the Bixby letter uses the perfect aspect only once as a main verb and a passive only twice: in the first sentence to avoid unnecessary identity of the person who showed him the files, and to enhance the emphasis the writer wished to place on the "thanks of the republic."
I can add little to your excellent analysis of the vocabulary except to point out that Lincoln's use of "beguile" is in the Elizabethan sense of "diverting." Hay's meaning in his letter to Mrs. R., March 19, 1861, is closer to the contemporary sense: "to charm or entice."
Lincoln's use of "tender" in the other writings you mentioned is the same as in the Bixby letter - the legal meaning of "offer."
Also, the metaphor of "laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom" is consistent with coined metaphors found in other Lincoln letters; i.e. "might also be the nest in which forty other troublesome questions would be hatched." Hay would more likely have used a literary quotation.
Professor Pival ended by stating:
Despite the difficulty of doing a close analysis of such a short piece of writing, my conclusion is that Lincoln wrote the letter himself. There is too much stylistic evidence to believe otherwise.
Thus, the stylistic comparison confirms what is already demonstrated by the documentary record and other historical indications. The cumulative evidence clearly restores the pen to the great President's hand and reveals the Bixby letter as his own.
