Did Abraham Lincoln write the Bixby letter?
6 min read
Possibly not. The letter of condolence to Lydia Bixby of Boston, dated 21 November 1864 and signed by Abraham Lincoln, was probably composed by his assistant secretary John Hay, who reportedly told friends so, and a 2019 computer study of word patterns points strongly to Hay. Lincoln still sent it in his name. The letter also rested on a mistake: of Mrs Bixby's five sons, two died in battle; the others survived, deserted, or vanished from the record.
The claim, and the verdict
The claim: in November 1864 Abraham Lincoln personally wrote one of the most beautiful letters in American history, to a widow who had lost five sons fighting for the Union.
The verdict: two parts of that sentence are doubtful. On authorship, the evidence is divided but leans towards John Hay, one of Lincoln's two private secretaries, who wrote many letters for the president to sign. On the facts, Mrs Bixby had not lost five sons: the War Department relied on a report from Massachusetts that was wrong. Neither point makes the letter a fake. It was sent from the White House with Lincoln's approval and signature, and it expresses his policy and feeling. But “Lincoln wrote it” is not proven, and “five sons died” is false.
What the letter says
The text survives only as printed in Boston newspapers on 25 November 1864. It is 139 words long. The central sentences:
“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.”
It ends with a prayer that God may leave her “the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom”, and is signed “A. Lincoln”.
What the evidence shows: a dated source table
| Date | Source | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| September and October 1864 | Massachusetts Adjutant General William Schouler to Governor John Andrew, then to the War Department | Schouler reports that Mrs Bixby has lost five sons; Andrew asks that the president write to her. |
| 21 November 1864 | The letter, Executive Mansion | Dated and signed with Lincoln's name. |
| 25 November 1864 | Boston Evening Transcript and Boston Evening Traveller | Schouler delivers the letter, and its text is printed the same day. |
| After delivery | Family accounts | The original disappears. Relatives later said Mrs Bixby, who sympathised with the South, destroyed it. |
| 1891 onward | Facsimiles sold in New York | Printed “originals” go on sale. Experts judge them copies of a forgery. |
| 1904 | John Hay, letter to William E. Chandler | Calls the letter genuine, perhaps meaning only that it was sent. |
| 1939 | Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years | Reports that the British statesman John Morley had been told by Hay, in confidence, that Hay wrote it. |
| 1990s onward | Michael Burlingame, Lincoln scholar | Argues for Hay: Hay kept clippings of the letter in his scrapbooks, and its word “beguile” is common in Hay's writing but absent from Lincoln's collected works. |
| 2019 (online 2018) | Jack Grieve, Andrea Nini and colleagues, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities | An n-gram study of about 500 texts by each man identifies Hay as the author in about 90 per cent of tests; the rest were inconclusive. |
Historians on the other side, including Edward Steers and Jason Emerson, point to the letter's closeness in rhythm and theme to the Gettysburg Address, and to Robert Todd Lincoln's statement in 1917 that Hay told him he had no special knowledge of the letter. Computer studies have also disagreed: an earlier stylistic analysis in 1988 favoured Lincoln. The original manuscript, which could show whose handwriting it is in, has never been found.
What happened to the five Bixby sons
This is the part of the story that is most often wrong. Schouler's report was mistaken in several places, and the federal government passed it on without checking.
| Son | Service | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Charles N. Bixby | 20th Massachusetts Infantry | Killed near Fredericksburg, Virginia, 3 May 1863. |
| Oliver Cromwell Bixby Jr. | Massachusetts infantry | Killed near Petersburg, Virginia, in July 1864. |
| Henry Cromwell Bixby | Massachusetts infantry | Captured at Gettysburg in 1863, released in 1864, survived the war; died in 1871. |
| Arthur Edward Bixby | 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery | Deserted in May 1862 and returned to Boston after the war. |
| George Way Bixby | Massachusetts infantry | Captured near Petersburg on 30 July 1864 and sent to a Confederate prison; records conflict on whether he died there or deserted to the Confederate side. |
So two sons, Charles and Oliver, certainly died in battle. That was a terrible loss. But it was not the loss the letter consoles.
How the story spread
The letter was reprinted across the North in 1864, then in collections of Lincoln's writings after his assassination in April 1865, and by the early twentieth century it was being taught as a model of English prose. In Britain it was admired as much as the Gettysburg Address. The 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, in which a general reads it aloud, introduced it to a new generation and revived the question of who wrote it.
Lincoln did write many letters himself, and his style is unmistakable in documents we know he drafted: the Gettysburg Address, the letter to Horace Greeley of 22 August 1862, and the letter to Albert Hodges of 4 April 1864, in which he wrote that if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Those are the places to study his own voice.
How to check who wrote a famous letter
- Ask whether a manuscript survives, and in whose hand. Here none does.
- Remember that leaders sign letters drafted by staff, then and now. A signature shows approval, not authorship.
- Look for testimony from the people involved, and note when and how it reached print.
- Use stylistic studies as evidence, not proof, especially for short texts.
- Check the facts inside the letter against independent records, such as military service files.
You can ask Lincoln about his secretaries, his letters and the war by talking with Abraham Lincoln in Yuga, or hear him argue with Frederick Douglass in the 1863 White House debate. These are AI recreations built from the record, not the men themselves, and they can be wrong, so cite the Collected Works. More: questions to ask Abraham Lincoln, famous letters in history and how to check if a quote is real.
Questions people ask
- Who wrote the Bixby letter?
- It was sent and signed in Abraham Lincoln's name on 21 November 1864, but many historians, led by Michael Burlingame, think his assistant secretary John Hay composed it. Hay reportedly admitted it privately, and a 2019 computer study of word patterns favoured Hay. Others still argue for Lincoln. The original manuscript is lost, so the question cannot be settled.
- Did all five of Mrs Bixby's sons die?
- No. Charles was killed near Fredericksburg in May 1863 and Oliver near Petersburg in July 1864. Henry was captured at Gettysburg and survived the war. Edward deserted in 1862. George was captured in July 1864, and records conflict on whether he died in a Confederate prison or deserted to the Confederacy.
- Where is the original Bixby letter?
- Nobody knows. It was delivered to Lydia Bixby in Boston on 25 November 1864 and printed in newspapers that day. Her family later said she destroyed it, partly because she sympathised with the South. Copies sold as originals from 1891 onward are facsimiles of a forgery.
- Why is the Bixby letter in Saving Private Ryan?
- In the 1998 film, General George Marshall reads it aloud to explain why the army should rescue the last surviving brother of a family that has lost three sons. The letter's theme of a mother's sacrifice fits the plot. The film presents it as Lincoln's, which is the traditional view.
Sources
- Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 8 (1953)
- Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress
- Michael Burlingame, “New Light on the Bixby Letter”, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 16 (1995)
- Jack Grieve, Emily Carmody, Isobelle Clarke and others, “Attributing the Bixby Letter using n-gram tracing”, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 34 (2019)
- F. Lauriston Bullard, Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby (1946)