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Appendix 1 The Authorship ofthe Bixby Letter One ofthe most extravagantly admired ofall Lincoln documents is the letter of condolence to the Widow Bixby, dated 21 November 1864. James G. Randall declared that it "stands with the Gettysburg address as a masterpiece in the English language."! Carl Sandburg called it "a piece of the American Bible. 'The cherished memory ofthe loved and lost'- these were blood-color syllables ofa sacred music:'2 Comparing the Bixby letter with the Gettysburg address, Sandburg added: "More darkly than the Gettysburg speech the letter wove awful implication that human freedom so often was paid for with agony:'3 Another Lincoln biographer claimed that "Lincoln's three greatest writings" Gettysburg address, the letter to Mrs. Bixby, and the second inaugural address-are the compositions "upon which assessment of his literary achievement must ultimately be based."4 In Lincoln the Writer, two literary scholars praised "the haunting strain of poetry" in the Bixby letter, the Gettysburg address, and the second inaugural address: ''All three great prose-poems were the direct outgrowth of the circumstances of his last years working on the heart of Lincoln the poet. In a greater sense they were the outgrowth of his whole life, of all those mysterious qualities of heredity and environment that went into the making of his genius."s Even more rhapsodic was the appraisal ofDaniel Kilham Dodge, who painted a picture ofLincoln as he wrote to the widow Bixby: "[W] e can imagine how that great heart throbbed and that strong, beautiful right hand rapidly traversed the paper while he was bringing comfort to a bereaved patriot mother. There was as true lydcal inspiration at work in the plain office of the White House that twenty-first day of November, 1864 as that which impelled Wordsworth to compose the 'Ode 011 Intimations of Immortality.")6 A New Yorker. thought the Bixby letter superior to the Gettysburg address: "It is ApPENDIX 1 cleaner English, better constructed and shows a heartfull of emotion and sympathy."7 Henry Watterson called it "the most sublime letter ever penned by the hand ofman:'8 Here is the text ofthat much-lauded missive: I have been shown in the files ofthe 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 ofthe Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish ofyour 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.9 The manuscript of this document has not been seen since 24 November 1864, when it was delivered to Mrs. Bixby, who evidently did not preserve it. Her granddaughter believed that the widow "was secretly in sympathy with the Southern cause ... and had 'little good to say of President Lincoln .'" She added, "I remember so clearly my surprise when my mother told me how Mrs. Bixby resented" the letter.lO The widow's great-grandson similarly recalled, "In my boyhood days I was advised by my Father that my Great-Grandmother was an ardent Southern Sympathizer, and when she received the letter, she destroyed it in angry [sic]:' On another occasion he asserted that Mrs. Bixby,"originally from Richmond, Virginia, destroyed it shortly after receipt without realizing its value."ll Some respectable Bostonians looked askance at Mrs. Bixby. Sarah Cabot Wheelwright, who at the age of twenty-six became acquainted with her, described the widow in unflattering terms: "Another woman to whom I gave work;' she recalled forty years after the event, "was a Mrs. Bixby, who had been recommended to me by Mrs. Charles Paine as being very deserving ." She was, as Mrs. Wheelwright remembered, "a stout woman, more or less motherly-looking, but with shifty eyes:' Although she did not like the widow, Mrs. Wheelwright approached her in an attempt to help convey "small comforts" to Union prisoners· of war. When the widow suggested that she could expedite such an errand of mercy through one of her sons, Mrs. Wheelwright visited her home. "I did not like the look of things...

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