A Texas museum hopes a document found in its archives turns out to be an authentic government copy of 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 of Lydia Bixby's sons died in the war.
The letter, written with "the best of intentions" 144 years ago next week, is "considered one of the finest pieces of American presidential prose," said Alan Olson, curator for the Dallas group.
Historians say Lincoln wrote the letter at the request of a Massachusetts official. Lincoln wrote that he would pray that God relieve her anguish and leave her with "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." The letter, as was the president's custom in his personal correspondence, is signed "A Lincoln."
There was renewed interest in the letter after it was read in the 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan." It also sparked debate centering 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, said James Cornelius, curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. A fifth is believed to have received a discharge.
Historians have argued that John Hay, a writer and one of Lincoln's secretaries, wrote the letter. But Cornelius said that was unlikely for "something like this that purports to be so personal."
"The letter was so popular that it was published in newspapers and people copied and sent it to relatives," Olson said. "That letter and the words in it affected the nation. It tugged at people's hearts at the time of a really bloody period in America."
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