It is one of the most famous letters in American history. So brief and eloquent that Hollywood used it to explain the plot in Saving Private Ryan. Signed by Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), this short letter of condolence to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, who had suffered the death of five sons fighting to preserve the Union, was eloquent, gracious, and compassionate. Only the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address compete with the letter to Mrs. Bixby in demonstrating Lincoln’s literary talents. Students of American history who have read all three documents see similarities in style and prose that leave little doubt that the martyred president composed the letter.

Yet controversy surrounds the letter’s authorship and Mrs. Bixby’s truthfulness. Only two of Mrs. Bixby’s six sons died in action during the Civil War; at least two survived the war, and one other son disappeared from history. Mrs. Bixby’s granddaughter claimed her grandmother was a Confederate sympathizer, hated Lincoln, and destroyed the letter immediately after reading it. She may have lied about her sons’ deaths, hoping to receive pensions.

However, two Boston afternoon newspapers printed copies of the letter on the day she received it, and The Complete Writings and Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 8 published a copy annotated by Roy P. Basler. Basler analyzes the claim that John Hay (1838–1905), one of Lincoln’s two private secretaries, wrote the Bixby letter. In 1904, Hay reportedly told the British statesman John Morley (1838–1923), that he “wrote” the Bixby letter. Perhaps Hay meant Lincoln dictated the letter to him and reviewed it before signing it? In 1952, Hay’s personal scrapbook was donated to Brown University. A second scrapbook was discovered at the Library of Congress. Both scrapbooks contain copies of the Bixby letter. It is unlikely that Hay would paste copies of a letter he did not compose in a personal scrapbook. Lincoln’s biographer, Michael Burlingame, writes that the letter’s authorship “does not affect Lincoln’s literary reputation; the author of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural will long command the world’s admiration.” Instead, “Rather than diminishing Lincoln, this new discovery should enhance the status of John Hay among literary critics and historians.”

Despite continued controversy over competing historical and literary evidence regarding its precise authorship, the letter to Mrs. Bixby deserves continued study as a paradigmatically Lincolnian text.