Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862

    Source citation
    Abraham Lincoln  to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 6: 16-17, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
    Recipient (to)
    Mary Frances “Fanny” McCullough
    Type
    Letter
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Transcriber
    Transcription adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler
    Adapted by Matthew Pinsker, Dickinson College
    Transcription date
    The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
    Executive Mansion, Washington,
    December 23, 1862.
     
    Dear Fanny
    It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.
     
    Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
     
    Your sincere friend
    A. LINCOLN.
     
    Miss. Fanny McCullough.
    How to Cite This Page: "Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/40484.