Record Data
Source citation
Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, November 21, 1864, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 8: 117-118, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
Original source
Boston Transcript, November 25, 1864
Recipient (to)
Lydia Bixby
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
Transcription
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, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
---I have been shown in the files of the 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 of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your 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.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
Mrs. Bixby
