# Factual disagreements and errors among the sources

Each entry gives the conflicting statements, where they occur, and which is better supported.

1. **Date of delivery/publication.** Bullard pp. 50-51: delivered the morning of Friday 25 Nov. 1864 and printed in the *Transcript* that afternoon ("Her lonely abode was made cheerful this morning"). Wakefield 1947 (following Barton p. 49): delivered Thanksgiving Day, 24 Nov., printed next day; Nickell LH 91:137: printed "the day after Adjutant-General Schouler delivered the letter"; Burlingame 1995 p. 61: the manuscript has "not been seen since November 24, 1864"; Grieve et al. 2019 preprint introduction: published "on the 24th of November" while their Table 1 says 25 Nov. Better supported: Bullard (contemporary wording "this morning"; Traveller 26 Nov. "called yesterday").

2. **Date of Butler's memoir.** Bullard p. viii says vol. 2 of *Across the Busy Years* appeared in 1939; the volume is dated 1940 (Wakefield 1947; Emerson 2008 n. 20; Butler's own text refers to Robert Lincoln events "a few months earlier"). Bullard also uses "1940" at p. 114.

3. **Butler's dating of Morley's arrival.** Butler 2:391: Morley came from a Carnegie Institute ceremony in Pittsburgh "the preceding Saturday." Bullard pp. 113-114: Morley and Seth Low spoke there on Thursday 3 Nov. 1904; Morley was in Chicago on election day 8 Nov. and at the White House c. 9-16 Nov. (Morley, *Recollections* 2:106-107).

4. **Date of Hay's Chandler letter.** Hay's letter is dated 19 January 1904 (Bullard pp. 122-128; Nickell LH 91:137). The OCR of Wakefield 1948 reads "January 19, 1901"; the Tobin facsimile caption in some reproductions reads "1901" for the 1891 copyright. Better supported: 1904 (Hay was Secretary of State; Chandler at the Spanish Claims Commission).

5. **Who owned/held the "original."** Banning (*Bookman*, Feb. 1922, p. 520) says the original was "now in the collection of the late J. Pierpont Morgan" and that the letter was "written in pen and ink on the stationery of the White House." Butler 2:392: "It is not and never was" in the Morgan collection; Bullard pp. 49-50; Emerson 2008 p. 98 (1925 search of the Morgan collection). Banning's stationery claim rests on the forged facsimile.

6. **Signature and form of the text.** Butler 2:392 and the 1894/1905 Nicolay-Hay editions print "Abraham Lincoln"; the *Transcript* has "A. Lincoln" (Bullard n. 19, pp. 146-147). Robert Lincoln (to Markens, 19 Feb. 1917): "my father almost never wrote his full name except in signing formal documents" (Emerson 2008 p. 104). Facsimiles, Banning and Nickell print "any word of mine," "tendering you," "republic," "freedom"; the *Transcript* has "any words of mine," "tendering to you," "Republic," "Freedom." Grieve et al. note both variant pairs.

7. **Hay's scrapbook at Brown: date of gift.** Burlingame 1995 p. 70: "late 1950s"; Burlingame 1999: "donated ... in 1954."

8. **Wording of Hay's 25 Nov. 1864 letter to Spencer.** Burlingame 1999: "crowded out of the opportunity of writing you a note"; Burlingame's unedited *Life* vol. 2 ch. 35 p. 3854: "crowded out of the opportunity to writing a note." Both cite *At Lincoln's Side* p. 101; the manuscript was not available to me.

9. **Interval between Stanton's removal of the papers and the letter.** Bullard p. 142: "an interval of twenty-three days"; 28 Oct. to 21 Nov. is 24 days.

10. **Henry C. Bixby's discharge.** Basler CW 8:117 n. and Bullard: honorably discharged at Boston 17 Dec. 1864; Banning and Wakefield 1948 give 19 Dec. Not resolved here.

11. **Pival's name.** Emerson 2006 (*American Heritage*) prints "Jean Prival"; Nickell LH 91:139 and n. 25-28: Jean G. Pival.

12. **Whether Hay compiled the 1894 *Complete Works*.** Robert Lincoln (to Markens, 5 Jan. 1917): "it was he [Nicolay] and not Colonel Hay who did the work of compiling the two final documentary volumes"; Emerson 2008 n. 64: "Nicolay may have physically done the compiling, but Hay certainly contributed to the editing choices" (Nicolay to Hay, 22 June 1888; RTL to Nicolay, 12 Dec. 1890). Grieve et al. (preprint intro) say "Hay and Nicolay even attributed the letter to Lincoln in their biography of the President (1890)"; the letter is in the *Complete Works* (1894), not in the ten-volume *History* (1890) (Emerson 2008 n. 28; Bullard pp. 60-62).

13. **What Butler said Robert Lincoln told him.** Butler to Basler, Apr. 1945 (Bullard pp. 81-82): Robert Lincoln said Hay wrote "all letters of a non-political kind" and "imitated Lincoln's handwriting admirably." Robert Lincoln to Markens, 13 Feb. 1918: "I do not now recall having seen any letter written by either Nicolay or by Hay which was personally signed by him" and (5 Jan. 1917) that it was Hay who suggested the handwriting "was very easy to imitate" as a forgery risk (Emerson 2008 pp. 103, 107). Emerson 2008 p. 91 lists other Butler stories about Robert Lincoln shown false by Mearns.

14. **Number of Mrs Bixby's sons who died.** Schouler (24 Sept. 1864) and the letter: five killed. Basler CW 8:117 n., Bullard pp. 28-34, Nickell LH 91:137: two killed (Charles, 3 May 1863; Oliver, 30 July 1864); Henry captured and discharged; George captured (deserted or died in prison - "Neither of these reports has been established beyond doubt," Basler); Edward deserted. The *Transcript* of 25 Nov. said "six sons enlisted"; a granddaughter told Bullard "six sons went to war" (Bullard p. 46). Mrs Bixby's Southern sympathies and her destruction of the letter rest on descendants' statements of 1925 and 1948 (Bullard p. 42; Emerson 2008 n. 4).

15. **Spencer Eddy's source.** Burlingame 1995 p. 64: Mrs Beveridge "assumed that Hay himself or Henry Adams was the source"; Emerson 2008 p. 91 quotes the memo as "presumably heard (or inferred) from some conversation with Mr. Hay or Mr. Adams." Same document, different emphasis.

16. **Whether the Army and Navy Journal first printed the letter.** Often so credited (e.g., Wakefield 1948 citing vol. 2 p. 228, 3 Dec. 1864); Bullard p. 51: it "did not appear in that periodical until December 3, the Saturday of the following week."

17. **The number of Hay's "beguile" uses.** Burlingame 1995 lists thirteen instances with citations; Burlingame 1999 says "at least thirty times"; Emerson 2008 p. 92 repeats "at least 30 times ... (including 17 times after the Bixby letter was written)." The additional instances are not itemized in the sources I read.

18. **Hay's presence in Hay's own record.** Butler says Hay asked Morley to keep the secret "until after his death"; Hay's diary for the days of Morley's visit records his brother's death and nothing else of note (Bullard pp. 116-117), and Morley's *Recollections* do not mention Hay (my search; Bullard p. 114).

19. **Date of the Pro Rhetoric review of Hartman (2026).** The fetched page shows 25 March 2026; a search-engine snippet gives 16 April 2026.

20. **Atlas Obscura article date.** A search-engine summary says 7 Aug. 2025; the page could not be fetched (403) and the URL slug suggests the 2017 coverage. Unverified.