# Every reported statement that John Hay wrote the Bixby letter

Prepared from a full reading of the sources listed at the end. Quotations are given exactly as printed in the cited source (obvious OCR breaks silently repaired). "Bullard" = F. Lauriston Bullard, *Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby* (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1946), page numbers as printed (archive.org id `abrahamlincolnwi00bull`). "Emerson 2008" = Jason Emerson, "New Evidence from an Ignored Voice: Robert Todd Lincoln and the Authorship of the Bixby Letter," *Lincoln Herald* 110:2 (Summer 2008), pp. 86-116. "Burlingame 1995" = Michael Burlingame, "New Light on the Bixby Letter," *Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association* 16:1 (Winter 1995), pp. 59-71.

Headline finding: **no statement by Hay claiming the Bixby letter survives in Hay's own hand or in any document written during his lifetime (he died 1 July 1905).** Every claim is hearsay with at least two intermediaries, first written down between 1922 and 1949, and first printed between 1926 (veiled) / 1933 (explicit) and 1995.

## 1. Table of every reported claim

| # | Hay allegedly said it to | When Hay allegedly said it | Chain of transmission | First written down | First published | Exact words as reported (and where I read them) | My weight assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | John Morley (British statesman, guest of Theodore Roosevelt at the White House) | November 1904 (Morley was at the White House c. 9-16 Nov 1904; Hay's diary records Morley on 12 and 13 Nov 1904; Bullard pp. 113-117) | Hay -> Morley (Nov 1904) -> Nicholas Murray Butler (told "during a quiet talk in London at the Athenaeum on July 9, 1912") -> Butler's memoir *Across the Busy Years* vol. 2 (1940) pp. 390-393. Butler also passed it privately to W. E. Barton (1926; Barton Papers, Univ. of Chicago: Burlingame 1995 p. 61-62), to A. J. Beveridge (letters 8 Jan., 15 and 19 Feb. 1926, Beveridge Papers, LC: Emerson 2008 n. 20), to Roy P. Basler (17 Mar. and 23 Apr. 1942, Basler Papers, LC: Emerson 2008 n. 20; and 7 and 17 Apr. 1945: Bullard pp. 79-82), to S. D. Wakefield (*Hobbies*, Feb. 1941: Bullard p. 73) and to David R. Barbee (1943: "My only two authorities were Robert Lincoln and John Hay," *Tyler's Quarterly*, Jan. 1945, p. 170: Bullard p. 115) | Butler's memoir, written c. 1939-40 (Barton's 1926 letters are the earliest written trace, but veiled) | Barton 1926 (veiled, see row F); Butler 1940 (explicit) | Butler 2:391-392: "One morning during his visit to Washington Morley called on John Hay ... After a brief silence, John Hay told Morley that he had himself written the Bixby letter and that this was the reason why it could not be found among Lincoln's papers and why no original copy of it had ever been forthcoming. Hay asked Morley to treat this information as strictly confidential until after his [Hay's] death. Morley did so, and told me that he had never repeated it to any one until he told it to me during a quiet talk in London at the Athenaeum on July 9, 1912. He then asked me, in my turn, to preserve this confidence of his until he, Morley, should be no longer living." Butler adds (2:390-391) that "it is now possible to make public the fact that the famous Bixby letter ... was not written by Abraham Lincoln at all, but by John Hay," and (2:392) "Abraham Lincoln wrote very few letters that bore his signature. John G. Nicolay wrote almost all of those which were official, while John Hay wrote almost all of those which were personal. Hay was able to imitate Lincoln's handwriting and signature in well-nigh perfect fashion." (archive.org `acrossbusyyearsr02butl`, pp. 390-393; quoted Bullard pp. 112-113, Burlingame 1995 pp. 63-64, Emerson 2008 pp. 90-91) | The only claim tied to a named, datable occasion, but second-hand and recorded 28 years after Butler heard it and 36 after the alleged remark. Checks that fail: (i) Butler's circumstantial detail that Morley came to Washington from a Carnegie Institute ceremony in Pittsburgh "the preceding Saturday" is wrong; Bullard found Morley and Seth Low spoke there on Thursday 3 Nov. (Bullard pp. 113-114). (ii) Morley's own *Recollections* (1917) 2:104-108 describe the White House week ("Next day I found myself at Washington, the guest of the conquering hero at the White House ... Not often have I passed a week so interesting") and never mention Hay (my search of the whole volume, archive.org `recollections0002morl`, finds no "Hay"; Bullard p. 114: "His narrative contains nothing about John Hay"). (iii) Hay's own diary for 12-13 Nov. 1904 records the Morley dinner and his brother Leonard's death, nothing about Bixby (Bullard pp. 116-117). (iv) Ten months earlier Hay had written W. E. Chandler that the letter "is genuine" (row H). (v) Butler's reliability as a witness was doubted by Harry Pratt and Basler, and his story of stopping Robert Lincoln from burning the Lincoln papers was shown false by D. C. Mearns (Emerson 2008 p. 91 and nn. 21-24). (vi) Butler also asserted on Robert Lincoln's alleged authority that Hay wrote "all letters of a non-political kind" and imitated Lincoln's hand (Bullard pp. 81-82), which Robert Lincoln's own letters contradict ("I do not now recall having seen any letter written by either Nicolay or by Hay which was personally signed by him," RTL to Markens, 13 Feb. 1918, Emerson 2008 p. 107). (vii) Bullard also notes Hay's loose use of "wrote" for "wrote out" (p. 133). Tyler Dennett (Hay's biographer): "I do not regard the Butler-Morley statement as conclusive" (Bullard p. 137). Emerson 2008 p. 91: "Not only was this second-hand information eight years after the supposed telling, but Butler also wrote it more than a quarter century later - a difficult statement to call reliable." Verdict: weak-to-moderate; the strongest of a weak set. |
| B | William Crary Brownell (essayist, Scribner's editor, d. 1928) | Undated; necessarily before 1 July 1905 | Hay -> Brownell -> Rollo Ogden (editor, *New York Times*; "who told me of it at the time") -> NYT editorial 14 May 1933 and Ogden's letter to Bullard, 15 May 1933 | Ogden's editorial and letter, May 1933 | NYT editorial "The Authorship of Happy Sayings," 14 May 1933 (p. 4:4); Ogden's letter printed Bullard p. 108 (1946) | Editorial: the Bixby letter "was doubtless signed by Lincoln and is certainly characteristic of his language, but it was actually written by John Hay." Ogden to Bullard, next day: "I know of no scrap of documentary evidence, but Mr. Hay in his lifetime told more than one person that he really wrote the letter which Lincoln signed. Among others he confided this fact to the late W. C. Brownell, who told me of it at the time. Naturally, Mr. Hay took pains never publicly to claim the authorship, and, I presume, left nothing written which set the matter straight." (Bullard pp. 107-108; Burlingame 1995 p. 62; Emerson 2008 pp. 89-90) | Third-hand and undated at both links; the earliest explicit assertion in print (1933) and independent of the Morley chain (Ogden names Brownell, not Morley). Bullard notes there was "an interval of twenty-three years, at least" (Hay's death to Brownell's) within which Brownell could have told Ogden, and that Ogden "understood 'wrote' to mean composed" (p. 108). "More than one person" is unsupported by any name other than Brownell. Verdict: weak; no check possible. |
| C | Walter Hines Page (New York magazine editor and publisher in Hay's lifetime; US ambassador in London 1913-18) | Undated; before July 1905 | Hay -> Page -> Lady Strafford (an American, tenant of Knebworth House during Page's embassy, 1913-18) -> Rev. G. A. Jackson (told by Lady Strafford; wrote it to E. V. Lucas on 16 Jan. 1922) -> Lucas, *Post-Bag Diversions* (London, 1934), pp. 132-133 | Jackson's letter, 16 Jan. 1922 | Lucas 1934 | "Lady Strafford ... occupied for a time Knebworth House, Lord Lytton's place, and the late Mr. Page, the American Ambassador, used to spend weekends there. On one occasion, Lady Strafford told me, he noticed a copy - framed, I think - of Lincoln's letter and asked her if she knew the true history of it. He then related that John Hay had told him that when the news of the mother's bereavement was given to Lincoln he instructed Hay to write a suitable reply of condolence. This Hay did, and handed it to Lincoln. Lincoln was so surprised that Hay had so perfectly captured his style of composition that he had the letter exactly as Hay wrote it sent to the mother as coming from himself." (Bullard pp. 110-112; Emerson 2008 p. 90; Nickell, *Lincoln Herald* 91:4 (1989) p. 136; Wakefield 1948 pp. 8-9; Burlingame 1995 p. 62) | Five links from Hay to print, none dated except the last two (1922, 1934). Bullard p. 112 calls it "fourth-rate testimony"; Emerson 2008 p. 90: "a chain too long to be trusted." The embellishment (Lincoln's surprise at the perfect imitation) is narrative, not a quotation. Nickell (LH 91:137) observes that both this and the Morley account were "supposedly elicited by the seeing of framed copies of the letter - which suggests the possibility that the hearsay accounts are merely variant folktales." Verdict: very weak. |
| D | Unknown (Louis A. Coolidge's informant) | Unknown | ? -> Louis A. Coolidge (Boston; Washington correspondent 1891-1904; literary director of the Republican National Committee in the year before Hay's death) -> "one person" -> Bullard | Never (Bullard: "not supported by any written statement") | Bullard 1946 pp. 109-110 | "The source of his information we can only conjecture, but he emphatically told one person, who in turn told us, that President Lincoln had nothing to do with the Bixby letter." (Bullard pp. 109-110; Burlingame 1995 p. 64; Emerson 2008 p. 90) | Anonymous at two links, undated, unwritten. Coolidge was in Washington in 1904, the year of the Morley visit and of Tobin's second copyright on the forged facsimile (Bullard p. 128 speculates the story was "afloat in Washington in that year"). Verdict: negligible as independent evidence; it is not even certain Coolidge attributed the letter to Hay rather than merely denying it to Lincoln. |
| E | Hay or Henry Adams (source uncertain) to Spencer Eddy (Hay's private secretary at the State Department) | Unknown (Eddy served Hay c. 1898-1901) | Hay (or Adams) -> Spencer Eddy -> his sister Catherine (Mrs Albert J.) Beveridge -> memorandum by Mrs Beveridge, 22 July 1949, filed with the Nicholas Murray Butler folder, container 286, Beveridge Papers, Library of Congress -> Burlingame 1995 | 22 July 1949 | Burlingame 1995 p. 64 (n. 16) | Burlingame 1995 p. 64: "Spencer Eddy, Hay's personal secretary, told his sister that Hay had actually written the Bixby letter. She assumed that Hay himself or Henry Adams was the source of her brother's information." Emerson 2008 p. 91 quotes the memo: a story "that he had presumably heard (or inferred) from some conversation with Mr. Hay or Mr. [Henry] Adams." | Third-hand, source avowedly uncertain ("presumably heard (or inferred)"), recorded 44 years after Hay's death and after the Butler and Bullard publications, in a folder about Butler. Emerson 2008 p. 91: "This third-hand evidence from a conversation 'presumably heard (or inferred)' is not substantive evidence." Verdict: negligible. |
| F | (veiled) | - | Butler -> William E. Barton, *A Beautiful Blunder* (1926) | 1926 | 1926 | Barton: "from a very high source comes a suggestion that there is an unpublished mystery with respect to this matter. It can mean, as I judge, nothing else than that John Hay wrote the letter." Burlingame 1995 pp. 61-62 identifies the "high source" as Butler from the Barton Papers (Univ. of Chicago). Barton rejected it: "versatile and gifted as John Hay was, he could not have written that letter. It is Lincoln's own." | Same chain as A; not independent. Earliest printed trace of the Morley story. |
| G | J. A. Spender (editor, *Westminster Gazette*) | - | Spender's memoir *Life, Journalism and Politics* (1927/28) 1:177 mentions a correspondence with Whitelaw Reid "about an essay which he wrote on Abraham Lincoln, and which raised a point I had discussed in earlier days with John Hay." | 1927/28 | 1927/28 | On Bullard's inquiry Spender replied that the point was "John Hay's part in certain speeches and writings, especially the famous letter of condolence," but that it "could not be raised on anything that Hay himself said to me"; in a 1941 letter he said the story came "Certainly not from John Hay himself ... possibly from Lord Morley," adding "Hay was a very punctilious man and it was unlike him to claim the authorship of anything that he wrote on behalf of his chief, but he may have let a word slip in private talk with an English friend" (Bullard pp. 106-107, 114-115). | Negative evidence: a well-placed English journalist who "knew [Hay] well" could not trace the rumour to Hay. Verdict: counts against, not for. |
| H | William E. Chandler (Hay's *own* written statement, contra) | 19 Jan. 1904 | Hay -> Chandler; copy (copyist unknown, probably in the Spanish Claims Commission office) in the Chandler Collection, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord; noted by N. W. Stephenson (1926); examined by Bullard 1941 | 1904 | Stephenson, *Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln* (1926) p. 438 n.; Bullard pp. 122-128 in full | "The letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine, is printed in our edition of his Works, and has been frequently re-published; but the engraved copy of Mr. Lincoln's alleged manuscript, which is extensively sold, is, in my opinion, a very ingenious forgery." (full text in `hay_own_statements.md`) | The only statement by Hay himself on the letter; written ten months before the alleged Morley confidence. Its force depends on what "genuine" means (Bullard pp. 129-133 argues it means what it says; Burlingame reads it as referring only to the printed text as against the forged facsimile). |
| I | Robert Todd Lincoln (Hay's statements to him, contra) | c. 1902-1905 | Hay -> RTL -> (a) Frederic N. Towers (RTL's secretary) to Col. John Tweedale, 22 Apr. 1908; (b) RTL to Isaac Markens, 5 Jan., 24 Feb. 1917, 13 Feb. 1918 (Chicago History Museum) | 1908; 1917 | Angle, *A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln in Letters by His Son* (1968); Emerson 2006/2008 | (a) "in response to inquiries some years ago by [Robert] Lincoln, both Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay stated that they had never seen any draft or copy of this letter to Mrs. Bixby" (Emerson 2008 n. 68). (b) "Colonel Hay knew nothing whatever of the source of the printed copy of the letter in the Nicolay and Hay book. He suggested a curious thing; namely, that my father's handwriting was very easy to imitate ... Colonel Hay went on to say that pretty nearly all the words in the Bixby letter could be found in photographs of genuine letters and that perhaps this lithograph had been made from a forged document." (5 Jan. 1917, Emerson 2008 p. 103). "Your suggestion that neither Nicolay nor Hay probably had any special knowledge of the letter at the time is correct. Hay himself told me so; when I took the matter up Nicolay had died and it was he who had compiled the collection of papers." (24 Feb. 1917, p. 104). | Second-hand but written by Hay's closest friend within about fifteen years of the conversations, and consistent with Hay's 1904 letter. Emerson 2008 p. 105: "the man purported to have written the letter specifically told his best friend - and his hero's son - that he had no knowledge of the letter when it was written." Burlingame's published work (1995, 1999) does not mention Robert Lincoln at all (Emerson 2008 p. 96). |
| J | Hay's children (contra) | - | Barton 1926; Bullard 1946 | - | 1926; 1946 | Barton (p. 63, quoted Nickell LH 91:137): "I have made diligent inquiry of the family of John Hay, and ... they, who ought to know of this if anyone knows, profess to have no knowledge that supports such a claim." Bullard p. 109: "Frankly and graciously they have told us, as they many times have told others, that they recall no mention whatever of his claim." | Silence within the family, though Emerson concedes the family "never denied it" (2008 p. 91). |

Names asked about but not found: no source I read attributes any Bixby statement to Herbert Putnam (Librarian of Congress; he appears in Butler 2:183 only in connexion with the Lincoln papers) or to anyone named Tuckerman. The only Putnam in the Bixby literature is Eben Putnam, co-author with Willard G. Bixby of the Bixby genealogy (Bullard p. 6 and n. 25). Daniel Kilham Dodge's 1925 remark that the letter "has been attributed to John Hay, who, according to his diary wrote many letters which Lincoln signed without reading. From another source I have heard that Mr. Hay imitated the President's handwriting" (letter of A. J. Gordon to RTL, 30 Sept. 1925, Emerson 2008 p. 100) is an inference from the Herndon letter, not a report of a Hay statement.

## 2. Narrative of the claims in the order they entered the record

1. **1866-1905: nothing.** Hay's letter to Herndon (5 Sept. 1866) says he wrote letters in Lincoln's name but does not mention Bixby (see `hay_own_statements.md`). Nicolay and Hay printed the letter as Lincoln's in *Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works* (1894) 2:600, with the footnote "This is one of Lincoln's most famous letters on account of its evident sincerity and the purity of its expression" (Gettysburg edition 1905, 10:274 n.; Emerson 2008 n. 28). Robert Lincoln asked Hay about the letter c. 1902 and was told Hay "knew nothing whatever of the source of the printed copy" (row I). On 19 Jan. 1904 Hay told Chandler the letter "is genuine" (row H). In November 1904 Morley stayed at the White House (row A).
2. **1912:** Morley tells Butler (per Butler).
3. **1922:** Jackson writes to Lucas (row C), the earliest surviving *written* record of any Hay claim, itself at least three removes from Hay.
4. **1926:** Barton's veiled "very high source" (row F); Barton rejects it.
5. **1927/28:** Spender's memoir hints at a "point" discussed with Hay; Spender later disowns Hay as the source (row G).
6. **14 May 1933:** NYT editorial: earliest explicit printed assertion; Ogden names Brownell (row B).
7. **1934:** Lucas prints the Jackson letter (row C).
8. **Feb. 1939 / Feb. 1941:** Wakefield's articles in *Hobbies* build on Lucas and Butler (Bullard p. viii; Wakefield 1948 pp. 8-10).
9. **1940:** Butler's memoir (row A). Bullard p. viii misdates vol. 2 to 1939; the title page says 1940 (Emerson 2008 n. 20; Wakefield 1947).
10. **1943-46:** Basler ("Who Wrote the 'Letter to Mrs. Bixby'?", *Lincoln Herald*, Feb. 1943, pp. 3-8), Barbee (*Tyler's Quarterly*, Jan. 1945), Bullard (1946) sift the claims; Coolidge (row D) enters the record only through Bullard.
11. **1949:** Mrs Beveridge's memo (row E), printed by Burlingame in 1995.

## 3. Overall assessment

- Earliest *datable* alleged statement by Hay: November 1904, to Morley (row A). Earliest *written* record of any claim: 16 Jan. 1922 (row C). Earliest explicit *publication*: 14 May 1933 (row B).
- Every chain has at least two human intermediaries and was first written down 17 to 44 years after Hay's death. None was recorded by the first recipient (Morley, Brownell, Page) in any surviving document; Morley's own memoir is silent.
- The two most circumstantial versions contradict each other in content: the Page version has Lincoln ordering Hay to draft and then sending Hay's draft unchanged because it captured his style; the Morley version has Hay explaining the absence of the manuscript from Lincoln's papers.
- Against them stand Hay's only written statement ("genuine," 1904), Hay's reported statements to Robert Lincoln (rows H-I), and the silence of Hay's diaries, letters, memoir essay ("Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln," *Century*, Nov. 1890, reprinted in *Addresses of John Hay* (1906) pp. 323-354, which discusses Lincoln's reading, evenings and the children but says nothing about who drafted his letters) and family.
- Burlingame (1995 p. 71) concedes that none of the pieces "clinch the case" separately and relies on their cumulation plus the scrapbooks; Emerson (2008 pp. 108-109) argues the cumulative hearsay "cannot overcome the fact that Hay never told any such thing to Robert Lincoln."

## Sources read in full for this file
- Butler, *Across the Busy Years*, vol. 2 (1940), pp. 390-393 (archive.org `acrossbusyyearsr02butl`).
- Bullard 1946, complete (archive.org `abrahamlincolnwi00bull`), esp. pp. 106-137 and notes pp. 145-154.
- Burlingame 1995 (JALA 16:59-71), complete.
- Burlingame, "The Trouble With the Bixby Letter," *American Heritage* 50:4 (July 1999), complete.
- Emerson, "America's Most Famous Letter," *American Heritage* 57:1 (Feb./Mar. 2006), complete; Emerson 2008 (*Lincoln Herald* 110:86-116), complete.
- Nickell, "Lincoln's Bixby Letter: A Study in Authenticity," *Lincoln Herald* 91:4 (Winter 1989), pp. 135-140, complete.
- Wakefield, *Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby* (1947) and *Abraham Lincoln and the Bixby Letter* (1948), complete.
- Morley, *Recollections* vol. 2 (1917), pp. 103-108 and full-text search.
- Hay, *Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary* (1908), vol. 1 pp. 238-250 and full-text search of all three volumes for "Bixby" (none); Thayer, *Life and Letters of John Hay* (1915), full-text search (no "Bixby").