# The strongest case that Lincoln composed the Bixby letter

Assembled from Bullard (1946), Basler (1943 article as reported; CW 8:117 n., 1953), Townsend (*Lincoln Herald*, Oct. 1946), Nickell (*Lincoln Herald* 91:4, Winter 1989, pp. 135-140, with Jean Pival's report), Emerson (*American Heritage* Feb./Mar. 2006; *Lincoln Herald* 110:2, Summer 2008, pp. 86-116), and, at second hand, Edward Steers Jr., *Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President* (2007), pp. 93-100 (cited in the Wikipedia article as "Steers and Holzer 2007"; not read by me) and Frank J. Williams (as quoted by Emerson). Page references are to the sources named.

## A. Documentary and circumstantial arguments

1. **The request came to the President personally and at the highest level.** Governor Andrew asked that "a letter might be written her by the President of the United States" (Bullard p. 16); Stanton himself took the papers out of the files on 28 Oct. 1864 (Bullard pp. 22-25, 35-37). Williams (letter to *American Heritage*, 30 June 1999, quoted Emerson 2008 p. 89): such a letter would "command the personal attention of the president." Louis A. Warren (to E. C. Stone, 20 July 1945, Bullard Collection, Boston University; Emerson 2008 n. 14) "scoffed at the idea that Lincoln would 'delegate' the writing of such an important letter to his secretary."

2. **Lincoln did write some letters himself, including the important ones.** Hay's own 1866 letter, in the sentence the Hay advocates omit: "He wrote perhaps half a dozen a week himself - not more" (Emerson 2008 p. 88). Robert Lincoln (to Markens, 13 Feb. 1918): "He never dictated correspondence; he sometimes wrote a document and had his draft copied by either Nicolay or Hay ... In writing a careful letter, he first wrote it himself, then corrected it, and then rewrote the corrected version himself ... I do not now recall having seen any letter written by either Nicolay or by Hay which was personally signed by him" (Emerson 2008 pp. 106-107). Lincoln's own condolence letters to Fanny McCullough (23 Dec. 1862, CW 6:16-17) and to Colonel Ellsworth's parents (25 May 1861, CW 4:385-386) are in his hand and are of the same order.

3. **Hay himself said the letter was Lincoln's.** Hay to Chandler, 19 Jan. 1904: "The letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine, is printed in our edition of his Works" (Bullard pp. 122-128). Hay to Mrs Langford, 4 June 1903, shows he distinguished between a genuine signature and a clerk-written body when asked (Bullard pp. 129-133). Nicolay and Hay included the letter in *Complete Works* (1894) with a footnote praising "its evident sincerity and the purity of its expression" (Gettysburg ed. 10:274 n.); Basler (draft letter to Butler, Basler Papers, LC; Emerson 2008 p. 92 and n. 29): inclusion "seems to place [Hay] in the questionable position of having knowingly foisted upon the American people a letter he knew not to be genuinely Lincoln's," and Nicolay, who compiled the volumes, "certainly would have known."

4. **Hay told Robert Lincoln he knew nothing of it.** Towers to Tweedale, 22 Apr. 1908: "both Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay stated that they had never seen any draft or copy of this letter"; RTL to Markens, 5 Jan. and 24 Feb. 1917: Hay "knew nothing whatever of the source of the printed copy"; "neither Nicolay nor Hay probably had any special knowledge of the letter at the time ... Hay himself told me so" (Emerson 2008 pp. 103-104, n. 68). RTL in 1925 held a photographic copy he said was "certainly a reproduction of the original, which was in the handwriting of his father" (Towers to *New York Evening Post*, 8 Aug. 1925; Emerson 2008 p. 99), while telling Charles Moore the facsimile was "made-up" (p. 100) - i.e. he believed the text but not the forgeries. Emerson's conclusion (2008 p. 108): the Markens letters "conclusively show that not only did Robert Lincoln believe his father had written the Bixby letter, but also that John Hay himself told Robert he had no knowledge of the letter when it was written." Paul Angle (1968, quoted Emerson p. 105): "This statement should dispose of the allegation that John Hay, because of his literary felicity, must have written the Bixby letter."

5. **Hay never claimed it to his family** (Barton 1926 p. 63; Bullard p. 109), nor in his diary, letters or memoir essay, nor to Roosevelt (Emerson 2008 n. 79), and every claim that he did is hearsay of two or more removes (see `hay_claims.md`). Townsend (1946, quoted Emerson 2008 p. 89): "whisperings, insinuations, and vague, indefinite recollections" that "could not even get in the back door of a courtroom."

6. **Schouler, who handled the letter, called it Lincoln's**: "President Lincoln wrote Mrs. Bixby a letter full of sympathy and deep feeling, which we had the pleasure of placing in her hands" (*History* 1:578; Bullard p. 26) - though Schouler could not have known who composed it.

7. **Contemporary reception.** Bullard pp. 52-53: the letter was reprinted in 1865 anthologies; W. C. Ford (*Boston Transcript*, 4 Aug. 1925, Bullard p. 144): it "bears in every line the characteristic expression of Lincoln, which no man could imitate."

## B. Stylistic arguments

8. **Parallels in Lincoln's own writings.** Bullard pp. 96-105: "our Heavenly Father" in the proclamation of 10 Apr. 1862; "our heavenly Father" in the proclamation of 20 Oct. 1864; "our Heavenly Father" in the reply to Mrs Gurney (Oct. 1862); "our Father in Heaven" in the letter to Mrs Gurney of 4 Sept. 1864, "seventy-eight days" before Bixby. Nickell (LH 91:138-139, Table 2) lines up Bixby phrases with Lincoln's: "My Dear Madam"; "which might divert your mind"; "no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow"; "of a citizen so venerable" (Phillips, the same day); "I tender to you ... the thanks of the nation"; "prayers to our Father in Heaven"; "the sad bereavement you mention"; "cherished memories"; "loved ones lost"; "sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars" (Lyceum address, 1838). Nickell p. 139: Lincoln's "frequent use of the verb *to tender*" - nine instances between 24 Dec. 1860 and 8 Feb. 1861 alone; alliteration ("beguile you from the grief," "assuage the anguish," "loved and lost") matched by "for weal or for woe," "sacredness of your sorrow," "lamp of liberty," "loved ones lost." Wikipedia's editors add Lincoln to Chase, 21 Sept. 1859, "I cannot refrain from" (CW 3), against Burlingame's claim that the construction is Hay's.

9. **Pival's report** (Jean G. Pival, University of Kentucky, report to Nickell, 23 June 1988; LH 91:139): Lincoln's "Elizabethan conditionals" and preference for "shall/should" - "Hay, even if trying to emulate Lincoln's style, would almost certainly have used 'would'" in "which should attempt to beguile you"; Hay's high frequency of the perfect aspect and of the passive against Lincoln's active voice, the Bixby letter using the passive "only twice"; "Lincoln's use of 'beguile' is in the Elizabethan sense of diverting," Hay's (to Anna Ridgely, 19 Mar. 1861) "closer to the contemporary sense: 'to charm or entice'"; Lincoln's "tender" in the legal sense of "offer"; the "altar of freedom" metaphor "consistent with coined metaphors found in Lincoln's writings" whereas "Hay would more likely have used a literary quotation." Conclusion: "my conclusion is that Lincoln wrote the letter himself. There is too much stylistic evidence to believe otherwise."

10. **Elevation and maturity.** Bullard pp. 141-143: the Farewell, Gettysburg, Second Inaugural and Bixby share "the measured flow of the lines, the cadence as of lyrics in prose, the nobility of sentiment and the simplicity of structure"; "the John Hay of the 1860's was not" capable of it; Hay's known compositions for Lincoln (Boker, 26 Oct. 1863) show "no glimmer of Lincoln" (p. 85). Basler (1943, quoted Burlingame 1995 p. 64-65): read the Farewell, Gettysburg and Second Inaugural aloud and then Bixby and it is "exceedingly difficult to believe that anyone other than Lincoln composed such sentences." Emerson 2008 pp. 93-94 sets Hay's flat condolence letters (to Ned Stanton, 8 May 1870; to "Wirt," 21 June 1870; to Edgar Welles, 14 Feb. 1878) beside Bixby and McCullough. Williams: beside McCullough, Bixby shows "a mystical Lincoln that Hay, though a prolific writer, never equaled" (Emerson 2008 p. 93).

## C. Rebuttals of the Hay arguments (Bullard, Emerson, Nickell)

11. **Hearsay chains** - see `hay_claims.md`: Bullard pp. 106-137; Emerson 2008 pp. 89-92 ("all second- and third-hand hearsay"); Nickell LH 91:137 ("variant folktales").

12. **The Herndon letter** does not say Hay wrote all letters; "He wrote perhaps half a dozen a week himself" (Emerson 2008 p. 88). Bullard p. 66-68 and Sandburg (*War Years* 3:414) count hundreds of Lincoln autograph letters and telegrams (Bullard p. 67: Sandburg's tallies 216/211/543/536); Bullard p. 68 shows the kind of letter Hay did sign or send (the Forbes letter of 12 Sept. 1863, the Greeley safe-conduct).

13. **Imitation of the handwriting** is irrelevant because there is no manuscript; Butler's assertion that Hay imitated Lincoln's hand "in well-nigh perfect fashion" rests on Robert Lincoln, who said the opposite (Bullard pp. 79-82; Emerson 2008 p. 107); the Huntington documents "penned by Hay, signed by Lincoln" show Hay writing bodies in his *own* hand for Lincoln's signature (Bullard pp. 85-87).

14. **"Beguile" and the word-frequency argument** (Emerson 2008 pp. 92-93): "The point then becomes not that Lincoln never used these words, but that Hay used them more often. One must then ask: Does frequency of word use substantiate its validity?"; Bullard's "Heavenly Father" and Nickell's "tender" show Lincoln used the other allegedly Hay-marked words; the absence of "beguile" from the *Collected Works* "does not mean he never wrote nor spoke nor understood it." Grieve et al. (2019, preprint lines 632-637) themselves observe that "One analyst, like Nickell, might consider the word 'tendering', while another analyst, like Burlingame, might consider the word 'beguile', and each will honestly come to a different conclusion."

15. **The scrapbooks** (Emerson 2008 pp. 94-96): the Brown scrapbook holds items "definitely not Hay's creations," including other letters signed by Lincoln and a French notice about Mary Lincoln; the LC scrapbook covering 1860-74 "is replete with articles about Abraham Lincoln"; the oversized LC scrapbook (OV 40) is half-filled with Lincoln's writings including photostats of the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural, "so why include them?"; Hay collected Lincoln material for the history from 1861, and revered Lincoln ("the greatest character since Christ"). Emerson concedes this is "the strongest evidence in favor of Hay's authorship, although circumstantial" and that "an assumption of their proof of Bixby letter authorship is not unfounded," but "cannot sustain a definitive conclusion."

16. **Busyness.** Bullard p. 142: Lincoln "responded without delay to circumstances which required instant action" (the Greeley telegram-letter "written at white heat"); Emerson 2006 notes that Hay's 25 Nov. Spencer letter shows Lincoln declining to have Hay draft what he meant to write himself. My count of Basler items shows the week of 21-27 Nov. 1864 (15 items) was no heavier than an average autumn week and lighter than election week (26) or annual-message week (35) - see `lincoln_calendar_nov1864.md`.

17. **Butler's reliability** (Emerson 2008 p. 91, nn. 21-24): Pratt had "little use for Butler's historical scholarship"; Basler questioned Morley's reliability; Butler's account of the Lincoln papers was proven false by Mearns; his Pittsburgh dating was wrong (Bullard pp. 113-114).

## D. Where the Lincoln case is weakest (my assessment)
- It cannot produce a manuscript either; the Transcript text is all there is.
- Its stylistic arguments are as impressionistic as Burlingame's and Pival's report is unpublished except through Nickell.
- Basler's own 1953 headnote had retreated to "Controversy over the claim that John Hay composed this letter has somewhat abated, with the claim remaining unproved" (CW 8:117 n.) - proof is lacking on both sides.
- Hay's "genuine" (1904) is capable of the narrow reading Burlingame gives it (the text as printed is authentic, the facsimile a forgery), and Robert Lincoln's reports are second-hand.
- The Phillips letter of the same day, surviving only in "an unidentified handwriting" on Executive Mansion stationery (CW 8:118 n.), shows that on 21 Nov. 1864 at least one gracious presidential letter to a Massachusetts citizen was not drafted in Lincoln's own hand.