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Show historical Vkighlights Zlma Scott Watio (Released by Western Newspaper Union. I That Famous Bixby Letter TT HAS been called "the world's most famous letter," alsc "the most sublime letter ever penned by the hand of man," and few persons who have read it will disagree with the aptness of either characterization. characteriza-tion. For both refer to the message which Abraham Lincoln sent to Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston in 1864 when he was told that she had lost five sons on the field of battle. This letter has also been called "a beautiful blunder," because it was inspired by an erroneous report re-port of the facts in the case. It is j true that Mrs. Bixby had five sons ' in the Union army. However, only 1 two of them were killed in battle. Of 1 the other three, one was honorably discharged after two years' service and two were deserters! Now there is good reason to believe be-lieve that another blunder has been made in regard to the Bixby letter that Abraham Lincoln did not write it at all and that the often-reproduced facsimiles, including this one: C OKm UJ. 4i tfHu,, A. 'ft' . C ' yl j . p& f&.ctz. J A - ( f w t. u-e rLy H J if y,,., ft 1- n tay A JtL i-U tX, I . i are forgeries of the handwriting of the man who actually penned it! Those are the conclusions of a historian his-torian whose research has turned up some startling facts about this famous fa-mous epistle. He is Sherman Day Wakefield, secretary of the Lincoln Fellowship of New York and author of the book, "How Lincoln Became President." Two years ago Mr. Wakefield wrote an article for the February issue of the magazine, Hobbies, in which his conclusions were that "we cannot be sure whether Lincoln wrote the letter to Mrs. Bixby or not, although al-though it appears doubtful, but we can be sure that we have neither the original nor any true facsimile facsim-ile copy of the original and that none of the current cur-rent reproductions reproduc-tions was made from the original." origi-nal." Since then, Mr. Wakefield's investigations have confirmed his suspicions of the authenticity of the letter and led him to the conclusion that Lincoln was neither the author, au-thor, nor the actual writer, of it. The man who was both was John Hay, Lincoln's secretary! Mr. Wakefield presents the evidence evi-dence to support that conclusion in an article, "Who Wrote Lincoln's Letter to Mrs. Bixby?", which appeared ap-peared in the February, 1941, issue of Hobbies. For John Hay himself confided to at least two men that he, instead of Lincoln, had written the Bixby letter. One of them was Walter Wal-ter Hines Page, American ambassador ambas-sador to England during Wilson's administration, and the other was Viscount Morley, the distinguished British statesman and author. "Here we have two different accounts . . . involving different men of unimpeachable un-impeachable veracity . . . which agree that John Hay said he was the author of the Bixby letter," writes Mr. Wakefield. "If it were possible to doubt one story, it is extremely ex-tremely unlikely that both stories can be dismissed." Mr. Wakefield proves that Hay often imitated Lincoln's handwriting when he was the President's secretary secre-tary and that many documents, believed be-lieved to be in Lincoln's handwriting, handwrit-ing, are actually the work of Hay's pen. It is not likely that any question ques-tion of the authorship of the Bixby letter came up while Lincoln was still living, for his assassination occurred oc-curred less than five months after it was written. When it became so famous. Hay naturally was reluctant reluc-tant to claim then that he, rather than the martyred President, was the author. But, as Mr. Wakefield points out, "he did feel that in justice jus-tice to the truth and to himself, the fact of his authorship should not be lost to the world, and so he chose to tell at least two outstanding men of his time that he had written it" m m The letter to Mrs. Bixby was sent to Adjutant-General Schouler of Massachusetts who delivered it in person to Mrs. Bixby on November 24, 1864. Its text was printed for the first time in the Boston Transcript Tran-script on Friday, November 24, and the following morning both the Boston Bos-ton Advertiser and the Boston Journal Jour-nal carried it. The first facsimile appeared ap-peared in 1891 when Michael F. To-bin To-bin of New York applied for a copyright copy-right for one but whether or not he had the original, or if it is still in existence, is still a mystery. |