Bixby Letter Research Paper

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The Bixby Letter, is a piece of forgery with quite a twist to it. Supposedly written by Honest Abe himself, the letter was quickly disposed by the recipient out of hatred for the President and the Union. The author of the letter, however has been in questioning for many years. Was it Lincoln who wrote it or was it someone else and why would Lydia Bixby lie that all of her sons had died in the war when only two did?
Lydia Bixby was married to Cromwell Bixby and two lived in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. The couple had five sons and three daughters and the family moved to Boston a short time before the Civil War. The Bixby Letter was a letter apparently written by Abraham Lincoln to Lydia Parker Bixby after hearing that her five sons had died in …show more content…

Seven years later, Rollo Ogden of the New York Times stated that the letter was signed by Abraham Lincoln, but that it was John Hay who wrote it. To back his claim, he also said that he knew that Hay told numerous people before he died that he was the one who wrote the letter. In 1928, Reverend G.A. Jackson published a letter which told about the history of the Bixby Letter. “When I lived at Knebworth, Cora, Lady Strafford—an American—occupied for a time Knebworth House, Lord Lytton's place, and the late Mr. Page ... used to spend week-ends there. On one occasion, Lady Strafford told me, he noticed a copy—framed, I think—of Lincoln's letter [to Mrs. Bixby] 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 [who] 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.” (Burlingame,

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