Bixby letter

On September 24, 1864, Massachusetts Adjutant General William Schouler wrote to Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew about a discharge request sent to the governor by Otis Newhall, the father of five Union soldiers. In the letter, Schouler recalled how, two years prior, they had helped a poor widow named Lydia Bixby to visit a son who was a patient at an Army hospital. About ten days earlier, Bixby had come to Schouler's office claiming that five of her sons had died fighting for the Union. Governor Andrew forwarded Newhall's request to the U.S. War Department with a note requesting that the president honor Bixby with a letter.[5]

In response to a War Department request of October 1, Schouler sent a messenger to Bixby's home six days later, asking for the names and units of her sons. He sent a report to the War Department on October 12, which was delivered to President Lincoln by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sometime after October 28.[6][7]

On November 21, both the Boston Evening Traveller and the Boston Evening Transcript published an appeal by Schouler for contributions to assist soldiers' families at Thanksgiving which mentioned a widow who had lost five sons in the war.[8][9] Schouler had some of the donations given to Bixby and then visited her home on Thanksgiving, November 24. The letter from the President arrived at Schouler's office the next morning.[2][10]

Bixby's 1862 affidavit attempting to secure a discharge for son Edward

Nevertheless, at least two of Lydia Bixby's sons survived the war:

• Private Arthur Edward Bixby (known as "Edward") – Company C, 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery (enlisted June 24, 1861). Deserted from Ft. Richardson, Virginia on May 28, 1862.[11] Trying to secure a discharge for him, his mother filed an affidavit on October 17, 1862, which claimed Edward had enlisted underage without her permission.[12] Born July 13, 1843, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Returned to Boston after the war.[13]
• Sergeant Charles N. Bixby – Company D, 20th Massachusetts Infantry (served July 18, 1861 – May 3, 1863). Killed in action near Fredericksburg. Born c.1841 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.[14][15]
• Corporal Henry Cromwell Bixby – 1st enlistment, Company G, 20th Massachusetts Infantry (served July 18, 1861 – May 29, 1862).[16][15] 2nd enlistment, Company K, 32nd Massachusetts Infantry (served August 5, 1862 – December 17, 1864). Captured at Gettysburg and sent to Richmond, Virginia. Paroled on March 7, 1864, at City Point, Virginia.[14][17] Born March 30, 1830, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Died November 8, 1871, in Milford, Massachusetts,[18] from tuberculosis he contracted while a soldier.[19][20]
• Private Oliver Cromwell Bixby, Jr. – Company E, 58th Massachusetts Infantry (served February 26, 1864 – July 30, 1864). Wounded at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864. Killed in action near Petersburg, Virginia. Born February 1, 1828, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.[18][11]
• Private George Way Bixby – Company B, 56th Massachusetts Infantry (served March 16, 1864 – ?). Enlisted under the name "George Way", apparently to conceal his enlistment from his wife. Captured at Petersburg on July 30, 1864. First held prisoner at Richmond but later transferred to Salisbury Prison in North Carolina, arriving there on October 9, 1864. His fate after that remains uncertain. Military records report conflicting accounts of him either dying at Salisbury or deserting to the Confederate Army.[lower-alpha 2][22][23] Born June 22, 1836, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.[13]

Schouler's report to the War Department erroneously listed Edward as a member of the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry who had died of his wounds at Folly Island, South Carolina.[24][2] Bixby may have been trying to conceal—possibly from embarrassment or hope of further financial aid—Edward's 1862 desertion. (She had been receiving a pension following Charles's death in 1863.)[25]

At the time of her September meeting with Schouler, Bixby's son George had been a prisoner of war for just over a month, and Henry was still hospitalized following his exchange.[26] The War Department failed to use its own records to correct errors in the Schouler report.[27]

Lydia Bixby died in Boston on October 27, 1878, while a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital. In his initial letter to Governor Andrew, Schouler called Bixby "the best specimen of a true-hearted Union woman I have yet seen,"[28] but in the years following her death both her character and loyalty were questioned.[29][30]

Writing to her daughter in 1904, Boston socialite Sarah Cabot Wheelwright claimed she had met and had given charitable aid to Lydia Bixby during the war, hoping that one of her sons, in Boston on leave, might help deliver packages to Union prisoners of war; but she later heard gossip that Bixby "kept a house of ill-fame, was perfectly untrustworthy and as bad as she could be".[31][32]

In the 1920s, Lincoln scholar William E Barton interviewed the oldest residents of Hopkinton, Massachusetts for their memories of Bixby's family before she moved to Boston. They recalled her sons as being "tough" with "some of them too fond of drink". One son may have "served a jail sentence for some misdemeanor".[33]

On August 12, 1925, Elizabeth Towers, a daughter of Oliver Bixby, told the Boston Herald that her grandmother had "great sympathy for the South" and that her mother recalled that Bixby had been "highly indignant" about the letter with "little good to say of President Lincoln".[34][35] In 1949, Towers' nephew, Arthur March Bixby, claimed that Lydia Bixby had moved to Massachusetts from Richmond, Virginia;[36] though this assertion is contradicted by contemporary records which list her birthplace as Rhode Island.[lower-alpha 3][4]

A similar letter Lincoln sent to Fanny McCullough in 1862

The fate of the original letter given to Bixby is unknown. William A. Bixby, a son of Oliver, told The New York Times in an August 9, 1925, interview that he did not know what happened to the letter after his grandmother received it, though he doubted it still survived.[37] A few days later, William's sister, Elizabeth told the Boston Herald that she also did not know the letter's fate but speculated Bixby may have torn it up, resenting that it incorrectly said five of her sons had been killed.[35] William's son, Arthur March Bixby, told the New York Sun in 1949 that he recalled his father telling him that she had angrily destroyed the letter after receiving it.[38][39]

In the early 20th century, it was sometimes claimed that the original letter could be found on display at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford along with other great works in the English language. Lincoln scholar F. Lauriston Bullard investigated this claim in 1925, discovering that it was untrue and the college had never heard of the Bixby letter.[40]

Michael F. Tobin's 1891 lithographic facsimile of the letter

Huber's Museum sold these copies of Tobin's facsimile.

Christie's auction house receives many supposed original Bixby letters every year,[41] including copies of a lithographic facsimile of the letter in widespread circulation. These first appeared in 1891, when New York City print dealer Michael F. Tobin applied for a copyright to sell souvenir copies of the letter with an engraving of Lincoln by John Chester Buttre for $2 each.[42][43] Soon, Huber's Museum, a dime museum in Manhattan, began displaying a copy, "stained by coffee and exposure", of Tobin's facsimile as "the original Bixby letter" and selling their own copies for $1 each.[44][45]

Charles Hamilton, an autograph dealer and handwriting expert, examined the Tobin facsimile; concluding it had been copied from a poorly executed forgery originally written in pencil and retraced in ink to imitate Lincoln's handwriting, calling it "halting and awkward and makes his forceful hand appear like a child's scrawl".[46]

Tobin's facsimile also errs when compared to the original text of the letter published in Boston newspapers; adding the salutation "To Mrs Bixby, Boston Mass", misspelling the word "assuage" as "assauge", omitting the word "to" after the word "tendering", changing the plural "words" into "word", not capitalizing the words "freedom" and "republic", missing the recipient "Mrs. Bixby" on the bottom left, and combining the original three paragraphs into one.[47][48] Huber's Museum corrected the spelling of "assuage" in their version of the facsimile.[49]

John Hay, Lincoln's private secretary