Things Lincoln never said

[RJNorton]

Great question! Personally I do not know, and the arguments on both sides seem convincing. From the ALO website, Michael Burlingame answers (regarding Hay being the author):

"The overwhelming evidence points to that. Hay told half a dozen people that he wrote it. He pasted a copy of it into a scrapbook of his own writing. He used words like "beguile" and "assuage" regularly in it, which never showed up in Lincoln's writings. When you put all that together it seems virtually irrefutable that Hay was the author and Lincoln signed it. It's a beautiful letter, but it just doesn't sound like Lincoln; it's not Lincoln's "voice."

It was written at an extremely busy time at the White House. A fellow in New York who was the head of the Lincoln-Johnson committee in the 1864 campaign writes in mid-November to say they were having a banquet and wanted Lincoln to write a toast. Hay writes back and says that Lincoln really wanted to write the toast instead of having me do it but the crush of business around here is so great he just didn't have a chance. This was right at the time the Bixby letter was written.

On the same day the Bixby letter was written, a letter is written to John Phillips, a centenarian in Massachuetts who voted for Lincoln. A copy of that, too, is pasted into John Hay's scrapbook. It was the sort of thing you would expect a secretary to write. Lincoln did write very moving letters of condolence -- to the parents of Elmer Ellsworth and to Fanny McCullough, but those letters have a very different feeling, stylistic pattern, and tone from the Bixby letter."

---------------------------------------------------------

On the other hand Jason Emerson, a member here, writes (regarding Robert Lincoln's belief that his dad was the author):

"On February 24, 1917, Robert Lincoln wrote to historian Isaac Markens:

"I think I have not acknowledged your letter of February 20th in regard to the Bixby letter. 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. It is entirely possible that neither of them knew of the letter at all; my father had no letter books and copies of his letters and documents were only made in special cases, many such copies being in the papers I now have, mostly drafts in his own hand; it is entirely possible that my father wrote this letter at his desk, folded it, addressed it and gave it to General [William] Schouler [adjutant general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts] without anybody else about him knowing of it."

The letters prove that not only did Robert Lincoln believe his father had written the Bixby letter, but John Hay himself told Robert he'd had nothing to do with it. What's amazing about this letter is its statement that the man purported to be the author of the letter told his best friend -and his hero's son-that he had no knowledge of it when it was written."