The Bixby Letter

[ELCore]

I have been busy. But I have not forgotten this thread. And I have finally collected by thoughts on authorship of the Bixby letter. I refer below to Burlingame (New Light on the Bixby Letter) and Emerson (America's Most Famous Letter). I understand Emerson has written on the subject again, but I cannot find the article anywhere.

First, I believe it is the only work that went out, so to speak, over Abraham Lincoln's name whose authorship is disputed. That Lincoln did not, indeed, write all of the correspondence attributed to him is accepted: the press of business from day to day in the White House was too much to allow him to write more than a handful of letters a week.

The claim that the Bixby Letter was of such singular importance that Lincoln, obviously, would have written it himself is, I think, so much guesswork: we do not, really, know what else he had to do at the time; we do not, really, know how he ranked that task in importance compared to the other tasks at hand; we do not, indeed, know what other tasks of similar nature and similar importance where given to Hay or Nicolay to do because Lincoln, for one reason or another, chose to have them do it. This claim is too close to a sheer guess for me to give it any weight at all.

Second, the mere fact that this letter alone, of all the works that went out over Lincoln's name, is disputed says a lot to me: the authorship of the Letter to Mrs. Whatshername or the Telegram to Mr. Whosit are not disputed; only this one is.

Why? Only because somebody other than Lincoln claimed to have written it.

Though it seems to be only be 2nd- and 3rd-hand testimony, we know of at least five named individuals who claimed to know that John Hay had written it: John Morley; William Crary Brownell; Walter Hines Page; Louis A. Coolidge; and, Spencer Eddy. All of these individuals were connected somehow or other, immediately or otherwise, to Hay. But I don't think that fact is as signigicant as the fact that none of them seem to have had any connection with each other beyond whatever way they were connected with Hay. As far as I can tell, these are five named individuals who independently claimed knowledge that Hay wrote the Bixby Letter, and who do not seem to possibly have any motive for making the claim other than its truth.

Hay never made the claim of authorship to his children. Even if that be true, so what? One doesn't need much experience of life to know people who will speak their minds on certain subjects more freely to acquaintances, or even to strangers, than they do to their own relatives.

And what about the scrapbooks analyzed by Burlingame? In one of them, the Bixby Letter is the only clipping that is not either overtly by Hay or about Hay; in the other, the only clippings not overtly by Hay or about him are the Bixby letter and four other letters that went out over Lincoln's name (to John Phillips, 11/21/1864; to L.B. Wyman, 12/11/1861; to F. B. Loomis, 5/12/1864; and to N.Y. Committee, 12/2/1863). I have no trouble with the surmise that these two scrapbooks were, by Hay's design, collections of items by or about Hay, and that the presence of the Bixby letter and those four other letters are his silent assertions of authorship. According to Emerson, there are other scrapbooks by Hay that contain works clearly not by Hay; but, as I understand, they are manifestly more than collections of just writings by or about Hay, so I think their existence and contents is irrelevant to the question at hand.

It seems to me, then, that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points to Hay having actually made the claim that he was the author of the Bixby Letter. Hay held Lincoln in the highest possible regard, even to the point of claiming that "Lincoln with all his foibles is the greatest character since Christ." Consequently, I do not think it likely in the least that Hay would falsely claim to have written it: I think he made the claim, and made it because it's true.

Third, stylistic analysis hinges largely, I think, on the use of the word "beguile", which is not found elsewhere in the Lincoln corpus. It is claimed, in Emerson, that the meaning of the word in context is the older "divert" (which Lincoln would have tended to mean) rather than the newer meaning "charm" (which Hay would have tended to mean). For myself, I can read the sentence with "beguile" having either meaning. Moreover, the Oxford English dictionary includes the following meanings for the verb: ".... 4. To win the attention or interest of (any one) by wiling means; to charm, divert, amuse; to wile (one) on, or into any course.... 5. To divert attention in some pleasant way from (anything painful, or irksome); to elude the disagreeable sensation of, and so to cause to pass insensibly or pleasantly; to charm away, wile away..." Each meaning has illustrative quotations from Shakespeare through the early 19th century. Thus, I think the semantic range of "beguile" is wide enough and old enough to allow any of several specific meanings to be attached to it in the letter; and, its frequent use by Hay, and lack of other known use by Lincoln, points to "beguile" being Hay's word choice, not Lincoln's.

As has been pointed out by our esteemed host, Emerson has presented some of Robert Todd Lincoln's correspondence concerning the Bixby letter.

It seems certain that RTL had a "photographic copy" of a Bixby letter, and that he believed it to be in his father's handwriting. However, both RTL and Hay agreed that Abraham's handwriting was easy to mimic, and they had even discussed ways in which a Bixby letter could be forged. And, since it is generally agreed that Mrs. Bixby destroyed the letter, I find it difficult to understand how the copy in RTL's possession could be an actual copy of the original. I think it far more likely to have been a copy of a forgery. And I think that even experts are very reluctant to assess the genuineness of a "photographic copy" rather than an original. That RTL believed the copy to be in his father's hand, therefore, does not settle the question of authorship.

Emerson also quotes from RTL's correspondence with one Isaac Markens. Emerson has made the extravagant claim that "The letters quoted prove not only that Robert Lincoln believed his father had written the Bixby letter but also that John Hay himself told Robert he'd had nothing to do with it." I think that Emerson here is not merely jumping to conclusions, but pole-vaulting to them.

To begin with, it is not at all clear to me that there was any controversy about authorship of the Bixby letter before 1925. The Lincoln-Markens correspondence, though, dates from 1917-1919.

Moreover, though Emerson quotes at length from several of RTL's letters, it is not at all clear to me that the question of authorship was under discussion; rather, whether the original letter still existed; whether any "official" copy was made in the White House at the time of composition; and, whether any known copies of the letter were actually copies of the genuine original.

Emerson thinks the following passage is the linch-pin: "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."

I do not see how Emerson's claim that "The letters quoted prove not only that Robert Lincoln believed his father had written the Bixby letter but also that John Hay himself told Robert he'd had nothing to do with it" can be justified without knowing exactly what Markens had written, to which RTL was replying.

Emerson's claim seems to be based especially on this part: "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...." But RTL's later speculations that "It is entirely possible that neither of them knew of the letter at all" and "It is entirely possible that my father wrote this letter at his desk, folded it, addressed it...." indicate to me that Hay's statement, whatever it meant, did not really clear up in RTL's mind what had happened the day the letter was written.

Again, it is not clear to me in the least that authorship was the question at hand. What in the world is meant by "special knowledge" and "at the time"? Why not just "knowledge" rather than "special knowledge"? And what time is meant by "at the time"? It could very well mean the time at which RTL and Hay had the conversation, since the existence and whereabouts of the original and any official copies were subjects of inquiry. If authorship was the question being discussed, why didn't Robert just say that he had asked Hay if he wrote it?

To sum up: the preponderance of evidence indicates that Hay claimed to have written the letter; the key word "beguile" seems much more likely to have been Hay's word choice, not Lincoln's; and, Robert Lincoln's correspondence, as presented by Emerson, does not seem to justify the case-closing conclusion Emerson reaches.

I think it highly likely, though not quite certain, that John Hay wrote the letter to Mrs. Bixby.