The Bixby Letter

[Steve]

Lane,

After a delay, here's my thoughts. Just so you know, I'm agnostic about the letter's authorship. I don't think there's enough evidence to prove Hay wrote the letter, just linguistic similarities that he might. Also, if Hay did compose the letter in a draft copy; I believe Lincoln may have copied it in his own hand (and possibly making slight alterations to the text) to make the physical letter delivered to Mrs. Bixby. I may expand on this on a later post.

Now about the article; I think your analysis of Robert Lincoln's letter to Isaac Markens is one of the best that I've read in regard's to the authorship question. Here's the quotation copied from Lane's article:

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 Schouler without anybody else about him knowing of it.

When I first read Emerson's article, I tended to agree with his interpretation that Lincoln meant that Hay told him that he had no knowledge of the letter when it was written - implying that Hay couldn't have written it since to write the letter he undoubtly would've had to have known about it. Although, I didn't think it was the slam dunk case for Lincoln authorship Emerson implied - Robert could've misinterpreted/misrememberd what Hay said or Hay could've been reluctant to tell Robert about his role with the letter. But I think your point about not knowing what Robert means by "special knowledge of the letter at the time" - especially since Robert speculates later in the letter that Hay may have not known about the letter at the time at all - is a very good point. Why would Robert have to speculate if Hay had definitively told Robert that he had no knowledge at all of the letter when it was originally sent? Good catch.

Unfortunately, due to "circumstances" peculiar to me; I cannot comment on the computerized stylometric analysis section of your article (at least in a way which would be fair to you) on a public forum at this time.

Now to the last section about the eyewitnesses claiming that someone told them that Hay told them that he wrote the letter. That comes off as hearsay to me and extremely unreliable. Catherine Beveridge is a better witness than the others due to her brother, Spencer Eddy, working as Hay's secretary, but she might have only been interpreting her brother's opinion as fact. Because she sepeculates "that he had presumably heard (or inferred) from some conversation with Mr. Hay or Mr. Adams." That quote makes it seem like she didn't know where he got the idea that Hay wrote the letter or if his source was reliable (Hay) or not.

As to the others I think Nicholas Murray Butler is lying about British diplomat John Morley telling Butler about Hay telling Morley that he (Hay) wrote the letter. It seems to resemble an account written in 1922 by British Rev. G. A. Jackson to British essayist E.V. Lucas (which Lucas later had published in one of his books in 1934) in which Jackson claimed a Lady Stafford had told him that American ambassador Walter Page had told her that Hay had told him (Page) that he (Hay) had written the letter. Lucas associated with Butler during Butler's trips to England, so he could've told Butler about Jackson's letter, especially given Butler's academic interests. As far as Jackson's original letter, he's 3 steps in transmission away from Hay.

As far as Rollo Ogden is concerned, he could be misremembering what Bronwell said or one of the men could've been exagerating. According to F. Lauriston Bullard, Hay's children said he never told them he wrote the letter - why wouldn't he tell them if he was telling all these random people? Also, Hay never admitted to writing his anonymously published novel The Bread-Winners. If he did compose the letter for Lincoln, I'm not sure he would be the type to admit it to random people (which are basically all the supposed witnesses, except for Spencer Eddy) out of respect for Lincoln's memory. Just because I don't think he would break "keeping the secret" doesn't mean I think he couldn't have written it. I just don't think there's enough evidence to be reasonably sure either way.

Even though my interpetation differs from you on the latter point, I still think your article is very good.