The Bixby Letter

[ELCore]

(07-22-2017 05:22 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  I still hold out some hope (growing less by the hour admittedly) that Lincoln wrote the letter. In 1904 John Hay wrote a letter to John E. Chandler. Hay wrote:

"The letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine, is printed in our edition of his Works, and has been frequently re-published; but the engraved copy of Mr. Lincoln's alleged manuscript, which is extensively sold is, in my opinion, a very ingenious forgery."

Some historians, including Dr. Mark E. Neely Jr., have concluded Lincoln was the author because Hay writes that the letter is "genuine." What did Hay mean by the word "genuine?" Is it really an indication that Lincoln wrote the letter? Or does it mean something else?....

Allow me to quote myself (29 March 2013): "I think all that he meant is that there was, indeed, a presidential letter to Mrs. Bixby, Nov. 21, 1864. Thus, the Bixby letter is to be distinguished from letters attributed to Lincoln that had actually been made up out of whole cloth, just as many sayings attributed to Lincoln were simply made up (as we well know!)."

And, since Hay seems to mean that inclusion in "our edition of his Works" implies genuineness, I will note that he and Nicolay included the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation in their two-volume edition (Vol. II pp. 417f) of Lincoln's Complete Works, though it was written by William Seward.