973.7L63 Wakefield, Sherman D. PbYw cop. 2 "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY presented by Harry E. and Marion D. Prat t Collection \ L^Oi* ■--" "ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WIDOW BIXBY" by SHERMAN P. WAKEFIELD ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSOCIATION "ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WIDOW BIXBY" by SHERMAN D. WAKEFIELD Author of "HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT" 144 East 24th Street New York 10, N. Y. 1947 Copyright 1947 Sherman D. Wakefield All rights reserved Printed in the U.S.A. Dr. F. Lauriston Bullard, in his book Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby (1946), aims to disprove the thesis set forth in two articles by this writer published in 1939 and 1941 respectively, in the second volume of the autobiography of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (1940), and in an article by Mr. David Rankin Barbee (1945). The thesis that Dr. Bullard tries to disprove is that the famous letter of condolence to Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston was not written by Abraham Lincoln as is generally supposed but was written by his assistant private secretary, John Hay. Part of the thesis of all three authors was that the "facsimiles" of the Bix- by letter, current since 1891, are forgeries. This latter part of the thesis is accepted by Dr. Bullard (p. viii, 154), and no further argument is necessary on this point. As for the authorship of the letter, Dr. Bullard has to correct various errors and find new facts and arguments before his thesis can be accepted. He has done a fine piece of work, taking from three to five years with the help of a long list of Lincoln students, but his facts and arguments are far from decisive. Even on the second page of his introduction, Dr. Bullard has a misstatement. He says (p. viii-ix) : "A distinguished public man, in an autobiographical work, in 1939, provided the foundation for most of the arguments — 3 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" used by others who have written upon the subject." The reference is to Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler's autobiography. But Dr. Bullard does not seem to realize here (al- though he does on page 115) that Dr. -But- ler's discussion of the Bixby letter is in the second volume of his autobiography, which was not published until 1940. This writer's first article was written in the summer of 1938 and was published in February, 1939, and the first he knew of Dr. Butler's book was when he saw a review of it in The New York Times for August 29, 1940. It was this which led him to write his second article, which was published in February, 1941. So much for priority! Coming now to the letter under discussion, Dr. Bullard tells us that the letter was delivered to Mrs. Bixby on the morning of Friday, November 25, 1864, and he cites the Boston Trans.cript for November 25th as proof (p. 35, 46, 50-51, 146), which says the letter was delivered • "this morning." He totally ignores the previous evidence that the letter was personally delivered to Mrs. Bixby on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday), Novem- ber 24th, by William Schouler, Adjutant- General of Massachusetts. Dr. William E. Barton, in his book A Beautiful Blunder (1926, p. 49), writes as follows: "It [the letter to Mrs. Bixby] was received by General Schouler not later than Wednesday and de- livered in person, as he himself has informed us y on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day" (italics — 4 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" mine). Would not Thanksgiving Day be a more appropriate time to deliver the letter than the following day, and would not the busy General Schouler have had more time to deliver the letter in person on a holiday rather than on a busy office day? It seems more likely, than taking the Transcript ac- count too literally, to assume that the account stating "this morning" was written late Thursday, failed to make the Thursday issue of the paper, and the phrase was inadvertent- ly left in the following day. This writer, in other researches, found a similar case where an account mentioning "yesterday" in a daily newspaper was later included intact in a weekly issue of the same paper, thus making the later account incorrect. On page 122 of his book Dr. Bullard refers to a facsimile "at the front of this volume," which in fact is on page 124. Because it refers to the frontis- piece does not prove it is there, as a glance will show. Dr. Bullard (p. 51) says that the Boston Traveller for Friday, November 25th, also told the story of the Bixby letter, but he does not say if that paper as well as the Transcript stated "this morning" for its de- livery. Rather, he quotes the Traveller (p. 46) as saying General Schouler "called yester- day to see that she [Mrs. Bixby] had every- thing comfortable for Thanksgiving" (italics mine). Certainly he did not call the day after Thanksgiving to see if she "had everything comfortable for Thanksgiving"! We now come to Dr. Bullard's statement "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" (p. 52) that it is not "strange" that the Bixby letter is not included in Edward Ever- ett Hale's compilation The President's Words and in an anthology called The Martyr's Monument, both published in 1865. Both Dr. Barton and this writer thought that these books were just the type where one would expect to find the Bixby letter. But in his refutation, Dr. Bullard quotes Dr. Hale's subtitle as "A Selection of Passages from the Speeches, Addresses and Letters of Lincoln" (italics mine). Also, he says, the book is a collection of short passages dealing, among other things, with "Faith in God and in the People" (italics mine). Is not this just the type of book for the Bixby letter? As for The Martyr's Monument, he says "about two scores of letters are here," but none of them is personal like the Ellsworth and Bixby letters are personal. But this writer contends that both the Ellsworth and Bixby letters, while addressed to individuals, were written for publication and really belong with the Lin- coln state papers. Colonel Ellsworth was a national hero at the time of his death and the case of Mrs. Bixby (if it were true) was of national interest and of help to the Union cause. Neither one of the letters is personal in the sense that the letter to Miss Fanny McCullough, of Bloomington, 111., is personal. Therefore, it still seems "strange" that the Bixby letter is not included in The President' s Words and The Martyr's Monu- ment. That is, if Lincoln really wrote it. — 6 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" On pages 58-60 of his book, under the heading of "Was Columbia University Fooled?/' Dr. Bullard calls attention to an extraordinary affair to be added to the al- ready super-extraordinary Bixby case. In the month of February, 1909, in celebration of the centenary of Lincoln's birth, Columbia University exhibited a collection of Lincoln- iana. Among the items on exhibit was what the New York Tribune of February 12, 1909, described as "the Bixby letter, with edges frayed and discolored." It did not say the letter was the original, but it gave that im- pression by its description. Dr. Bullard sets forth his "theory" about this "Bixby letter" to the effect that it was the Huber "facsimile" borrowed from the Museum for the exhibit. The Columbia officials had heard the "origi- nal" of the Bixby letter was at the Huber Museum, but when it arrived they "under- stood the character of the paper, but felt themselves to be under obligation to recognize the courtesy of the owner by including it in their display." What does this mean? It can mean only that the Columbia officials recog- nized this so-called original to be a fake, but out of "courtesy" to the owner included it in their exhibit without a label or explanatory statement. Dr. Bullard says "the public as- sumed" the letter to be the original. Where does this place the Columbia officials in charge of the exhibit? By exhibiting this fake, even with- out positive claims for it, did they not con- tribute to misleading the public and justify- — 7 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" ing Huber in his fraud? Did not "courtesy" to the public and the interests of truth out- weigh "courtesy of the owner" for lending the document? Dr. Bullard then makes mat- ters worse by stating that this "theory" is more than a theory, that "we would not venture to state it at all unless we had seen documents which guarantee it to be a correct exposition of the essential facts." What docu- ments and what facts? may well be asked. Something is being held back here, something which Lincoln students and the public have a right to know. Beginning on page 66, Dr. Bullard dis- cusses a quotation from John Hay in a letter he wrote in 1866 to William H. Herndon, Lin- coln's law partner. This quotation was sub- mitted to this controversy by the present au- thor in his article of 1941. Hay said of Lin- coln: "He wrote very few letters. He did not read one in fifty that he received. At first we tried to bring them to his notice, but at last he gave the whole thing over to me, and signed without reading them the letters I wrote in his name. He wrote perhaps half a dozen a week himself — not more." Dr. Bul- lard takes exception to this writer's previous statement that Hay wrote letters in Lincoln's name and handwriting. But this was only adding the Hay statement to the statements of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler and Dr. Tyler Dennett, biographer of John Hay, that Hay often imitated Lincoln's handwriting. Dr. Bullard quotes the conclusions of Carl Sand- — 8 — Tlccf w fnouf iuuZ $~fcu Uffct^ Paragraph reproduced from an original letter by John Hay in the collection of Lincolniana formed by W. H. Herndon. — 9 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" burg and William H. Townsend, who indepen- dently figured that "there would remain no more letters than Hay says Lincoln himself wrote" (p. 67). This means that a much greater number were written by his secre- taries Nicolay and Hay. The fact that Lin- coln had two other subordinate or "mailbag" secretaries, who assorted incoming mail, has no bearing on who wrote the Bixby letter. William 0. Stoddard, one of them, stated that Lincoln in 1862 "saw and read, at the time of their arrival, about one in a hundred [let- ters] ; less rather than more" (p. 70). This further confirms Hay's statement, making it even stronger. It is therefore strange that Dr. Bullard, when supplying these confirma- tions of Hay's letter, should add: "no argu- ment bearing on the authenticity of the Bixby letter can fairly be based on w T hat his former secretary wrote in 1866" (p. 67). Beginning on page 73, Dr. Bullard takes exception to a quotation from Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, former President of Columbia University, in his autobiography, as follows: "As a matter of fact, Abraham Lincoln wrote very few letters that bore his signature. John G. Nicolay wrote almost all of those which were official, while John Hay wrote almost all of those which were personal. Hay was able to imitate Lincoln's handwriting and signa- ture in well-nigh perfect fashion." Dr. Butler says he was told this by Lincoln's son, the late Robert T. Lincoln. Dr. Bullard asks (p. 82) how Robert T. Lincoln knew this, as — 10 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" if his father could not tell or write him of it. Even if Hay told the younger Lincoln, as Dr. Bullard suggests, Hay was a "gentleman" (p. 122) and told the truth. But if Nicolay and Hay did not write most of the letters in Lincoln's name, who did? John Hay said Lin- coln wrote only about half a dozen a week, and this has been confirmed by Carl Sand- burg and William H. Townsend. Dr. Bullard writes (p. 76) : "That Nicolay and Hay wrote some of Lincoln's letters is admitted." But they must have been in the majority, for surely there were many times six letters a week that needed to be written by the Presi- dent in wartime. This could be the meaning of the words "almost all" as used by Dr. Butler. As for Hay's imitating Lincoln's handwriting, it may not be essential to Hay's authorship of the Bixby letter to assume or attempt to prove that such was done in this instance. As in these days of typewritten letters, often signed by a secretary in imita- tion of the boss's signature, so in pre-type- writer days the body of a letter was often written in the handwriting of the secretary, which was signed by the boss and perhaps often imitated by the secretary. There was no need to imitate handwriting in a telegram, for the message was not sent facsimile as is possible now. Hay would have been the au- thor of the Bixby letter if he had written it in his own handwriting and had it signed by Lincoln or signed it in imitation of Lincoln's signature just as much as if he had written — 11 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" it throughout in imitation of Lincoln's hand- writing. However, as Dr. Bullard says (p. 81), "the imitation of an ordinary signature is usually not very difficult. But the imitation of the handwriting in a letter or a document is another thing altogether." Undoubtedly, yet three or more current "facsimiles" of the en- tire Bixby letter have fooled the public and Lincoln students for 56 years! On pages 86 and 87, Dr. Bullard quotes two letters "penned by Hay, signed by Lincoln." "About the first of these letters," he says, "there is nothing of note either in style or content. The second handles deftly a delicate situation. Lincoln signed it and thus made it his own." He does not say of the first and undistinguished letter that "Lincoln signed it and thus made it his own," but such was the case. Dr. Bullard, throughout his book, more than once refers to Lincoln's signature mak- ing the letters "his own," but what of Hay's statement that Lincoln "signed without read- ing them the letters I wrote in his name"? Did not these letters become "Lincoln's own" also? On page 97, Dr. Bullard states the present author "aligns himself with the relatively small group of anti-Lincolnians who accuse the Civil War President of hypocrisy." That emphatically is not the case, and I object to being called "anti-Lincolnian" on any score. The statement was made because the author in his first article said if Lincoln believed in a "Heavenly Father" he was more likely to — 12 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" "give the consolation of religion to a loved friend [Miss McCullough] in a letter of con- dolence" than "to an utter stranger" [Mrs. Bixby]. The subject of Lincoln's religion is a complicated one requiring the length of a book for its complete exposition, and no book on the subject has yet done it justice. Hence it is impossible to do justice to it here. How- ever, the highlights are clear. Lincoln defin- itely was a religious man, but one cannot ac- curately impute to him any sectarian theologi- cal beliefs. He believed in a God, but not in a personal God; rather in a form of deism. Herndon writes (Angle ed., p. 360) that once Lincoln made Herndon erase the word God from a speech which he had written because his language indicated a personal God, where- as Lincoln "insisted no such personality ever existed." Yet the mere mention of "God" did not come easy to Lincoln, even in the most important of documents. For example, there is not one reference to deity in his carefully prepared Cooper Institute Address. Both Hon. John P. Usher and Hon. Salmon P. Chase, members of Lincoln's cabinet, have recorded how Lincoln's draft of the Emancipation Pro- clamation contained no reference to deity, and that at the suggestion of Mr. Chase "God" was inserted. In composing the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln apparently wrote it out twice without mention of this nation being "under God," and it was only as he spoke that the words were interpolated, perhaps on the suggestion of Secretary Seward the night be- — 13 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" fore. Later copies of the Address that he wrote contained the words. It is significant that the great bulk of ref- erences to deity occur in Lincoln's political writings and speeches and in his state papers. There are, of course, exceptions. Lincoln was a politician as well as a statesman, and he had no desire to hurt people's feelings or antagonize them unnecessarily when important issues were at stake. Especially in the state papers, like Thanksgiving Proclamations, which may have been written by his private secretaries, the pious references may have been used by them or been suggested by Chase or other members of the Cabinet. Dr. Bullard makes much of the Thanksgiving Proclamations, and invokes Lincoln's signa- ture as giving him the full responsibility for them. That may be true, but as Herndon said in his Lecture on Lincoln's Religion (1936, p. 17), "Mr. Lincoln was the President of a Christian people, and he but used their ideas, language, speech and forms. So would Tom Paine have done had he been President of this free people." Nobody regrets more than the present au- thor that Lincoln found it necessary to so play the role of politician as to use pious phrases in his state documents, even though at the suggestion of members of his cabinet. Lincoln's main object as President was to save the Union, he was willing even to retain slavery if necessary to gain that end, and he needed to have the cooperation of all possible — 14 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" groups including the churches. He could not afford to have the energies of the country diverted from winning the War and saving the Union by religious controversies, so he felt justified in the use of pious words and phrases. The blame, if any, should be laid upon those Christians who make such tactics necessary because they cannot tolerate the right of men in public office to believe dif- ferently than they do. It is the contention of the present author that the Bixby letter belongs among the state papers, because it was written to a stranger coming from the President of the United States and because it could not fail of great publicity. As such, it was a political or state document and did not have to be written personally by the President or express his personal views. Even Dr. Bullard writes (p. 62) that Lincoln "wrote as the representative of the nation, the Commander-in-Chief of the Union army." However, it is not proved that Lincoln signed his full name, "Abraham Lin- coln," since the facsimile Dr. Bullard presents (p. 46) of the letter's first publication the day after it was delivered to Mrs. Bixby shows only the usual "A. Lincoln." On pages 99-101, Dr. Bullard cites two addresses and two letters of Lincoln of a personal character supposedly as examples of his use of the phrase "our Heavenly Father." Three of them refer to God, but not as "our Heavenly Father," and the fourth does not even mention God. Then follow (p. 101-05) — 15 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" two documents to the leader of a group of Quakers, Mrs. Eliza P. Gurney, which are almost unique Lincoln papers. Usually presi- dential responses to official representatives of church organizations or denominations belong among the state papers, but these seem to include some personal beliefs. With these should be placed the answer of Lincoln to the leader of another Quaker group in 1862, according to Francis F. Browne (Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 536-37) : "I have neither time nor disposition to enter into dis- cussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the ques- tion, whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indi- cated, it is not probable that He would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her?" It is not quite clear what Dr. Bullard's object is in the section "John Hay's Burden of Grief" (p. 116-18). He points out that Hay had received word of his brother's death just before he entertained John Morley when, ac- cording to Dr. Butler, he told Morley that he wrote the Bixby letter. It would seem that such an occasion would naturally bring up the subject of a famous letter of condolence and lead to the admission as claimed. Nobody claims that Hay in assuming the authorship of the Bixby letter knowingly "was stealing what another man had composed," as Dr. Bullard states. All those who uphold Hay's authorship believe he was honest in making — 16 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" the claim, that he said so because he actually had written the letter. Dr. Bullard says he does not accept any such interpretation, but where does he get the idea that others do? Dr. Bullard does some round-about maneu- vering (p. 118-22) to come to the conclusion that if John Hay had written the Bixby let- ter and told some others that he had done so, he owed it to his friend Richard Watson Gilder to have told him. Less than four years before Hay's death, Gilder had sent Hay a copy of a little book called Lincoln Passages from His Speeches and Letters (1901), to which Gilder had written the "Introduction" containing the Bixby letter. But Dr. Bullard is on dangerous ground when he argues as follows: "Is it conceivable that if John Hay had been the author of this letter wrongly attributed to Lincoln he would have allowed Gilder to remain for four years in ignorance of the truth, and meantime would have told such less intimate friends as Walter Hines Page, John Morley, and William C. Brownell that he had himself composed this message of condolence which Gilder was extolling as a masterpiece of art?" But do we know that Hay did not tell Gilder? Perhaps Hay lacked the time to read and comment upon the book, perhaps he was not well at the time and the book was mislaid, or perhaps a possible let- ter he wrote Gilder has been lost. When they met for tea and luncheon in May, 1904, they may have discussed the matter for all we know. Dr. Bullard answers his own question — 17 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" merely by stating: "John Hay was a gentle- man. " Granted, but Walter Hines Page, John Morley, and Dr. Butler were also gentlemen, who told different stories about John Hay and the Bixby letter. Dr. Bullard's argument is a parallel of that used by the present writer in his first article when discussing Lincoln's letter of condolence to his young friend, Miss Fanny McCullough of Bloomington, 111. He there wrote: "Why would Lincoln, if he be- lieved in a 'Heavenly Father/ fail to give the consolation of religion to a loved friend in his letter of condolence and then extend it to an utter stranger?" (Mrs. Bixby). Dr. Bullard's argument can be explained away easier than can this parallel. Dr. Bullard never answered this question, and it is crucial. We now come to what Dr. Bullard probab- ly considers his coup de grace to those authors who hold that John Hay rather than Lincoln wrote the Bixby letter. On pages 122-28 of his book, Dr. Bullard presents his "scoop," a letter purporting to have been written by John Hay on January 19, 1904, to Hon. Wil- liam E. Chandler of the Spanish Claims Com- mission. In this letter Hay is quoted as say- ing: "The letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby is genuine, is printed in our edition of his Works, and has been frequently re-pub- lished; but the engraved copy of Mr. Lincoln's alleged manuscript, which is extensively sold, is, in my opinion, a very ingenious forgery." A facsimile of this letter is printed, not at the front of the volume as stated, but on page — 18 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby'' 124. This facsimile, however, is not in the handwriting of John Hay, but is a copy made by an unknown person before the original was given to Mr. Chandler's son, W. D. Chandler. Apparently the original has been lost, like the Bixby letter, otherwise Dr. Bill- iard would have reproduced it. At best, then, the evidence of this letter is third-hand — Hay, unknown copyist, Mr. Chandler — and is not much if any better than the so-called third- hand evidence of the Page and Butler stories. It might even be called fourth-hand by adding the name of Bullard, as Dr. Bullard added the name of Lucas to the Walter Hines Page story to make that fourth hand. Dr. Bullard quotes Associate Justice Elwin L. Page of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire: u Of course W. E. C. had no motive to copy in- correctly," but just below he admits that the copyist is unknown. However, a motive to copy incorrectly is not necessary — it is as "rare as a day in June" to find a person who can copy or quote correctly. But let us as- sume that this is a correct copy of a John Hay letter, that he said the Bixby letter is genuine. What did he mean? Dr. Bullard himself (p. 131) gives us the answer: Ac- cording to Hay, "a letter written by a White House clerk and signed by Lincoln is 'genu- ine/ The clerk may have taken it by dicta- tion, the President may have corrected a letter written by the clerk, the President may have outlined or in any other way have drafted a letter and the clerk may have 19 "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" copied it for the President to sign. In any case the signature would make it Lincoln's own. The clerk in any of the alternatives could say, by the way, that he 'wrote' the letter; but when the President appended his signature even though the letter had been composed entirely by a clerk, it became a 'genuine' Lincoln letter" (italics mine). John Hay was no clerk, he was the official Assist- ant Private Secretary to the President, and yet Hay believed that a letter written entire- ly by a clerk and signed by the President would have been a genuine Lincoln letter! Nobody denies that Lincoln signed the letter written to Mrs. Bixby by John Hay, and there is nothing here that militates against Hay's authorship of the Bixby letter. On the con- trary, it all but proves the Hay authorship. Lincoln may have read what Hay had written and affixed his signature, as the Walter Hines Page story relates, or this may have been one of the occasions when Lincoln "gave the whole thing over to me," and "signed without reading them the letters I wrote in his name," as Hay wrote in a letter to Herndon. In either event, Hay could have composed the Bixby letter and it would have been con- sidered by him a "genuine" Lincoln letter. Finally, Dr. Bullard (p. 134) says that "gifted and versatile though John Hay was, we do not think that the young man, twenty- six years old in 1864, could have written the letter to Mrs. Bixby. He had not suffered enough." On the other hand, Dr. Tyler Den- — 20 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" nett, former President of Williams College and Pulitzer prize winner for his biography of John Hay, writes in that book (p. vii) : "John Hay was an exceptionally good letter writer; at his best one of the best which America has produced." In a letter to the present writer, dated November 15, 1940, Dr. Dennett added: "Hay was able at that age to write such a letter. Some of his very best letters date from an early period. " Dr. Bullard then quotes extracts from let- ters written by Hay in 1858 and 1860 and from his first published essay in 1861, show- ing them not up to the Bixby letter style. But during the intervening period up to November, 1864, Hay had lived through most of the Civil War and had served as Private Secretary to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln himself had grown tremendously during those years, and is Hay to be given no credit for having grown at all? Of course he was not Lincoln, but he had also grown. What is more, none of the docu- ments quoted was a letter of condolence, the writing of which is apt to bring out one's best in feeling and words. Dr. Bullard him- self quotes a letter of condolence written by Hay to a friend in Massachusetts, dated June 9, 1864, less than six months before the date of the Bixby lettter (p. 154). It was not written to cover the same circumstances in- volved in the Bixby letter, but it seems to have more than a little resemblance to it in ideology and wordage. He said: "I will not intrude upon your sorrow further than to — 21 — "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" express my deep sympathy for your great loss and my prayer that a merciful God may give you that consolation which mortal love is too weak to offer. I have sent your letter to my mother who will join me in my sympathy and prayers." Dr. Bullard writes (p. 141-42) : "The letter to Mrs. Bixby is universal in its significance, and may ease the pain and uplift the hearts of war-stricken mothers in all generations. " Granted, but that does not prove that John Hay did not write it. Then he adds: "What is there of timelessness about the President's letter ... to the young girl who mourned the death of her father?" (the McCullough letter). The obvious answer is that it is "timeless" and "universal in its significance" to all those who have lost their fathers or mothers, and is not limited in its significance to wartime or to those very few individuals who have lost five sons "on the field of battle." In other words, the McCullough letter is much more "timeless" and "universal in its signifi- cance" than is the Bixby letter. It is well that Dr. Bullard ends his book (p. 143-44) by stating: "We do not claim to have demonstrated absolutely that Abraham Lincoln composed our letter." He has fallen far short of demonstrating to any significant degree that Lincoln wrote it. On the con- trary, he has unwittingly supplied additional information which tends further to the belief that John Hay was the author. If the evi- dence for this belief is not considered over- — 22 -- / "Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" whelming and convincing, it is only because no first-hand direct evidence is available for either side. What first-hand evidence is avail- able — Hay's letter to Herndon — and the sec- ondary evidence submitted by honorable men, all definitely point to Hay's authorship of the Bixby letter. 23 — Quotation from Dr. Bullard's book by permission of Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N. J. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 973.7L63PBYW C002 ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WIDOW BIXBY NY 3 0112 031833566