The Sons of Mrs. Bixby

President Lincoln wrote this letter after an aide told him about a Boston widow whose five sons had been killed fighting for the Union armies.  As Carl Sandburg wrote, “More darkly than the Gettysburg speech the letter wove its awful implication that human freedom so often was paid for with agony.”  Here is an American president understanding that agony, sharing it, and performing a heartfelt rite, as Sandburg put it, “as though he might be a ship captain at midnight by lantern light, dropping black roses into the immemorial sea for mystic remembrance and consecration.”  In a letter dated November 21, 1864, President Lincoln wrote the following to Mrs. Bixby in Boston, Massachusetts.  “Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.  I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.  But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save.  I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.  Yours very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln.”  We now know that Lincoln had been misinformed:  two of Mrs. Bixby’s sons had been killed in action, one was taken prisoner, and two deserted.  The error does not stand in the way of the letter’s deserved fame.  Mrs. Bixby’s loss and sacrifice hardly could have been greater.  Lives are still being lost to save a nation.