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The Bixby Letter
The beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" features a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a mother (at the time) thought to have lost five sons in battle during the Civil War. It was written to Mrs. Lidia Bixby, a widow, and was later published in a Boston newspaper. The letter is simultaneously very (by modern sensibilities perhaps too) formal, and poignant.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
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
There is a beauty in the words, a visceral (however detached the reader may be) horror in the content. It has contains a terrible beauty that, in its small way, encapsulates a part of war.
Read the wiki. I dare anyone to read the sentences that follow the letter's text and not laugh. Horrible, yes. Funny (if only because of the shock), also yes.
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2 Comments:
Perhaps it's even better that Mrs. Bixby did not appreciate the letter as we might. The content, however beautifully worded, and the sentiment, however moving, would do little to comfort a mother who had lost all of her children, I would think. The grand concepts - "the altar or freedom," invoking "the Republic" - are in keeping with Lincoln's speeches, but it seems this letter is much better suited to speaking to that Republic (and to history) than to comforting an individual so afflicted.
Though I may agree that the letter seems a bit too formal and politically charged, I wish we still had the same appreciation for well-crafted words... getting all my information in bits and bytes means that I rarely have more than a bite-sized bit of reading at hand.
Miss you, love.
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