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
I read a lot of both history and politics. So it’s always a bit of a surprise to re-read the Bixby letter and find a giant lump in my throat, and my eyes watering involuntarily. I’ve read these words a hundred times, and they never fail to move. This is despite the many questions surrounding Ms. Bixby herself, and the fate of her sons. Whether the first sentence is wholly true is insignificant to the thrust of the letter:
The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Each and every one of those words lands like a thunderbolt.
They are addressed to Ms. Bixby, but they apply to all families who experienced loss during bondage and in the struggle for freedom.
The promise of freedom Lincoln is writing about includes the Thirteenth amendment, which he helped shepherd through an obstinate Congress. His life was cut short before the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1865, which was at first vetoed by Andrew Johnson, then passed by two-thirds majorities of Congress to become the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This act sought to grant equal protection under the law. It was already clear, by 1865 that reactionary elements among the confederacy and in the North would seek to undermine these protections. And so the Fourteenth amendment was passed to clad these protections in iron.
So costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
It is a source of endless frustration that a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth occupies the post once held by Abraham Lincoln, who was the first working class President, born in a log cabin.
It is shocking that a craven self-absorbed bully would seek to undo the work of the Great Emancipator and might have the power to.
It is a source of national shame that this man would seek to undo the great laws of the 13th, 14th and 15h amendment. Freedoms that were purchased with the lives and limbs of millions of Union soldiers, with the tears and blood of millions of slaves.
It is our job to wrest the power to undo these great laws away from this man.
Vote and Get out the Vote.
— @subirgrewal