Generations of American patriots have made the ultimate sacrifice to maintain our freedoms and way of life. Remember these brave men and women. Thank God for the great privilege and blessing to be born American.
For me, no one person captures the essence of the American people more than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s letter to the grieving Mrs. Bixby on the loss of her sons during the civil war is, as the poet and Lincoln scholar Carl Sandburg described it, an American “…psalm of sacrifice…” that, once read, cannot be unheard. The original has been lost to antiquity. However, the letter was widely printed across the North and in other countries.
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 words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to 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.
Mrs. Bixby.
Boston Evening Transcript:
