Legend holds that on 21 Nov 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Lydia Bixby, a widow and mother of five men who had been killed in the Civil War. A copy of the letter was then published in the Boston Evening Transcript on 25 Nov and signed “Abraham Lincoln.” The original letter has never been found. The letter expressed condolences to Mrs. Bixby on the death of her five sons, who had fought to preserve the Union in the Civil War. The author regretted how “weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” He continued with a prayer that “our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement [and leave you] 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.”
Our nation needs a president of such quality again–and citizens who understand that freedom isn’t free; it must be paid for in every generation by the blood of patriots. There seem to be very few patriots of that quality in our nation today.
