Trump should study Lincoln, master of the condolence
ANALYSIS
On May 25, 1861, Abraham Lincoln sat down to write a New York oyster salesman and his wife what was probably his first condolence letter of the Civil War.
“My dear Sir and Madam,” he began, “in the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own.”
The president had known the late Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth before the war, and found in him, “a fine intellect, an indomitable energy... And yet he was singularly modest and deferential in social intercourse.”
The day before Ellsworth, 24, had been shot and killed in Alexandria, Va., by a Confederate sympathizer as he pulled down a rebel flag flying from the roof of a hotel across the Potomac River from Washington.
It was one of the early deaths of the Civil War, then only a few weeks old, in a conflict that would claim tens of thousands of lives during the next four years.
And Lincoln’s letter to Ellsworth’s parents, Ephraim and Phoebe, is one of the most moving in American history: “In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child...”
Amid the furor over President Donald Trump’s call to the mother of a fallen soldier, it is worth noting that few commander-in-chiefs handled the wrenching job better than Lincoln.
A century later, President Lyndon B. Johnson struggled with a letter to the stricken parents of Marine Cpl. Russell Forrest “Rusty” Keck, 20, who had been killed in Vietnam on May 18, 1967, according to the National Archives. The Kecks had penned letters to the president expressing their anger and grief at the loss of their son, Mrs. Keck writing at one point, “You are responsible for taking his life. You could have prevented it and you can prevent more deaths...”
Johnson’s June 14, 1967 typewritten draft of his response, on White House stationary, is heavily edited in pencil, with entire paragraphs crossed out and replaced with hand-written corrections.
But Lincoln may not have written the condolence letter he’s most famous for. It was an eloquent note to Lydia Bixby, a Massachusetts widow believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War. “Dear Madam,” it began: “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.”
Some historians believe the letter was written by Lincoln’s White House secretary, John Hay.