High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Bixby letter is a letter sent from the United States President Abraham Lincoln to a bereaved mother of five sons who were thought to have died while fighting for the Union in the American Civil War. The brief, consoling message was written in November 1864 to Lydia Bixby, a widow living in Boston, following a request from Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew. The text has been widely praised as one of Lincoln`s finest works of writing alongside the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address.