The epic World War II movie “Saving Private Ryan” tells of the attempt by an American infantry squadron to locate Private James Ryan, a paratrooper who disappeared during the D-Day assault on Normandy, France, in 1944. Because Private Ryan’s three brothers had been recently killed in the war, making Ryan the sole surviving son, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall ordered that Ryan be found and saved.
In the movie, Marshall justifies his decision to potentially sacrifice a squadron of eight men, in order to save one man, by reading a letter written by an American president, Abe Lincoln, who, during the Civil War, was told of a mother who had lost all five of her sons to the Union cause. Marshall’s scene was Hollywood fiction, but the letter was real and written this week (Nov. 21) in 1864. Some historians believe it may have been written by Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, but it is generally attributed to Lincoln and with respect to its heartfelt eloquence, it sounds like something only Lincoln could have written:
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, Abraham Lincoln
As it turned out, not all five sons were killed — records prove three of them survived the war — and records also indicate that the mother, Lydia Bixby, was probably a sympathizer of the Confederacy.
Be that as it may, the letter expresses a sublime depth of understanding about loss, bereavement and sacrifice, which may be because, as it happened, Lincoln had already had some practice in that kind of writing. Exactly a year earlier, on November 19, 1863, Lincoln was asked to deliver a tribute to the thousands of other brothers, and sons, who had died in a battle near a little town in Pennsylvania — a battle that was even more important to the Civil War than the battle of D-Day was to WWII.
Lincoln’s tribute on that day is now called the Gettysburg Address.
