Fans of Stephen Spielberg’s WWII films know that the acclaimed director isn’t one to hold back his punches when it comes to displaying the carnage of war. Take what is arguably one of his greatest WWII films — 1998’s Saving Private Ryan.
The screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan, Robert Rodat, later recounted that the story was inspired on a trip to a small New Hampshire Village. He was struck by the fact that on a war memorial, it was clear that multiple members of the same family name were listed. At the same time, Rodat was reading Stephen Ambrose’s bestseller, “D-Day: June 6th 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.” Ambrose’s book, as it turned out, would go on to describe the story of four brothers, Edward, Preston, Robert, and Frederick “Fritz” Niland of Tonawanda, New York. The story of these brothers and soldiers — while not the same — certainly echoed that of the multiple family members on the memorial. Retrieving the wayward Fritz in real life proved rather simple; the Army knew where he was and simply sent a chaplain on the 501st Regiment, Fr. Francis Sampson, to retrieve him. It was this rescue, however, that loosely inspired the events Rodat wrote down in the film’s screenplay, replacing the last name Niland, with “Ryan.”
While the story was inspired by the Niland brothers, Saving Private Ryan drew upon events from the American Civil war and yet another family, the Bixbys, and a letter purportedly written by Abraham Lincoln.
Separating the Stories: The Nilands, the Sullivans, the Bixbys, and the fiction of the Ryans
The film opens with an emotional return to a gravesite in present day that segues into the destructive onslaught of the Allied invasion of Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The action is cut short by a sea of typewriters manned by secretaries in 40’s garb. Their job is to type out the condolence letters sent to the families of fallen soldiers.
In this scene, one of these secretaries pieces together a developing situation — of the four Ryan brothers sent to war, all but one of them have been killed in action. The fourth is still alive, supposedly, though he’s been dropped somewhere beyond enemy lines in Normandy, with no news of his whereabouts.
The three bereavement letters are eventually brought to the desk of General George C. Marshall (played by Harve Presnell), where the ethical conundrum is posed: Is it worth going behind enemy lines to ensure the safety of the last Ryan sibling?
This, unfortunately, was not a new problem in real life at the time. Most famously, the five Sullivan brothers all met the same fate on November 14th, 1942 when the USS Juneau where they were stationed together was destroyed by a Japanese submarine attack.
Of the five Sullivan brothers, four of them (Coxswain Francis Sullivan and Seamen 2nd Class Joseph, Madison, and Abel) failed to make it topside. The fifth, Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class George Sullivan, had been wounded during the previous day’s encounter, but still managed to make it out alive, only to die soon after of his injuries.
Saving Private Ryan references the Sullivan tragedy as the reason for splitting up the Ryan brothers from their original company in the 29th division.
Returning to the movie, General Marshall, upon learning of the Ryan situation with three of the four brothers killed in action, takes from his desk a copy of an old and weathered letter, and proceeds to read it:
“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.”
By the end of the recitation, General Marshall no longer needs to read from the paper, as he as it learned by heart.
This of course resolves any and all doubt as to what the most ethical course of action to take — Private Ryan must be found and extracted from the war. This worn letter is used to justify sending a squadron of soldiers to “save Private Ryan” from meeting the same fate as his fallen brothers.
Was the Lincoln letter real?
Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby
The letter in Saving Private Ryan references a real letter supposedly written by President Lincoln during the American Civil War to a woman who had — to his knowledge — lost nearly all of her sons to the Union cause. The letter’s language used in the film is taken word for word from the original. Which begs the question - who was the original letter meant for? And what had happened to them to cause a sitting president to take on the mantle of a fellow mourner?
The unlucky recipient of then-President Lincoln’s condolences was a mother and widow in Boston, Mrs. Lydia Bixby of No. 15 Dover Street Place, Ward 11, Boston, Massachusetts.
Married in 1826 and widowed in 1854, Mrs. Bixby had at least six sons and three daughters before her husband’s death. According to the accounts at the time as reported in the newspapers, each of her sons had reportedly joined the Union war effort, and all but one had been killed in action.
Hearing of this tragedy, then-President Lincoln purportedly wrote and sent a letter to the widow. A copy of the letter would go on to be published just a few short months before the end of the Civil War (April, 1865) in The Boston Evening Transcript, the Boston Evening Traveller and other papers on November 25th, 1864 (replication from the Traveller, below). The note would soon be dubbed The Bixby Letter, and would go on to be considered one of the greatest examples of condolence writing in English literature. This is perhaps even more poignant considering the recent loss of Lincoln’s own two sons at the time (Edward in 1850 and Willie in 1862).
As one can see, the text of the letter in Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby are identical, a rare case of a historical movie not taking liberties with an original document. But, the reliance on fact stretches thin after that in the movie, and this could also be said of the real story of Mrs. Bixby and the fate of her sons.
Mrs. Bixby and her sons
Here’s what we might expect would happen, if it were a movie: After Lincoln sent the letter to Mrs. Bixby and it was published in the local papers, Mrs. Bixby received an outpouring of monetary gifts and support. This all happened right around Thanksgiving to boot and everyone was happy. The End.
Or so the story goes…. The reality was, in fact, far more convoluted. And more interesting.
For one, it’s doubtful that President Lincoln had ever heard of Mrs. Bixby, let alone wrote to her a letter of condolence at the heart of war.
Then there’s the fact that many of Mrs. Bixby’s sons were, in fact, alive.
The original print in the Boston Evening Transcript of Nov. 25, 1864 described the widow Bixby as a woman in “rather poor circumstances,” and said that steps were being taken to make her comfortable for Thanksgiving.
The paper listed the deaths of Mrs. Bixby’s son’s as follows:
Sergeant Charles N. Bixby, Co. D., of the Massachusetts 20th regiment, was killed in Fredericksburg on on May 3rd, 1963.
Private Henry Bixby, Co. K., 23rd Regiment, was killed at Gettysburg on July 3rd 1963.
Private Edward Bixby, 22nd Regiment, died of his wounds in hospital at Folly Island, South Carolina. (no date)
Both Private Oliver Cromwell Bixby, Co. E., 58th Regiment and brother George Way Bixby, Co. B., 50th Regiment were killed “before Petersburgh” on July 30th, 1864. George had purportedly run off to join the Union Army, changing his name to do so.
The sixth son was purportedly seeking treatment at a hospital in Readville after being injured in battle.
The request for a letter to Mrs. Bixby came at the behest of the Massachusetts government, most likely either from Governor John A. Andrew (who organized the 54th Regiment, an all-black troop that was the first of its kind at the time) or from the Adjutant General William Schouler, a former magazine editor by trade.
It’s likely that after several meetings with Mrs. Bixby over the years, Schouler finally reached out to then-Governor Andrew for aid. Andrew then sent it on to the White House. Either way, a letter from the Department of War was requested on the widow’s behalf. A copy of that letter was sent to the local Boston papers.
What Actually Happened
We have documentation that Mrs. Bixby was very much involved in trying to find out information about her sons, and she often visited Schuler with requests to intervene on her family’s behalf.
However, the number of Mrs. Bixby’s children who died in battle, let alone served, has long been a bone of contention. Part of the problem lies in the records. According to the New England Historical Society, Bixby’s five sons served along with four cousins, all of whom came from the same towns and served in the same regiments. It is possible that due to the confusion of war and limited access to records, some of the deceased Bixby cousins were confused with one another. Of the five, it was later determined that only two Bixby sons had died, Charles and Oliver, though Henry died seven years later of tuberculosis contracted as a soldier.
Here’s the corrected round-up:
CLAIM: Sergeant Charles N. Bixby, Co. D., of the Massachusetts 20th regiment, was killed in Fredericksburg on on May 3rd, 1863.
This is true. Charles was indeed killed in action around that location. Having enlisted on July 18th, 1961, he’d participated in much firefight before that time as a part of the “Harvard Regiment”. He was killed during the Second Battle of Fredericksburg.
CLAIM: Private Henry Bixby, Co. K., 23rd Regiment, was killed at Gettysburg on July 3rd 1963.
This is false. Private Henry Bixby was captured at Gettysburg, sent to Richmond, and parrolled in 1964.
CLAIM: Private Edward Bixby, 22nd Regiment, died of his wounds in hospital at Folly Island, South Carolina.
This is false. Private Arthur “Edward” Bixby definitely deserted. Either enlisted at 16 or 18, he likely deserted his post in 1862, returning to Boston after the war.
CLAIM: Private Oliver Cromwell Bixby, Co. E., 58th Regiment and brother George Way Bixby, Co. B., 50th Regiment were killed “before Petersburgh” on July 30th, 1864. George had purportedly run off to join the Union Army, changing his name to do so.
This is half-true. Oliver was wounded in Spotsylvania and died at or was killed at Petersburg. George, on the other hand, was captured at Petersburg, after which conflicting reports say he either died in Salisbury Prison as a POW or deserted to the Confederacy. He may also have been galvanized while in captivity under the promise of freedom.
Whether this was a bureaucratic oversight in the heat of war, a case of a mother protecting her children from the deserter’s hangman’s noose, what is true is that Mrs. Bixby did reach out on several occasions to Adjutant General Schouler during the war. Schouler, for his part, would meet with her and other widows in person, even going so far as to visit her humble home. Schouler, for his part, had a high opinion of the widow, at least in writing. Wrote Schouler on September 24, 1864, “Mrs Bixby is the best specimen of a true-hearted Union woman I have yet seen.” Bixby first visited Schouler in October 1862, giving an affidavit to get a discharge her young son, Edward who had enlisted as a minor; she claimed Edward was given to bouts of insanity and was therefore unfit for service. That same year, she would also ask for monetary assistance for another son injured during the Battle of Antietam in order to nurse him back to health.
However, there was no War Department record of her son having sustained an injury in the conflict, let alone having fought in that battle.
Unreliable narrators and the fog of war
Those wanting to view the original copy of the letter sent to Mrs. Bixby are bound for disappointment. The original letter sent to the papers has since been destroyed, either by the newspaper editor after publication or by Mrs. Bixby herself. According to her descendents, she would certainly have reason enough to do so. For one, she was a purported Confederate sympathizer with a known dislike of President Lincoln. Surely having a letter addressed to her from said President would not have sat well. As her great-grandson recalled, “I was advised by my Father that my Great-Grandmother was an ardent Southern Sympathizer, and when she received the letter, she destroyed it in anger … shortly after receipt without realizing its value.” It was also later reported that she kept a house of ‘ill-fame’, and would likely not want this to come to the attention of the authorities. Such places were not unheard of at the time, and might have even served as a profitable source of income for the widow. That being said, it would’ve been easy enough to accuse a woman of ill repute in the 1800s. One such accusation arose from philanthropist Sarah Cabot Wheelwright, who was one of those to bring charitable aid to Mrs. Bixby in her time of need.
Years after Bixby’s death, Wheelwright wrote in a letter to her daughter that she had heard gossip that Mrs. Bixby “kept a house of ill-fame, was perfectly untrustworthy and as bad as she could be.”
Lydia Bixby would soon fall out of the public eye, dying at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1878. One can only speculate if her surviving sons were around to see her off. Those wanting to visit the grave of this infamous woman can visit a largely desolate section of Mt. Hope Cemetery in Mattapan, under headstone number 423.
As for the letter, it was likely not written by Honest Abe at all, but by his private secretary, John Hay, who had also helped with his presidential campaign. Hay himself would boast about having written the letter years later. This was refuted for years by both his and Lincoln’s children. Robert Todd Lincoln, for one, wrote in a 1917 letter that John Hay had told him he was not the writer. Yet, modern analysis of the text against the many writings of both Lincoln and Hay have since all but confirmed Hay as the writer, though doing so proved difficult due to its length. To arrive at their conclusions, a team of British researchers used a method called “n-gram” tracing to find linguistic sequences of one or more words within text at both a character and word level. These are compared to similar sequences found within the purported author’s work. Luckily for them, there were plenty of writing samples to go on.
For his part, Hay would go on to co-write a ten-volume study of Lincoln alongside John Nicolay before returning to public service under President McKinley. He would later serve as Secretary of State under McKinley and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt. His time in office is marked by several significant milestones in U.S. foreign policy, from post-war negotiations following the Spanish-American war, to securing construction rights of the Panama Canal for the U.S., to working on border conflicts over the settlement of the Alaska-Canada territory boundary.
All these years later, the letter is still being used in the public eye. Most recently, former President George W. Bush would use it in a speech years later alongside then President Barack Obama at the 10th anniversary of 9/11. One could argue, however, that Spielberg’s interpretation of the text is far more poetic. Perhaps just as interesting is that, in the end, Spielberg’s fictitious World War II epic was more truthful than the letter it was based on.
Amanda Minchin is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, and all-around content creator, with top nods from the Georgia Shorts Film Festival, WeScreenplay TV Lab, Mad Wife Top 100 Scripts, and Coverfly, among others. A bona fide library enthusiast, she’s moonlit as a TV and Film Writer, as well as a Script Reader for top screenwriting contests like the Austin Film Festival. This summer, a selection from her short play Writer’s Block - A Horror Story premiered at her hometown theater.
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