From the Humanym archive · Grief

Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, 1862

Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, whose father William, a court clerk Lincoln had known from his circuit-riding days in Illinois, had been killed in action in Mississippi on 5 December. Lincoln had lost his own son Willie ten months earlier. Washington, D.C., 23 December 1862.

Executive Mansion, Washington, December 23, 1862.

Dear Fanny:

It is with deep regret that I learn of the death of your kind and brave father, and especially that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned ever to expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say, and you need only to believe it to feel better at once.

The memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend,

A. LINCOLN.

Why this letter

William McCullough had been clerk of the McLean County court in Illinois when Lincoln rode the circuit; despite being blind in one eye and missing an arm he enlisted, and was killed near Coffeeville, Mississippi on 5 December 1862. Lincoln, who had lost his own son Willie ten months earlier, wrote to McCullough's daughter Fanny. He does not tell her the loss is bearable. He tells her what he knows from experience will happen next, and asks her to believe it only as far as it helps.

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Provenance

Author: Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
To: Fanny McCullough
Written: 23 December 1862, Washington, D.C.
Source: Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, vol. 8 (New York: Tandy-Thomas Company, 1905), via Internet Archive
Rights: Public domain — Abraham Lincoln died in 1865; the text follows the 1905 Tandy edition of Nicolay and Hay's Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, volume 8, pages 152 to 153.
Formatting: Paragraph breaks added for readability; the wording is unchanged.

This text follows Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, new and enlarged edition, volume 8 (New York: Tandy-Thomas Company, 1905), pages 152 to 153. "Bittered agony" is as printed there.

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