Video: 'George C. Marshall reads Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixbey'

(Monday, November 21, 1864; during American Civil War) — A letter was signed tdoay by President Abraham Lincoln expressing condolences to Lydia Bixby, a widow in Boston whose five sons supposedly died while fighting in the Civil War.

As it turned out, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s sons had been killed in battle. Also, historians are not certain that Lincoln actually wrote the letter.

Still, the text has been widely praised as one of Lincoln’s finest works of writing alongside the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address