 had lied to the War Department about the number of sons  shed lost. Moreover, according to the Abraham Lincoln Association,  the letter itself wasnt even written by Lincoln but by one of his  secretaries, John Hay. Brown University houses Hays scrapbook of  newspaper clippings which featured his writings. The Mrs. Bixby  letter, publicly credited to Lincoln, is among them. One of the  words in the letter, "beguiled", was helpful in showing that it  wasnt Lincoln who wrote the letter. A database of Lincoln  speeches/writings revealed the only instance in which he uses the  word beguiled is actually the Bixby letter. Hay, however, is  documented to have used it at least a dozen different times in his  letters, writings and speeches.