“The Solemn Pride”: Remembering Through Lincoln’s Words

Honoring the Fallen, Confronting Our Present, and Defending the Democracy They Died For

On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who have given “the last full measure of devotion,” it’s worth returning to one of the most haunting and humbling tributes ever penned to the cost of war and the resilience of those left behind: the Bixby Letter.

Written in November 1864, President Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Lydia Bixby—a Massachusetts widow believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War—remains one of the most poignant statements of presidential humility, grief, and national reverence. Though historians later discovered discrepancies in the actual number of her fallen sons, the letter’s emotional gravity endures.

As American democracy again finds itself under siege—not from foreign battalions but from internal authoritarian impulses—it’s worth asking: Are we still worthy of their sacrifice?

Here is Lincoln’s full letter:

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864.

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,

A. Lincoln

A Call to Remember—and Recommit

Lincoln’s words ask us to do more than mourn; they demand we live in a way that honors the cost of freedom. On this Memorial Day, that means more than backyard barbecues and sales. It means defending the very democracy those soldiers died for.

It means rejecting the authoritarian drift we see in our politics. It means remembering that patriotism is not performative—it’s principled. And it means ensuring that the sacrifices of the past are not rendered meaningless by complacency in the present.

Let us honor the fallen not just with flags and flowers, but with action, vigilance, and a fierce commitment to liberty and justice.

Let us be worthy of their sacrifice.