I agree with Burlingame that the cadences and word choices of the Bixby letter do not seem entirely Lincolnian. I prefer a letter, less well known, that he wrote to a twelve-year-old girl whose father had died in battle. The language and the sentiment are unmistakably Lincoln’s own: Executive Mansion Dear Fanny,
Washington, December 23, 1862
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Many people erroneously believe that the well-known facsimile of the letter (often printed on thick, yellowed “parchment” paper) is ample proof of Lincoln’s own authorship. A close examination, however, of the writing in the Bixby facsimile shows flaws when compared with authentic examples from President Lincoln—the handwriting in the Bixby facsimile is far too legible, slow, and hesitant to match Lincoln’s naturally sloppy script. Decades after Lincoln’s death two people copyrighted their own “versions” of the Bixby letter in an attempt to capitalize on its continuing popularity. The first copyright was obtained in 1891 by Michael F. Tobin, a dealer in prints, and the second one was made in 1904 by the Huber Museum. Thus the existence of these posthumously produced forgeries is not proof that Lincoln authored the original letter.
Michael Burlingame’s article on the letter to Mrs. Bixby (July/August) makes a strong argument that Lincoln was not its author. However, my home library includes a volume that contains a reproduction of what purports to be the original Bixby letter, signed and in the hand of Mr. Lincoln. The original is supposedly framed and hanging on a wall in Brasenose College, Oxford University.
Although Thomas Mine’s thesis that the modern teenager began to evolve in the late 1930s is attractive, like all neat formulations, it has to disregard contradictory evidence. Earlier avatars of his “boy-man” are the heroes of Booth Tarkington, the protagonists of silent films starring Harold Lloyd and Richard Barthelmess, and especially the comic-strip character Harold Teen. Carl Ed’s The Love Life of Harold Teen appeared as early as 1919 and carried on until its creator’s death in 1959. The travails of seventeen-year-old Harold with his flivver and his girlfriend, Lillums Lovewell, were those familiar to Andy Hardy and Archie, although he spent more time at the soda fountain than in the schoolroom. Like many comics, Harold Teen propagated slang and fashions rapidly adopted by real teenagers.
The photo in the September issue on page 70, for “The Rise and Decline of the Teenager,” brought back memories to my family. The Seattle football team in the picture was the Roosevelt High School Roughriders. My siblings and I all attended Roosevelt, my sister in 1955, when the game was played. The Roughriders might have won the game (my sister thinks they lost, although when shown in Life magazine that year, the photo caption said they won), but the celebration was for the team’s first touchdown in two years. The cheerleader was Jean Forstrom, who became Mrs. Booth Gardner and the first lady of Washington State when her husband was elected governor. Governor Gardner reported that when he saw the beautiful blonde in that photo, he said she was the girl he’d like to marry. He didn’t attend Roosevelt, but he managed to find her later in college, and they’ve been together ever since.
On December 13 Paul Revere rode into Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with distressing news from Boston that required immediate action. On orders from Gen. Thomas Gage, warships would soon arrive in Piscataqua Harbor to keep Fort William and Mary, in the town of Newcastle, from falling into rebel hands. Boston’s Sons of Liberty had learned of Gage’s plans the day before and had sent Revere, their most reliable courier, to alert the local patriots. Not quite a year earlier he had been chosen to bring word of the Boston Tea Party to New York City, and in September he had carried the Suffolk Resolves to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
After riding sixty miles through snow, ice, and mud, Revere arrived in Portsmouth and gave the news to a member of the local Revolutionary committee. It spread quickly. John Wentworth, the governor of New Hampshire, heard the rumblings and warned Capt. John Cochran, commander of the fort, to be alert. With only five men under his command, however, alertness would not be good for much.
Killer Joe Piro, dance-hall titan, demonstrates a new step at Shepheard’s discotheque in New York City in 1965. The discotheque had been born in Nazi-occupied Paris, as a place to hear recordings of banned American jazz and swing; it reached these shores in the 1960s and then soon mutated into that pure seventies phenomenon, disco. Disco’s white-hot flame of unfettered hedonism was bound to burn itself out, yet it left a permanent mark on the country’s social and cultural landscape—as Peter Braunstein explains inside.