That letter, sent in care of Massachusetts Adjutant General William Schouler to be delivered personally to the grieving mother, was first copied by Schouler and released to the Boston newspapers, from which it was reprinted nationwide.  Its raw anguish and sincere gratitude comforted a nation mourning the loss of sons, sweethearts and fathers.

The president is not depicted as a part of the mourning scene, but overlooks his words and the black-clad woman as a figure of mythic proportions in his own right.  This tone is echoed throughout the series as “The Martyred President” becomes a part of American mythology, enshrined in the American psyche.

Of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons sacrificed “upon the alter of freedom,” three turned up later very much alive, only temporarily lost in the fog of war and reported killed.  Charles and Oliver did die in combat, but Henry was captured at Gettysburg and later exchanged, George was captured and joined the southern forces, and Edward, only sixteen years old, deserted and went to sea.  The image of five fraternal tombstones, however, persists on the postcard as a fundamental bit of national Lincoln folklore.

Artistic renditions of Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime ranged from cartoonish political drawings to somber photographic likenesses.  Immediately after his assassination, however, those images became idealistic and noble.  Within a decade, the images began to take on mythic qualities.  Lincoln was never elevated to the stature of a god, as was George Washington in Constantino Brumidi’s The Apotheosis of Washington, which was installed on the rotunda of the capitol in 1865, nor even to colossus, as Horatio Greenough sculpted the founding father.  Lincoln remained, even in allegorical reverence, a man of the people.

Lincoln the Liberator is one of the great recurring mythological themes in Lincoln postcards.  In the Nash version (figure 5, right), he appears before a kneeling slave family, bidding them to rise from their lowly condition.  Although chains still encircle their limbs, a cast-off chain lies conspicuously at the president’s feet, and he holds a rolled up document, the Emancipation Proclamation.

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