When news of her father’s death in battle reached Mary Frances “Fanny” McCullough of Bloomington, Illinois, she became so depressed that family and friends feared for her life. A pretty and normally vivacious twenty-one-year-old, Fanny withdrew to her room and would neither eat nor sleep. Abraham Lincoln had bounced Fanny on his knee as a child while he visited the home of Lieutenant Colonel William McCullough during his days as a lawyer on the Eighth Illinois Circuit, and knowing this, Judge David Davis, also a resident of Bloomington, asked the president to write Fanny on the family’s behalf. The result was one of the most touching condolence letters ever conceived.