Last Friday at Christie’s New York, Ann Bookout, regent of the board of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, secured what she had come to town to buy: George Washington’s personal copy of a book containing the Constitution and Bill of Rights for a cool 9.8 million dollars.
There’s a Ladies Village Improvement Society where I own a house. I’m pretty sure those women, who a run a mean thrift store and stage a lucky-to find-a- parking-spot summer fair, do not have that kind of buying power.
A privately funded non-profit organization, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association owns and manages George Washington’s Virginia estate. The Association’s press release explains the document was bought “for the shelves of the Fred W. Smith National Library,” and will open in the fall of 2013.
For presidential documents, “ten million is rarified air,” said Nathan Raab, vice president of The Raab Collection and dealer in important historical autographs. The closest to that sale was 3.7 million in 2010 for a signed copy by Abraham Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation, once owned by Bobby Kennedy.
Today, another copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, which has been in a private collection since the 1960s, sold for $2,085,000 to David Rubenstein, co-founder of The Carlyle Group, at the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries. Mr. Rubenstein, who in 2007 purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta at Sotheby's for $21.3 million, plans to donate this document to an Institute in Washington, DC. This is the second signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation Mr. Rubenstein owns; he bought the first privately in 2008. It is presently on view at The White House.
"I believe Americans should know about their history, " said Mr. Rubenstein. "Particularly their freedoms."
On watermarked paper, Lincoln boldly signed the printed 17 by 21 inch document which states, "...I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and hence forward shall be free...."
A radical step at the time, the Emancipation Proclamation led to the gradual ending of slavery. Lincoln's anti-slavery effort was a "courageous thing to do and ultimately cost his life," said Mr. Rubenstein.
Of the 48 copies signed by Lincoln in 1864 and sold at “sanitary fairs” to benefit the troops, only 26 are accounted for—they are on view at universities, historical societies and libraries across the country; eight, including today’s sale, are privately owned.
