Lincoln 1864 manuscript sets record at NYC auction
A handwritten manuscript of an 1864 Abraham Lincoln speech sold for $3.44 million on the bicentennial of his birthday Thursday, setting a new auction record for any American historical document.
The manuscript was sold to an anonymous phone bidder after spirited bidding in a crowded Christie's auction house room. Proceeds from the sale will go toward a new wing for a library in New York's Finger Lake region, where the document has been since 1926.
Thursday's price was just slightly higher than the previous record of $3.40 million set last year at Sotheby's, also for a Lincoln document -- an 1864 letter the 16th president wrote to a group of youngsters who asked him to free America's "little slave children."
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The manuscript was sold to an anonymous phone bidder after spirited bidding in a crowded Christie's auction house room. Proceeds from the sale will go toward a new wing for a library in New York's Finger Lake region, where the document has been since 1926.
Thursday's price was just slightly higher than the previous record of $3.40 million set last year at Sotheby's, also for a Lincoln document -- an 1864 letter the 16th president wrote to a group of youngsters who asked him to free America's "little slave children."