Gabor Boritt: The Gettysburg drafts
[Mr. Boritt is the author of "The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows" (Simon & Schuster, www.gettysburggospel.com).]
In the middle of a terrible war that would take the lives of more than 600,000 Americans, Abraham Lincoln went to a little Pennsylvania town on Nov. 19, 1863, to dedicate the nation's first national cemetery and to explain why the war had to go on. In some 270 words he gave the world a definition of democracy, and in time his Gettysburg Address became not only the best known speech on the globe but a document of great monetary value as well.
The first draft of Lincoln's speech, often called the Nicolay copy, has an adventurous post-creation history. The president probably wrote the first part in Washington, with pen, on Executive Mansion stationery, and the second part in pencil, at the Wills House in Gettysburg, on the evening of Nov. 18. But we do not know for certain.
This much we do know: John Nicolay, the president's secretary, eventually took possession of the Lincoln papers. And in 1885 he wrote about the Gettysburg Address that "the original ms. is now lying before my eyes." His daughter, Helen, turned the Lincoln papers over to another former Lincoln secretary, John Hay, upon Nicolay's death in 1901, and she inadvertently included the Gettysburg Address with it--and possibly the second draft as well.
After Hay's death in 1905, the whereabouts of the first draft continued to remain unknown to the public even as the news of the existence of the second draft, or "Hay" copy, surfaced. In 1916, the Hay family presented both the first and second drafts to the American people. They have been at the Library of Congress ever since, except for a brief refuge at Fort Knox during World War II, together with the second draft.
Lincoln wrote the second draft in ink on the same lined paper as the second page of the first draft, most likely on the morning of Nov. 19, at the Wills House. If so, this was the reading copy, though this, too, is not entirely certain.
Various people unsuccessfully attempted to buy the second draft from the Hay family, among them J.P. Morgan, who reputedly offered the then unheard-of sum of $50,000 (close to $1 million today) early in the 20th century....
In the early 21st century, with less significant Lincoln documents fetching seven-figure prices, the value of a copy of the Gettysburg Address must be in the many millions. Seth Kaller, a highly reputable dealer, ventures that it would fetch the highest price ever paid for a document, higher than Leonardo Da Vinci's papers that Bill Gates bought for more than $30 million in 1994. But unless one of the revered institutions that own the five copies were to face bankruptcy--an unlikely event--we cannot expect to witness the sacrilege of such a sale....
Read entire article at WSJ
In the middle of a terrible war that would take the lives of more than 600,000 Americans, Abraham Lincoln went to a little Pennsylvania town on Nov. 19, 1863, to dedicate the nation's first national cemetery and to explain why the war had to go on. In some 270 words he gave the world a definition of democracy, and in time his Gettysburg Address became not only the best known speech on the globe but a document of great monetary value as well.
The first draft of Lincoln's speech, often called the Nicolay copy, has an adventurous post-creation history. The president probably wrote the first part in Washington, with pen, on Executive Mansion stationery, and the second part in pencil, at the Wills House in Gettysburg, on the evening of Nov. 18. But we do not know for certain.
This much we do know: John Nicolay, the president's secretary, eventually took possession of the Lincoln papers. And in 1885 he wrote about the Gettysburg Address that "the original ms. is now lying before my eyes." His daughter, Helen, turned the Lincoln papers over to another former Lincoln secretary, John Hay, upon Nicolay's death in 1901, and she inadvertently included the Gettysburg Address with it--and possibly the second draft as well.
After Hay's death in 1905, the whereabouts of the first draft continued to remain unknown to the public even as the news of the existence of the second draft, or "Hay" copy, surfaced. In 1916, the Hay family presented both the first and second drafts to the American people. They have been at the Library of Congress ever since, except for a brief refuge at Fort Knox during World War II, together with the second draft.
Lincoln wrote the second draft in ink on the same lined paper as the second page of the first draft, most likely on the morning of Nov. 19, at the Wills House. If so, this was the reading copy, though this, too, is not entirely certain.
Various people unsuccessfully attempted to buy the second draft from the Hay family, among them J.P. Morgan, who reputedly offered the then unheard-of sum of $50,000 (close to $1 million today) early in the 20th century....
In the early 21st century, with less significant Lincoln documents fetching seven-figure prices, the value of a copy of the Gettysburg Address must be in the many millions. Seth Kaller, a highly reputable dealer, ventures that it would fetch the highest price ever paid for a document, higher than Leonardo Da Vinci's papers that Bill Gates bought for more than $30 million in 1994. But unless one of the revered institutions that own the five copies were to face bankruptcy--an unlikely event--we cannot expect to witness the sacrilege of such a sale....