“Executive Mansion,
“Washington,
“October 26, 1863.
“Ladies having in charge The North Western Fair for the Sanitary Commission, Chicago, Ill.
“According to the request made in your behalf, the original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is herewith enclosed. The formal words at the top and at the conclusion, except the signature, you perceive, are not in my handwriting. They were written at the State Department, by whom I know not. The printed part was cut from a copy of the preliminary Proclamation and pasted on merely to save writing.
“I have some desire to retain the paper, but if it shall contribute to the relief of the soldiers, that will be better.
“Your obt. servt.,
“A. LINCOLN.”
In technical strictness the original Proclamation was of the archives of the Department of State when the signature of the President and Secretary of State had been affixed thereto, and its transfer by Mr. Lincoln was an act not within his competency as President, or as the author of the Proclamation.
This point, however, is wholly speculative, but the country and posterity will be interested in the fate of the original of a document which is as immortal as the Declaration of Independence. The Proclamation was sold to the Honorable Thomas B. Bryan of Chicago for the sum of three thousand dollars and it was then presented by him to the Soldiers’ Home of Chicago, of which he was then the President. That position he still retains. The document was deposited in the rooms of the Chicago Historical Society, where it was destroyed in the great fire of 1871.
