The only known signature made by President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg will be sold at auction next week in New York City.
The signature,
A. Lincoln
, is on a page that was part of an autograph book from the dedication of the Gettysburg soldiers' cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863 - the day Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
Selby Kiffer, a senior vice president at Sotheby's, said yesterday that while photographs, diaries and newspaper accounts document Lincoln's presence at Gettysburg that day, the autographed book leaf is the only surviving item that Lincoln himself handled on that historic day.
"It's tangible evidence of his being there," said Kiffer, who handles historical books and manuscripts for Sotheby's, which is holding the sale Thursday.
The five known copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand are not believed to have been written on that day.
Sharing the gilt-edged page with the Lincoln signature is the signature of William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, and the names of two prominent Pennsylvanians: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's secretary of war and a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Gov. Andrew Gregg Curtin, all of whom were seated on the platform with Lincoln during the ceremony.
The autographs of two Union generals who saw action at Gettysburg (Abner Doubleday and George Sykes), Lincoln's private secretaries (John Hay and John Nicolay), and several foreign dignitaries appear on three other pages from the album.
Kiffer says the album may have belonged to one of the dignitaries because it contains signatures from all 13 men who were present and it would have been unlikely that an ordinary citizen could have gotten all those autographs at one time.
The autograph book's pages were part of a private collection that will be auctioned along with presidential and other American manuscripts, including documents from Lewis and Clark, and John Brown.
Among the other Lincoln papers is a letter responding to a group of Massachusetts schoolchildren who asked the president to free slave children. The collection will be on public exhibit at Sotheby's gallery in New York from tomorrow through Wednesday. The signature is expected to fetch up to $1 million.
