?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
DISPATCHES FROM LINCOLN'S DEATHBED (LINCOLN, ABRAHAM.) Stanton, Edwin M. Dispatches concerning Lincoln's last hours and death. Manuscript in pencil, 2 pages on one sheet, 10 x 6 inches; minor wear. War Department, [Washington, DC], 15 April 1865
The text of Stanton's two famous dispatches from Lincoln's bedside, apparently written from a telegraph report that morning. The first one was composed by Stanton at 4:10 a.m. as a message to Major General John Adams Dix, then commanding the Department of the East in New York: "The Prest continues insensible & is sinking. Sec Seward remains without change. Fredk Seward skull is fractured in 2 places. . . . It is now assertained with reasonable certainty that the assassins were engaged in the horrible crime, Wilkes Booth being the one that shot the President & the other a companion of his. . . . It appears from a letter found in Booth's trunk that the murder was planned before the 4th March." Stanton's second dispatch, also addressed to Dix, is shorter and sadder: "Ab Lincoln died this morning at 22 min past 7." Following these two dispatches are two later ones not clearly attributed to Stanton. One is a false report about the Secretary of State's wounded son: "A dispatch has just been received that Fred. Seward is dead 9 oc this A.M." The second reads "Wilkes Booth is the youngest brother of Edwin Booth 33 years old. J.H." This report may have come from Lincoln's aide John Hay. This dispatch has remarkable provenance, having passed through at least four notable collections: Offered in Eberstadt catalogue in 1954, 133:606 (illustrated); Sotheby's Sang sale, 26 April 1978, lot 268; Heritage Lattimer sale, 20 November 2008, lot 61158, to Eric Caren.
