Mar 26, 2015 - Sale 2377

Sale 2377 - Lot 114

Price Realized: $ 11,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. Thirteenth Amendment. Joint Resolution of the Thirty Eighth Congress . . . Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution . . . Abolishing Slavery. With engraved signatures of President Lincoln, Vice President H. Hamlin, Schuyler Colfax and J.W. Forney (Speaker and Secretary of the Senate) and 164 Senators and Congressmen. Large folio, 22-1/2 x 17 inches, printed on fine, heavy stock; elaborate engraved border with a small vignette of the pyramid and all-seeing eye at top center; beneath this an oval vignette of a slave family holding a cameo portrait of Lincoln; one tiny closed tear to the bottom blank margin; 2 inch square discoloration to the bottom right corner, partially affecting the border and a few letters of text. Chicago: Engraved for D. R. Clark by the Western Banknote Co., 1868

Additional Details

an exceedingly rare and beautiful printing of the thirteenth amendment, abolishing slavery. 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . Shall exist within the United States. . .' An elaborately engraved broadside, based on the special 'souvenir' copies signed by Lincoln, of which only a handful are known to have been made.
The Thirteenth Amendment represents the first substantive change to how America interpreted those liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights since its ratification in 1791. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it really only freed the slaves in the openly rebellious states. The Amendment effectively put an end to slavery once and for all upon its passage on 1 February, 1865.