One of the last documents ever signed by Abraham Lincoln, which for years lay undiscovered in a desk drawer, is being offered for sale, valued at $45,000.
The 16th president signed the document, a treasury appointment for Allen Gangewer, an anti-slavery campaigner in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Washington DC, on 11 April 1865 – the day he made what would turn out to be his final speech.
Three days later, at Ford’s Theatre in downtown Washington, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth and died the following day.
“A woman from the midwest, probably in her 80s, gave us a ring and arranged to come meet with us at our office outside Philadelphia,” said Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, which will sell the Gangewer document online.
“And she told me this heartwarming story about her husband, how he had passed away, and in looking through his stuff, sometime later, she had found this desk that he used to work at, and inside this desk there was this Lincoln document. She didn’t know much about it, except obviously it had been acquired at some point by her late husband, who had kept it close to his work.
“You imagine people make plans for these documents, for when they’re not here. And a lot of people do. But you do find that on occasion these things pop up in rather unexpected and exciting places.”
In Lincoln studies, 11 April 1865 is a date that looms large. The civil war was all but over and crowds pressed the president to speak in public. That night, from a White House window, he did so.
Addressing the subject of Reconstruction in the defeated southern states, Lincoln expressed support for Black suffrage. Looking on, Booth – an actor, white supremacist and Confederate sympathiser – is said to have said: “That is the last speech he will make.”
The document now offered for sale was one of the last Lincoln ever signed. It reads: “Washington, April 11, 1865. AM Gangewer is hereby appointed to discharge the duties of Third Auditor of the Treasury during the absence of the Auditor caused by sickness or otherwise. Abraham Lincoln.”
Allen Gangewer edited German-language and anti-slavery newspapers before becoming private secretary to Salmon P Chase, the governor of Ohio who was treasury secretary under Lincoln and later chief justice of the US supreme court.
Gangewer was also a co-founder of the National Colored Home, established in Washington, in a house confiscated from a treasury official who joined the Confederate government, to care for formerly enslaved people.
Daniel Worthington, director of the papers of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, said the document now offered for sale was “a new find”, the National Archives holding only a contemporary copy.
Asked how the original was authenticated, Raab said: “If you’ve ever read the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell [about instinctual thinking] … when you’ve looked at enough documents that Lincoln signed, and I certainly have, you do get an initial kind of ‘blink’ moment, where you really feel you’re looking at something that’s authentic, or kind of a sinking feeling where there’s something that’s not right.
“… The process is not to immediately look at the signature but to look at the context, the paper, the wear, the ink, the historical event. Did this event actually take place? Was this man actually appointed? Who was he? And then, was Lincoln in Washington on 11 April? We know he was. Then look at the signature, of course. So the process is a multifaceted one.
“In some ways, you’re looking at the signature but not in a way you might expect. Of course, I’m looking to make sure it’s Lincoln’s handwriting. But I’m also making sure it’s signed ‘Abraham Lincoln’ not ‘A Lincoln’, because Lincoln signed his letters ‘A Lincoln’ but these formal documents were always signed with his full name. One signed the wrong way is pretty much as close to the kiss of death as you can get. He was consistent in his practice.”
For the sale through the Raab Collection website, Raab expects interest from institutions and private collectors. Signatures of Lincoln and George Washington are the most highly valued among US presidents, in large part due to increasing scarcity.
“There will come a day 100 years from now where these things will be nearly impossible to find,” Raab said. “We’re dealing with a product where there’s an increasing demand but a decreasing supply, because these things sell to major private collections that they never exit or they go to institutions or, God forbid, they get lost or destroyed. But the demand continues to increase.”
