The Kennedy-Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation.

New York: Sotheby's, December 10, 2010,

quarto, pictorial wrappers. 32 pp. Sotheby's, Item #35296

Just over a year after speaking about the Emancipation in Kentucky, Robert Kennedy purchased a copy of the Authorized Edition of the Proclamation for his own collection of historical American manuscripts. The copy appeared in an auction of 'important Manuscripts' at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, 31 March 1964. Kennedy was at this time serving as Attorney General in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, who had succeeded to office after President Kennedy's assassination; Robert Kennedy was at the same time beginning to weigh a run for the United States Senate from New York....Kennedy had been collecting American manuscripts for more than decade. During a September 1957 appearance on Edward R. Murrow's television show, Person to Person, Kennedy showed the interviewer letters by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as well as an early legal brief by Lincoln, that the then-chief counsel of the Senate's Select Committee on Labor and Management called 'one of my prize possessions.' "

Price: $25.00