By Kelly Crow
Billionaire Ken Griffin just bought two of the most significant documents ever signed by President Abraham Lincoln, adding to his trove of Americana.
Griffin reset the record for any document signed by Lincoln when he paid Sotheby's $13.7 million on Thursday for a rare, handwritten copy of the 13th Amendment. The president signed the single sheet of vellum in 1865 ending slavery nationwide, and it is one of only four surviving copies to remain in private hands.
Griffin's winning bid smashed the previous $2.4 million record set by another copy of the 13th Amendment in 2016. Sotheby's thought its latest offering would only sell for up to $12 million.
The collector also won a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation for $4.4 million in Sotheby's rare books sale in New York. The 1863 proclamation originally signed by Lincoln and issued during the Civil War declared that all enslaved people in the Confederate states would be free. This copy, which was signed a year later, was estimated to sell for between $3 million and $5 million.
Griffin's purchase also reset the auction high bar for any copy of the famed proclamation; the previous titleholder was a $3.8 million copy sold to an anonymous collector in 2010.
The collector said in an email he wanted to win both historical documents because they "marked a profound step forward, abolishing the scourge of slavery and advancing the ideal that all people are created equal."
The two single-sheet papers sold by Sotheby's represented the priciest examples of each document to enter the marketplace and served as a major test of collectors' appetites for historic American artifacts. Griffin, the Florida-based founder and chief executive of hedge-fund Citadel, is best known for collecting modern and contemporary artists such as Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning, but he has also lately emerged as a voracious collector of rare U.S. documents.
In 2021, he outbid a consortium of cryptocurrency investors to win a $43.2 million copy of the U.S. Constitution. Last month, he said he planned to lend his copy of the Constitution -- as well as a 1789 document presaging the Bill of Rights -- to Philadelphia's National Constitution Center to exhibit in a new gallery to coincide with next year's 250th anniversary of the nation.
Griffin said the upcoming anniversary of the country was on his mind when he decided to bid for the latest documents at Sotheby's; he plans to lend them to institutions next year as well. "Each generation must experience the sacred documents of our democracy -- to learn from them and be inspired to carry our country forward," he said.
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 30, 2025 11:30 ET (15:30 GMT)
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