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Lincoln's Final Draft of the Gettsburg Address Goe

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Auction Catalog, "PARKE-BERNET GALLERIES," New York, April 27, 1949, 36pp., plus cover, very good. This was the auction which sold the fifth and final Lincoln hand-written copy of the Gettysburg Address, the "Bliss Copy," which is illustrated to exact size as a foldout in this catalog. The Bliss Copy has been the source for most facsimile reproductions of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This draft now hangs in the Lincoln Room of the White House, a gift of Oscar B. Cintas, former Cuban Ambassador to the United States.[26] Cintas, a wealthy collector of art and manuscripts, purchased the Bliss copy at a public auction in 1949 for $54,000, at that time the highest price ever paid for a document at public auction.[31] Cintas' properties were claimed by the Castro government after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, but Cintas, who died in 1957, willed the Gettysburg Address to the American people, provided it would be kept at the White House, where it was transferred in 1959.

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