No two ways about it, this is a happy-ending story.Â
George Washington personal copy of the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and dated 1789, which he had annotated, remained at Mount Vernon when he died in 1977, but was inexplicably sold at auction in 1876. Sometime later, the Heritage Foundation of Deerfield, Massachusetts, bought it, but they it sold again at auction in 1964, when it was acquired by an avid Americana collector, Richard Dietrich. On Friday, it was sold by Christie’s on behalf of his estate — and acquired by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, the non-profit that owns and operates Washington’s historic home and museum in Virginia. Back into the library it will go.
The price set a record for an American book or historical document –Â $9,826,500, including the premium. It was estimated at $2- to $3 million.
The previous record was held by an autograph manuscript of Lincoln’s 1864 electionvictory speech,  sold at Christie’s for $3,442,500 in February 2009. Christie’s says the previous record for a Washington document was $3,218,500 for an autograph letter written in 1787 by him to his nephew Bushrod Washington, on the subject of the ratification of the Constitution, set in December 2009.
Christie’s said the bidding went on for four minutes, and involved “multiple buyers in the room and on the phone.”
The document, it als said, “remains in near-pristine condition, with Washington’s bold signature and his armorial bookplate. Remarkably, in the margins of the Constitution, Washington has added careful brackets and marginal notes. These notations highlight key passages concerning the President’s responsibilities, testifying to Washington’s careful, conscientious approach to his powers and responsibilities in his ground-breaking first term.”
Here’s what the Mount Vernon Ladies had to say.
No mention of who funded the purchase or if the money came out of its own resources, nor could I find that information in other reports of the sale. Bloomberg has a few other details, however.
It’s a good day for the first president.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s