Judge Thomas B. Bryan, of Chicago, a member of the Union Defense
Committee during the War, related the following concerning the original
copy of the Emancipation Proclamation:
“I asked Mr. Lincoln for the original draft of the Proclamation,” said
Judge Bryan, “for the benefit of our Sanitary Fair, in 1865. He sent it
and accompanied it with a note in which he said:
“‘I had intended to keep this paper, but if it will help the soldiers, I
give it to you.’
“The paper was put up at auction and brought $3,000. The buyer afterward
sold it again to friends of Mr. Lincoln at a greatly advanced price, and
it was placed in the rooms of the Chicago Historical Society, where it
was burned in the great fire of 1871.”