Sotheby's to sell The Emancipation Proclamation from The Collection of Robert and Ethel Kennedy - 10 December 2010
Sotheby’s is pleased to announce the sale of The Emancipation Proclamation from The Collection of Robert and Ethel Kennedy in New York on 10 December 2010. Estimated to bring $1/1.5 million, the document is one of only nineteen copies of the Proclamation known to survive, of which fourteen are in institutional collections. Purchased by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1964 at Sotheby’s predecessor firm, Parke-Bernet, the document has hung proudly in their family home, Hickory Hill. The Kennedy Emancipation Proclamation will be exhibited to the public this autumn in Boston, Philadelphia and New York ahead of the December auction.
Signed by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation stripped away the denial that the Civil War was about slavery. The Proclamation clearly demonstrates the President’s acknowledgement that the Civil War was fought not only to preserve the Union, but also to abolish slavery, as abolitionists had long maintained. Historians and the public have long linked Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy because of their devotion to freedom and liberty for all American citizens. As Attorney General and President Kennedy’s principal advisor, and later as Senator from New York, Robert Kennedy successfully championed the passage of Civil Rights legislation, completing the great work begun by the Emancipation Proclamation.
