Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel, has been revealed as the buyer of two rare copies of historic US documents for a total of $18.1m (with fees) at a Sotheby’s auction of fine books and manuscripts in New York on 26 June. Griffin paid $13.7m and $4.4m, respectively, for copies of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation that were signed by President Abraham Lincoln.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the US in 1865, and freed an estimated 4 million people after more than a century of the cruel institution. The manuscript that sold at Sotheby’s was a congressional copy and one of only 15 known versions signed by Lincoln, the driving force behind having the amendment passed and ratified. The copy was also signed by senators and congressmen who supported it. Only four such examples remain in private hands, according to Sotheby’s.
The Emancipation Proclamation, a presidential executive order passed in 1863 in the middle of the US Civil War, declared enslaved people in Confederate territory free. It meant more than 3.5 million people in secessionist states were no longer enslaved, though it did not apply to slave states that remained loyal to the Union or areas already under Union control.
The previous record for a copy of the 13th Amendment at auction was $2.4m, set in 2016, while the previously most valuable copy of the Emancipation Proclamation sold at auction in 2010 for $3.8m, both at Sotheby’s, according to the auction house.
“Since our founding, America has been on a journey to form a more perfect union,” Griffin said in a statement. "The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment marked a profound step forward, abolishing the scourge of slavery and advancing the ideal that all people are created equal."
Griffin is a top Republican donor who has given more than $100m to conservatives running for office, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. He said last year that he voted for President Donald Trump, whom he previously called a “three-time loser”.
The two rare documents are the latest additions to Griffin's wide-ranging collection. Besides art and dinosaur bones, he has a penchant for historic manuscripts. He outbid a group of crypto investors to buy a first-edition copy of the US Constitution at a 2021 Sotheby's auction, dropping a record-breaking $43.2m (including fees).
In May Griffin revealed that he also owns a rare early printing of the precursor to the Bill of Rights. He will lend that document and his copy of the US Constitution to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia—to which he has also just given a $15m gift—for a special exhibition timed to next year’s US semiquincentennial.
According to Sotheby's, Griffin also intends to lend his two newest acquisitions to an unspecified institution in the US.
