Lincoln's Yarns and Stories

HELPED OUT THE SOLDIERS.

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.”