Lincoln Letter Sets Auction Record at $3.4 million

Document was reply to plea for slavery's end

For $3.4 million, anonymous phone bidder won ownership of a letter President Lincoln wrote in reply to an impassioned plea for the end of slavery.

The letter, an emotional response to a "Children's Petition to the president asking him to free all the little slave children in this country," dates from 1864 and was the highlight of a sale of historical American manuscripts, according to AFP.

Part of an auction called Presidential and Other American Manuscripts from the Dr. Robert Small Trust, the Lincoln letter was just one of many historically-significant items put on the block by Sotheby's New York.

"Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy," Lincoln wrote in the letter.

"While I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it."

More from AFP:

- The other highlight in the Sotheby's sale was Lincoln's signature from an autograph album on the same day in 1863 he gave his Gettysburg address -- considered perhaps the greatest speech in US history.

The autograph, signed at the dedication of a cemetery for those killed at the battle of Gettysburg in July that year, sold for 937,000 dollars to a first-time bidder who described the letter as "an amazing piece of history." -

A letter written by Thomas Jefferson, in which the third president reveals his concern over the health of then president George Washington, was among the items that failed to sell.

Lincoln letter as it was displayed in the National Archives. (AFP/GETTY IMAGES/File)