Skinner Auctions John Wilkes Booth Letter for $79,900
In November 2004, Skinner sold an extremely rare John Wilkes Booth letter for $79,900 in its auction of Rare Books & Manuscripts in Boston. It was purchased at auction by a private collector/dealer.
The letter was written by Booth in February of 1865, just three short months before he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Sent to a friend in Boston, the letter details Booth’s request to order additional card de visites (calling cards with portraits). Ironically, it was the photograph taken for this card de visite that was used on Booth’s wanted poster after he shot the President. The chilling last passage of the letter reads as follows: “I return to the city [Washington, D.C.] in about a week, stop at national hotel and will get any letter sent to Ford’s Theater.”
Owned by a Boston-area collector, the letter was probably the latest correspondence written by Booth that was still left in private hands, as most other examples are now in museum collections. Surviving material from John Wilkes Booth is very rare, since so much of his personal belongings and writings were destroyed after the assassination of President Lincoln.
Notes Stuart Whitehurst, director of Skinner’s Books & Manuscripts department, “Booth is really one of the most reviled figures in American history. People were so eager to distance themselves from him after the death of Lincoln, they literally destroyed nearly everything related to him. Whitehurst goes on to say, “Booth was actually one of eight conspirators who devised a plan to assassinate Lincoln and other high ranking government officials. When the group was brought to justice, four of the eight were hanged, it was written of them by a Northern newspaper, “we want to know their names no more.”
