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A rare piece of presidential history used by Indiana’s beloved Benjamin Harrison is up for sale.
On the market as of early November is Harrison’s original reading copy of his 1889 inaugural address. The signed manuscript was held by the 23rd president as he delivered his famous speech from the East Portico of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
The artifact was kept in the Harrison family for multiple generations before the Philadelphia-based Raab Collection acquired it some 15 years ago. The address was sold on the private market and is now up for grabs publicly for the first time, with an asking price of $225,000.
“Harrison lived a fairly long period of time and wrote a lot of letters. So, the ability to buy correspondence or documents of Harrison’s is certainly within the ability of any private buyer,” said Nathan Raab, president of The Raab Collection, in an interview with the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
“But what separates this is it’s just an individually important moment in American history. There have only been so many inaugurations, right?” he continued. “And of those inaugurations, I’m not aware of a single inaugural address, actually handheld inaugural address—not a souvenir copy, not something drawn up later, not a draft—but an actual handheld inaugural address, having come to the market.”
Harrison’s call for ‘mutual respect’
Harrison, among Indiana’s most famous residents, and the only president to have hailed directly from the Hoosier state, was a Civil War general and lawyer who descended from an already political family.
He was the great-grandson of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, and son of Congressman John Scott Harrison.
Harrison added to that legacy, first serving as a U.S. senator, and then as president when he narrowly defeated the incumbent Grover Cleveland in the election of 1888.
He accepted the country’s highest office on March 4, 1889.
As reported by those who were there, after Harrison took the oath of office, he “donned his silk hat and pulled a manuscript from his pocket that had been typed by his secretary Elijah Halford. Adjusting his spectacles, the President delivered his speech with sincere eloquence. He called for effort to preserve a more perfect union, advocating early statehood for territories, universal education, protectionism, pensions for dependents of Civil War veterans, and increased patriotism.”
Harrison’s inaugural address was well-received and is still considered by historians to be among the best: “… I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in frequent ambush along our path, but we have uncovered and vanquished them all. Passion has swept some of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor…The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all our communities, and the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect …”
Harrison served only one term as president; his second run against Grover Cleveland failed. Even so, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis notes numerous accomplishments during his four years as commander in chief, including the addition of six states to the Union—more than any other president.
Additionally, Harrison is remembered for establishing the Coast Guard Academy, expanding the nation’s Navy, enforcing the 15th Amendment to secure voting rights, expanding forest and public land preservation efforts, and instituting the practice of displaying the American flag over public buildings and schools.
Pages of history
The 37-page manuscript Harrison pulled from his pocket is the same one for sale. The Raab Collection said it numbers 37 single-sided pages on watermarked paper.
Considering Harrison’s known practice was to annotate documents immediately after events, Raab said it’s assumed that the former president signed and added this note right after the address: “This is the MSS [manuscript] used by me in delivering the address March 4, 1889.”
Harrison had the sheets bound in a small book, which was handed down from generation to generation in the Harrison family.
Originally obtained by Raab from a direct descendant of the president, the signed and annotated reading copy had been in a private collection for over a decade.
That previous customer has since sold it back. Raab did not disclose how much the manuscript was previously bought or sold for.
Raab said the collection’s research has failed to turn up “even one” other delivered manuscript, a “reading copy,” of an inaugural address having reached the market.
Separately, however, the Library of Congress holds three drafts of Harrison’s inaugural address.
Significant too, Raab noted, is that Harrison chose to bind the manuscript.
“And the intent of that was surely to safeguard it, to pass it down,” Raab said. “So he obviously cared, for sure.”
Additionally acquired from that unnamed descendant, who does not live in Indiana, was “an entire archive worth of stuff, and we bought that,” Raab said.
The Raab Collection also has seven other Harrison-related documents for sale—like correspondence between the president and his family, a report sent to Congress, and his order admitting the state of Washington. They range in price from $2,500 to $50,000.
Waiting for a buyer
Raab described the collection as “a business that looks for, discovers, buys and then sells important historical documents.” He said that means looking for “quality, not quantity,” and finding “things of individual, high importance.”
The has customers “all over the world,” including private customers and institutional buyers, university libraries and public libraries, and private clientele.
“We’re not an auction,” Raab emphasized. “We buy things and own them, and then we put them up at a fixed price. And at that point, it’s the equivalent of first come, first serve.”
Raab said it’s “hard to predict in a situation like this, where it’s so rare,” who the buyer will ultimately be, “but there would be some beauty in bringing it back to his home state.”
“Any other document of Benjamin Harrison, who wrote a lot of pieces and lived a long time …his correspondence is out there and can be acquired at a much cheaper price than this,” Raab added. “What makes this different is that it’s an inaugural address. It’s very rare. If somebody wants an inaugural address of an American president, well, this may be their only opportunity.”
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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