Lincoln Letter Sold for Record Price

A letter written by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 has been sold at auction in New York for $3.4 million, which is a record price for a Lincoln manuscript.

The letter was a reply to a group of schoolchildren in New York who had sent Lincoln a petition urging him to free "all the little slave children in this country."

Lincoln's handwritten response was brief: "Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust that they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it."

The Lincoln letter was dated April 5, 1864, a year before the end of the Civil War. Slavery would not be ended in the United States until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in December 1865, eight months after Lincoln's assassination.