“Don’t you need white gloves to handle that document?” a client asked recently when he visited our office.  These vaunted protectors of our historical legacy, pieces of cloth that stand between our filthy hands and many American treasures, are ingrained in the mind as a required wear during a visit to an archive. Many reporters file stories replete with white glove imagery.  It surfaces in movies and books.  And this past week, sitting on my couch watching one of the many reality shows featuring celebrities, I was moved to write this.  The scene took place in an institution, where a trained archivist carefully removed a centuries-old historical document from its resting place and gently handed it to the celebrity to examine. They both wore the requisite white gloves.  Has this  absurdity made its way that comfortably to the main stream?

Let’s begin with the main point: you do not need to wear white gloves to handle historical documents.  If your hands are so dirty that they require gloves, go wash them.  This will get rid of the excess oils on your hands that are the villain in this scenario.  If your hands are wet, dry them.

But it’s not only that you do not need white gloves when handling old documents or book.  You should not wear them.  The problem with the white glove myth is that it fights against the very thing it is supposed to ensure – the safety of the historical treasure.  Would you find it easier to read a book wearing white cloth gloves?  It removes any dexterity required when handling older paper.  You are more likely to rip the document or bend it while wearing gloves of any sort. Moreover, white gloves are more likely to sop up sweat and other oils that can then be transferred to the document.  And the small fibers can be left behind and filed away with the document.

What started out as a form of show and presentation has moved into the collective consciousness as a required precaution when handling our national treasures.  And it is counterproductive.

The documents titled “Autographs of the PRESIDENT AND CABINET, 1864” were created to help raise money for wounded soldiers and were given to various Sanitary Fairs to sell. The narrow pieces of paper had Lincoln’s signature as well as those of his seven Cabinet members.

At the fair held in Cleveland, Elisha N. Sill bought one of the documents and had it bound into a two-volume history written by abolitionist and newspaper publisher Horace Greeley. And then it disappeared for the next 148 years … until it showed up at the Raab Collection, a Philadelphia historical autograph sales business.

The books and the page of signatures had only two owners since 1864. They stayed with the Sill family for about 50 years until they were sold about a century ago to Summit County, Ohio, Probate Judge Lewis D. Slusser, a Lincoln scholar. They remained in his family until a relative approached Raab about buying the books and document, according to the company.

The document is believed to be one of only five known to exist. The document and the set of books, titled “The American Conflict,” are priced at $35,000.

According to information supplied by Raab, Sill was one of the organizers of the Sanitary Fair where he purchased the page of signatures. He was an Akron banker, abolitionist, state senator and a friend of John Brown, whom he met in the 1850s. Hoping to help Brown avoid the death penalty, Sill testified at Brown’s trial for treason that he thought the man was mentally unbalanced.

The Team of Rivals

If only a document signed by Abraham Lincoln could tell you where it has been, what it has seen, for the last 150 years.  Perhaps it has been held by other famous people, survived battles, sat decades in an attic, caught fire, traveled around the world, adorned the White House, or been torn apart and reassembled.   We do not learn about these stories in history books. Our historical narrative is often ignorant of them.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “David Swan,” the hero sleeps by the side of the road as events swirl around him.  He is tempted with love, nearly dies, and all the while slumbers, oblivious to it all.  “We can,” wrote Hawthorne, “be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny.”

Like David’s passage through events to which he is oblivious, the past exists around us and unfolds for us like a dream.  But original documents have seen more.  Their written words tell one story.  But they live a full life of their own in the subsequent years, decades, centuries.  We are looking for those stories.  Put away your white gloves; there is no need here for chemical solutions or scientific laboratories.  The process we are embarking on is more complex, subtle, and fascinating than this.  And it will take us to the fields of Ohio in 1864.

A few months ago, a woman called us and claimed to have a single sheet of paper signed by President Lincoln’s entire cabinet, the Team of Rivals.  It was bound into a book, she said.  Books of this era often carry printed signatures, and I was skeptical.

The document has been hidden inside this book for over a century

A digital scan she emailed showed signs of real ink on paper.   The pens appeared in different colorations, which you would expect to see as the different Cabinet members pressed with varying force on paper.  Printed signatures by contrast are uniform.  Also, I could see where one stroke crossed another, an example of ink on paper showing texture and thickness.  The signatures looked right, each bearing the clear script of the cabinet members.

Knowledge of history shed additional light.  The Civil War was the early dawn of organized modern medical care. For the first time in coordinated fashion, non governmental organizations played a serious role alongside their governmental counterparts in public health, working to organize Sanitary Fairs to benefit wounded and disabled soldiers.  President Lincoln and his cabinet took a personal interest in this, and occasionally donated autographs to be sold at these Sanitary Fairs.  This donation has helped contribute to his legend.  A few carried the full signatures of Lincoln and his cabinet, the “Team of Rivals,” and were signed on known letterhead.  Only 3-4 of these documents are known to have survived.  Though this sheet matched those few, there was no previous record of its existence.

But the document told us so much more.  At the Sanitary Fair, it was bought by a man who bound it into a history book by Horace Greeley and entered his name on the front leaf: “E.N. Sill.”  He was Elisha Sill, whose father had been a Revolutionary War hero and poet-preacher.  The younger Sill was an abolitionist in Ohio, a state that, along with Massachusetts, led the anti-slavery crusade.  In Summit County, where Sill ran the local bank, the fiery John Brown, who tried to liberate slaves, grew up.  The families knew each other and John and Elisha were friends.  Sill spoke in the Ohio Senate advocating abolition.  And he fought for the well being of the soldiers going off to fight.

His name was a breadcrumb that took us to an obscure book, A Historical Sketch of the Soldiers Aid Society of Northern Ohio.  He appears in the list of organizing members of the great Northern Ohio 1864 Sanitary Fair.   Single admission tickets cost 25 cents. The fair, opened by Major General and future President James A. Garfield, brought in $78,000. The book describes the event in vivid detail.  “February 22d, 1864, the anniversary of the birthday of Washington, and henceforth to be remembered as the inaugural day of the great Sanitary Fair, opened inauspiciously with clouds and rain. But by nine o clock the sun peered through the clouds, the sky cleared, the morning air was balmy and spring-like, and nature smiled in happiest mood. Above the fair building, around and in which the workers still clustered, thickly and busily as bees, floated the flag of the Union, and from housetops and flagstaffs throughout the city the stars and stripes were flung out. The streets were thronged with citizens and strangers.”

This book put us on the ground, in a tent, where soldiers and citizens strolled through the exhibits, seeking a glimpse of the heroes, and browsing the items being sold.  More importantly, it put us in the shoes of E.N. Sill.  The book continues, “Several fine engravings adorn the walls, autographs of Lincoln are for sale here, and useful and fancy goods of every variety.”

One of these autographs, which had survived nearly 150 years, had just walked into our office.  From Mr. Sill, it had gone to a judge in the Akron area, just miles from where it had been first sold in 1864. And when the judge’s grand daughter put the book and document on my desk, asking if she had a real signature of Abraham Lincoln, the document’s story came full circle, and was able to speak unhindered for the first time in a century.

You can follow Nathan Raab on twitter at www.twitter.com/raabcollection or facebook at www.facebook.com/raabcollection

A Well Known New World Naval Confrontation Between England and Spain

In this original order, a new acquisition, from King James II’s Privy Council (his highest advisers), signed by one of those advisers, he challenges the Queen of Spain over the seizure by Spanish ships of a British vessel, The Virgin, in the West Indies.  This is an uncommon Royal Order in relation to the sparring New World nations.

1) Tip for the below image: the letter “e” will appear backwards. Also, prepare yourself for antiquated spellings. And don’t forget that a special symbol that looks like a “y” adopted the sound “th” and later gave way to the pronunciation of “ye” not as “the” but as we would pronounce it today.

Here is the excerpted portion: “By the Spaniards in ye (the) West Indies…. Councell Learned as to ye Impossibility…”

2) Tip for below: look for the “p” that looks like an “x,” and alternate spellings of words.  Also, the first “s” in the word is not the same as the second.

Transcription: “The Dispatches obteyned from the Queen…. and Satisfaccon (abbreviated for satisfaction) of ye losses & Damages.”

3) Tip for below: watch out for abbreviations. This did not die in the modern age.

Transcription with meaning in parantheses: “Right Honble (Honorable) Mr. Secry (Secretar) Coventry… his Mats (Majestys) Ambbassadr at the… acquaint that Court how…  that the Petrs (petitioners) haveing made…”

Want to see the whole piece? Click below.

or contact us to order

Raab Collection Interview on C-SPAN