(Fox News) – A rare piece of American history is up for sale, just in time for Christmas.

An original letter written and signed by President Abraham Lincoln in the
middle of the Civil War was recently discovered among a collection of family heirlooms belonging to the direct descendants of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Written four days before Christmas in 1863, it requests that Mrs. Lincoln’s
first cousin and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Craig, be allowed to safely return
to their cotton plantation in Arkansas, which was by then in Union territory.

“[I]t is my wish,” Lincoln writes “that they be permitted to do so, and that the
United States military forces in that vicinity will not molest them or allow them
to be molested, when within their power to prevent, as long as the said Mr. and
Mrs. Craig shall demean themselves as peaceful and loyal citizens to the United States.”

The letter was handed down from generation to generation, until it ultimately
ended up in the care of a descendant now living in the Midwest.     

It was recently acquired directly from that descendant by the Raab Collection,
and is now for sale for $60,000.

“Finding something from Abraham Lincoln that is still in the hands of the family
of the recipient is increasingly rare,” says Nathan Raab, the vice president of the Raab Collection. “Something of this importance and connection to Lincoln’s
family is very uncommon.”

And he would certainly know. The Raab collection has worked on the sale and preservation of many important historical documents, and with the families of
their authors, including Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald
Reagan among others.