On August 19, 1791, the accomplished American mathematician
and astronomer Benjamin Banneker wrote a letter to then-
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson corresponded prolifically with luminaries from around
the world, but Banneker is unique among them: the son of a free
Black American woman and a formerly enslaved African man from Guinea, Banneker criticizes Jefferson’s hypocritical stance on
slavery in respectful but unambiguous terms, using Jefferson’s
own words to make his case for the abolition of slavery.

Banneker himself was born free in what is now Ellicott City,
Maryland, and was encouraged in his studies of astronomy
and mathematics by the Ellicotts, a Quaker family who owned
a mill and much of the land in the area.

The auctioned-off letter was dated April 10 and postmarked
April 12 – just days before disaster struck.

(FOX NEWS) – A "prophetic" letter written aboard the ill-fated RMS
Titanic ocean liner has been auctioned in England for a stunning
sum.

The letter was sold by Wiltshire-based Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd.
on April 26. It was written by Archibald Gracie IV on April 10, 1912
– just five days before the ship sank on April 15.

Gracie penned the note on April 10, when the ship left Southampton, England. The letter was postmarked in London two days later, on
April 12.

"It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass
judgment on her," Gracie wrote compellingly in the letter.

"The Oceanic is like an old friend and while she does not possess
the elaborate style and varied amusement of this big ship, still her seaworthy qualities and yacht-like appearance make me miss her,"
he added.

"As dawn broke, Col Gracie returned to New York City aboard the
rescue ship Carpathia, where he began writing about what he had
been through."

Originally predicted to fetch the equivalent of $80,000, the
103-year-old piece of paper was sold for an eye-popping 
$399,000.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge called the letter "one of the
finest of its type known."

Though Gracie survived the shipwreck, his health was
severely impacted by the disaster. He suffered from
hypothermia and various physical injuries on the day
of the sinking. In Dec. 1912, he fell into a coma before
dying of complications from diabetes.

.

George Washington
(February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799)

(Fox News) – A letter on God and the Constitution written by George Washington
is up for sale after spending decades in a private collection.

The letter to Richard Peters, speaker of the Pennsylvania Constitution, is signed Sept. 7, 1788, and praises God for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Written a week after Washington told Alexander Hamilton that he would likely accept calls to assume the presidency, the letter came at a time when the Constitution was under attack. Some states wanted to hold a second
Convention that may have undermined the Constitution.

The letter, which is priced at $140,000, is up for sale at Ardmore, Pa.-based historical document dealer The Raab Collection.

(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.

BOSTON (AP) — An angry letter from John Lennon to Paul and Linda
McCartney written shortly after the Beatles’ breakup has been sold at
auction for nearly $30,000.

The two-page typed draft , with handwritten annotations by Lennon,
was sold Thursday by Boston-based RR Auction.

RR says the letter is believed to have been written in 1971 in response
to criticism Lennon received from Linda McCartney about his decision
to not publicly announce his departure from the band.

The profanity-filled and sometimes rambling letter reads: “Do you really
think most of today’s art came about because of the Beatles? I don’t
believe you’re that insane — Paul — do you believe that? When you
stop believing it you might wake up!”

The letter was sold to a collector in Dallas who requested anonymity.

John Winston Ono Lennon (John Winston Lennon)  
(October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)