Scholar Seized With Stolen Lincoln, Churchill Letters

An art scholar was arrested today for allegedly trying to sell a bookstore stolen letters by Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Abner Doubleday, along with other rare documents.

FBI agents arrested Washington-based scholar Charles Merrill Mount, 59, at Goodspeed’s bookstore on Beacon Hill where Mount was allegedly trying to sell the letters. Goodspeed’s had alerted federal agents last week that Mount had tried to sell nine letters by the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

The documents were stolen at an unknown time from the Library of Congress in Washington, FBI Special Agent John J. Cloherty Jr. said. As a published author of art history books, Mount had special access to such documents, Cloherty said.

But Cloherty gave no indication whether investigators have any evidence that Mount stole the documents. Mount faces a maximum 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of transporting stolen property over state lines.

The nine letters by Whistler are valued at at least $5,000, Cloherty said. He had no information on the value of the other documents.

Whistler, an American expatriate who spent most of his career in London, is best known for his portrait “Whistler’s Mother,” hanging in the Louvre in Paris.