Scholar-Writer Convicted in Stolen Documents Case

Scholar Charles Merrill Mount was convicted Monday of transporting stolen historic documents, including letters from Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, that belonged to the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

Mount, 59, a Brooklyn native who sports the manners and accent of a British gentleman, was charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when sentenced on May 23.

The respected biographer and former Guggenheim Foundation fellow insisted that the documents he sold to a book shop were his.

Public defender Charles McGinty said bookkeeping at the National Archives and Library of Congress was too spotty to prove that those institutions ever owned the documents in question. He said he will appeal the conviction on grounds that the court should have paid transportation costs for two Irish men Mount wanted as defense witnesses.

Mount, whose $18,400 in savings was seized by the government after his arrest, contended that his indigent status required prosecutors to pay to transport witnesses.

He was not charged with theft, although the government contended that he took the papers.

Mount was accused of selling to a Boston book shop letters written by artist James McNeill Whistler, Churchill and author Henry James that belonged to the Library of Congress. He was arrested when trying to sell letters and papers signed by Abraham Lincoln and some Civil War generals that allegedly had been taken from the National Archives.

Mount, who was born Sherman Suchow, contended that he had bought the Whistler papers at Paris shops in the 1950s and ‘60s and that a priest in Ireland, who has since died, gave him the Civil War papers in 1961.

Salvation Army, lodged at a YMCA during most of the trial.

The defense noted that Mount over the years donated many of his papers to the Library of Congress. He has written biographies of painters John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart and Claude Monet and held a Guggenheim fellowship in 1956.