Lincoln Text Fragment Brings Record Price

A handwritten fragment of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address--featuring the words “With malice toward none; with charity for all”--sold Friday for $1.32 million, a record for an American manuscript.

The manuscript had an estimated value of $500,000 at the Christie’s auction. The buyer was Profiles in History, a California dealer in rare manuscripts, said Todd Merrill, a Christie’s spokesman.

The price broke the manuscript record set by a Lincoln letter proclaiming that he would not repeal the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves on Jan. 1, 1863. That letter sold in 1991 for $748,000.

The “malice toward none” passage was Lincoln’s attempt to set a conciliatory note for his second term in office and for the post-Civil War era.