Via the AP and CBSNews.com:
[…] But how did an innocuous Civil War-era memo bearing Abraham Lincoln’s signature end up in the state archives of Hawaii, which was not part of the United States at the time? State researchers are trying to find out.
The memo dated Sept. 22, 1862, orders the secretary of state at the time to affix the U.S. seal to a separate piece of paper, a proclamation dated the same day.
That proclamation was the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s official warning to rebellious Southern states to return to the Union within three months or face military emancipation of their slaves.
Hawaii records indicate they’ve had the memo – but not the proclamation – for at least 74 years.
[…] Back in the 1920s and ’30s, the archives received several donations from a collector named Bruce Cartwright Jr., grandson of Alexander Joy Cartwright, considered by sports historians to be the inventor of baseball.
One of those donated items was the Lincoln-signed note announcing Caldwell’s appointment, Kurkjian said.
“It’s my guess that (Cartwright) is the donor” of the proclamation memo “and for whatever reason it wasn’t properly documented,” she said.
“I can’t prove it. I’ve been trying,” she said.
“Its an interesting mystery,” Stowell said.
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