One of the rarest American historical documents, the wanted poster for Abraham Lincoln’s killers, is up for auction this week and is expected to sell for a record-high price.
The U.S. War Department poster seeking the arrest of John Wilkes Booth and co-conspirators John H. Surratt and David C. Harold is reportedly just one of five remaining from the original printing.
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In a 2021 auction, another copy sold for $275,000. Auctioneer Nate D. Sanders expects his sale to reach well above that when the hammer drops on April 27.
“President Lincoln’s assassination was a turning point in American history, triggering the ultimate what-if question of how racial reconciliation might have been different if he had lived,” said Sanders.
He added, “This poster viscerally brings you back to the days after he was killed — the shock of the murder, and the anxiety of the assassin still out there on the loose. It was an incredibly tense few days and this poster is one of the few mementos that have survived from it.”
Booth shot Lincoln while the president and his wife were at Washington’s Ford’s Theatre on April 15, 1865. Booth, a Marylander but Confederate sympathizer, was killed 12 days later by federal troops.
The reward on his head was an astronomical $100,000, about $1.8 million in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars.
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At just one of five copies, the wanted poster is rarer than the Constitution, of which 13 exist.
According to Sanders, the poster “originates from the Philadelphia area, passed down through the same family until its auction here; it has never been sold or auctioned before. A museum-worthy piece, perhaps the only opportunity to own the very first printing of the reward poster of the first U.S. president to be assassinated.”
