Gettysburg Railroad Pass, Lincoln Manuscripts and Custer Letters Among Standout Lots at Heritage Historical Manuscripts Auction Feb. 26

Highlights also include Marie Antoinette letter from Tuileries, Bugsy Siegel Flamingo Hotel legal transfer and Pope Francis zucchetto DOWNLOAD DIGITAL PRESS KIT DALLAS, Texas (Feb. 13, 2026) — President Abraham Lincoln’s unusually brief oration on November 19, 1863, now referred to as the Gettysburg Address, is among the most important, if not the most important, speeches in American history. He had arrived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the prior evening with a small party of his closest associates, including William P. Dole, his Commissioner of Indian Affairs, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on a special train arranged exclusively for Lincoln and his entourage. Each member of this small party was issued a special pass. Very few were issued, and fewer still of these passes — relics that were in close proximity to Lincoln as he prepared to give his most famous oration — have survived to the current day. On February 26, Dole’s railroad pass and the marshal’s ticket that authorized him to stand with Lincoln on the speaker’s platform will be among the singular historic items to go on the block at Heritage Auctions’ Historical Manuscripts & Texana Signature ® Auction. The railroad pass and Gettysburg marshal’s ticket are mounted in a scrapbook assembled by Dole’s wife, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Dole, which is full of other items that paint a portrait of the wartime social world of Washington. More than 70 pages of calling cards and invitations from politicians and dignitaries connect the scrapbook to Secretary of War William W. Belknap, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, journalist John D. Defrees, Representative John Sherman, Attorney General Edward Bates, Justice Andrew Wylie, and dozens of others. The scrapbook with its railroad pass and marshal’s ticket is just one of the 19 lots featuring notes, letters, autographs and other keepsakes collected by Lizzie Dole and passed down through multiple generations. “These are some of the most exciting historic documents Heritage has ever had the put up for auction,” says Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena. “These are the only such passes to come on the market. Think for a moment: Dole was on the train with Lincoln as he was on his way to deliver one of the most noted speeches in American history. Items that were in such close proximity to Lincoln during his trip to Gettysburg are exceedingly rare.” Lizzie Dole also collected two albums full of autographs. One of those albums features the signatures of seven Presidents of the United States, including Lincoln, as well as Vice Presidents, Civil War generals and naval officers and even a strip of paper bearing the handwriting of the fifth monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, King Kamehameha V. The other has signatures from figures including President Franklin Pierce, President Andrew Johnson and Texas President Sam Houston, as well as various politicians, generals, artists and more. Perhaps the most electrifying item in the Dole collection is the opening passage of Lincoln’s final Annual Message to Congress, a critical war-time address delivered December 4, 1864, in Washington, in Lincoln’s own longhand. This opening, resonant with the moral clarity that defined his presidency, stands as a complete and poignant declaration in its own right: “Fellow citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives. Again the blessings of health, and abundant harvests, claim our profoundest gratitude to Almighty God.” The manuscript fragment is extraordinarily rare and possibly even unique. Carl Sandburg explains in Lincoln Collector that only a few of the original pages of this address have survived: “Of President Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress in December of 1864, several manuscript sheets were given to various persons by the Superintendent of Public Printing, J. D. Defrees.” Roy P. Basler, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VIII, records 11 extant fragments of the original manuscript, all from its later sections: “Other fragments may exist, but if so, they have escaped the editors.” Other Lincoln material includes a signed letter written just two days after the conclusion of the Battle of Gettysburg in which he asks Surgeon General William A. Hammond to allow Sarah Fisher Ames to minister to the wounded on the battlefield. The auction is also replete with items related to General George Custer, including a 21-page letter from Custer to his wife, Elizabeth “Libbie” Carter dated January 2, 1869, just over a month after the controversial Battle of the Washita River, also called the Washita Massacre, in which Custer and his 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne village and used the tribe’s women, children and other noncombatants as human shields. “The Indian war is over,” Custer proclaimed in the letter. “To make a long story short, like Alexander, who mourned because there were no other worlds for him to conquer, Genl Sheridan and your dear Bo can mourn (?) because there are no more hostile Indians to conquer.” Of course, his death in the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight years later would prove his boast premature. The letter is of particular significance because it came so soon after Washita. It is possible Custer’s actions there contributed to his defeat eight years later at Little Bighorn, as he enraged not only Plains Indians but also H Company Captain Frederick Benteen, who blamed the deaths of 20 soldiers led by Major Joel Elliott on Custer’s abrupt withdrawal. This anger might have influenced his choice not to rush to Custer’s aid at his Last Stand. The June 20, 1876, Department of Dakota Headquarters field order from Edward W. Smith directing Custer to join Major Marcus Reno at the forward camp on the Rosebud River is another major piece of Custer history available in the auction. A May 6, 1791, letter from Marie Antoinette describes the dangerous situation she faces during her confinement at the Tuileries, written just weeks before her ill-fated flight to Varennes. Addressed to her confidant Florimond Claude, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, she despairs of the royal family’s perilous situation in Paris and her determination to escape the capital as the revolutionary violence escalates. A legal document from some 150 years later reads as a dry property transfer, but it would result in the spectacularly violent end of famed mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In the March 19, 1947, document, Siegel assumes control from Billy Wilkerson of the Las Vegas hotel and casino complex that would come to be known as the Flamingo. His mismanagement of the project would result in his mob cohorts ordering his murder three months later. And originating from Vatican City, a white zucchetto, or skullcap, worn and signed by Sua Santità Papa Francesco, or Pope Francis, is on offer with a certificate of provenance and shipping box from Charity Stars, the auction that originally offered the item on December 28, 2023 in support of the non-profit History Life Onlus. Images and information about all lots in the auction can be found at HA.com/6328. Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world's largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Heritage also enjoys the highest Online traffic and dollar volume of any auction house on earth (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). The Internet's most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has more than 2 million registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of 7,000,000 past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit. For breaking stories, follow us: HA.com/Facebook and HA.com/Twitter . Link to this release or view prior press releases . Hi-Res images available: Jesse Hughey, Public Relations Specialist 214-409-1376; JesseH@HA.com