WASHINGTON -- There's a few short days to see the original Emancipation Proclamation, going on view at the National Archives for its 150th anniversary.
The Abraham Lincoln-signed copy of that document bought by David Rubenstein, managing director of The Carlyle Group, for $2.1 million earlier this year will be available to the public a little longer than that.
Rubenstein's copy -- one of 48 "authorized editions" that Lincoln signed in 1864, to be sold at the Philadelphia Great Central Sanitary Fair -- will be shown at President Lincoln’s Cottage through February 2013.
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Emancipation Proclamation
It's a fitting place for this display: President Lincoln's Cottage, a 34-room Gothic Revival style house at Armed Forces Retirement Home near D.C.'s Petworth neighborhood, is where Lincoln stayed for stretches of his presidency, and is where he wrote much of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Rubenstein is 250th on Forbes' 2012 list of the 400 richest people in America, with a net worth of $1.9 billion. He is a well-known philanthropist. In 2011 he donated $4.5 million to the National Zoo's panda program. Earlier in 2012 he donated $7.5 million to repair the Washington Monument, which was damaged by the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in August 2011.
Rubenstein's known for his love of old documents, too. His copy of the Magna Carta -- bought for $23.1 million in 2007 -- is on loan to the National Archives. Rubenstein donated $13.5 million to the Archives, as well, for related conservation and display expenses.
