By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

For more than 20 years, the rare document hung in the front office of a valve company owned by a Pennsylvania family. Now it is touring the country, giving historians and schoolchildren a chance to view a constitutional amendment that, in 42 words, conclusively freed nearly 4 million people from slavery.

There were 13 original copies of the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in the United States in 1865, all of them signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One of those copies is on display, for today only, at the Frederick Douglass Museum & Caring Institute, at 320 A St. NE.

"When I look at this, it reminds me that African American freedom had to be legislated," said Edna Greene Medford, a Howard University history professor who spoke at a brief ceremony yesterday sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. "It reminds me of what the country was 141 years ago, but it also reminds me of what the country can become -- and I don't think we've quite gotten there yet."

Although the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, declared that slaves "are and henceforward shall be free," it was limited in its reach, applying only to states that had withdrawn from the Union. Lincoln's authority to issue the order also was questioned.

"Without an amendment, we would not have legally ended slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was legally suspect, and it was going to be challenged," said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.). "What strikes me is here is a piece of paper signed by white men that transformed slaves from the status of property to the status of human beings."

After it was approved by the 38th Congress in early 1865, the amendment was signed by Lincoln and ratified by the states. The handwritten copies also were circulated for signatures of members of Congress. Today, except for one other privately held copy, they are housed at museums and libraries around the country, including the Library of Congress. The original is at the National Archives.

The copy on display at the Douglass museum, which has 146 signatures, is to be auctioned off March 30, at an expected price of about $1 million, said Ryan Raynor of Raynors' Historical Collectible Auctions, which is handling the sale. He said some museums, institutions and private collectors have shown interest. Two other original copies of the 13th Amendment have sold recently for $725,000 and $1.2 million, he said.

The Pennsylvania copy's complete history is not known, Raynor said. The owners, who did not want to be identified, obtained the document from a private dealer, he said. Already displayed in Chicago and Dallas, it is headed next to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said the point of such viewings is to "fuel our thirst for knowledge of our own history."

"What is the point of occasions like this, when people come in and look at pieces of historic paper and then say, 'Wow,'" Norton said. ". . . They make sense because they make us want to look behind the documents."