A rare letter that gives a little insight into “the room where it happened” just sold at auction for a huge price tag.
The letter, written by Alexander Hamilton to James Madison in 1790, was estimated to sell at auction for $8,000-$10,000. According to Lion Heart Autographs, one of the world’s premier dealers in rare autographs and manuscripts, announced that the letter sold for $133,850 when it went to auction in New York on April 28.
The handwritten Hamilton letter, which is the only letter between Hamilton, the first Secretary of Treasury, and Madison to ever hit the auction block, mentions Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, and is likely one of the last letters still in private hands that chronicled the events that inspired the song “The Room Where It Happens” from the hit musical “Hamilton.” The letter connects the three founding fathers as they resolved their differences and came to the agreement that was the Compromise of 1790, which passed Hamilton’s resolution that the federal government would assume the state’s debts from the Revolutionary war in exchange for the nation’s capitol be moved to a location on the Potomac River.
Lion Heart Auction No. 13 featured over 170 rare documents, many of which exceeded their sales estimates. Other notable sales from the April 28 auction include a Mahatma Gandhi quote on faith selling for $11,500, a handwritten “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” poem by Robert Frost which sold for $35,650, a Charles Dickens quote that sold for $10,637, a John Adams letter about the War between France and Britain that sold for $26,450, a George Washington land parcel sale document that sold for $10,925, a Benjamin Franklin Inscription that sold for $14,375 and a Montgomery el Alamein manuscript that sold for $14,375.
