"I certify that the President's signature is genuine"

The note

The wording barely changes from one photograph to the next. On the back of a signed carte de visite, the small mounted portrait photographs that Americans collected and traded in the 1860s, Hay wrote:

"I certify that the President's signature is genuine. John Hay."

It has turned up on portraits sold at Heritage and other houses, on a photograph held in the Shapell manuscript collection, and on one brought to Antiques Roadshow, where the appraiser called the note "fabulous."

The notes carry no date. Nobody can say for certain whether Hay wrote a given one in the White House years or long after.

Who was vouching

Hay first met Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, while working in his uncle's law office, which sat next door to Lincoln's own. He went to Washington as Lincoln's assistant private secretary, and with John Nicolay he handled practically all of the president's personal correspondence through the war.

That included requests for signed photographs. In 1864 a Soldiers' Aid Society in Illinois asked Lincoln to donate to a fundraising fair, and a letter from Hay confirms that the president sent six signed cartes de visite.

After Lincoln's death Hay co-wrote, with Nicolay, a major biography of him, and later became an ambassador and Secretary of State. Few people alive knew Lincoln's handwriting better, and as one Heritage catalogue put it, it is hard to think of anyone better placed to authenticate his signature.

What the note does to a price

The two dearest Lincoln photographs in the research behind this index's Lincoln page both carry Hay's line.

A portrait taken by Alexander Gardner in February 1861, the day after Lincoln arrived in Washington for his first inauguration, sold in 2023 for $181,250. It came with Hay's note and letters from two modern authenticators, PSA/DNA and Beckett.

A portrait taken by Mathew Brady in 1862 sold in 2016 for $175,000, with Hay's note and no modern certificate at all. Heritage billed it in its heading simply as certified authentic by John Hay.

A signed 1864 Brady portrait with a PSA certificate and no Hay note made $81,250.

Those are different photographs, from different sittings, sold in different years, so they cannot settle exactly what the note is worth. But they show something plainly: at the top of Lincoln's market, a handwritten line from his secretary was enough on its own, and a modern certificate was not needed.

That is why this index, which records only sales with a modern third-party certificate, carries just three Lincoln results. The $175,000 portrait is not among them. By our rules it has no certificate. By the market's, it has the best one there is.

The twist

In November 1864, Lincoln sent a letter of condolence to Lydia Bixby, a Boston widow who was said to have lost five sons in the war. The Bixby letter became one of the most admired letters in American history.

For more than a century, historians have argued over whether Lincoln wrote it. The case against him rests partly on accounts that Hay himself claimed authorship, including one in which he told the British statesman John Morley that he had written it. In 2019 a team of forensic linguists at Aston University compared the letter with hundreds of known texts by each man and concluded that Hay was almost certainly the author.

The question is not closed, and others still argue for Lincoln. But the possibility is worth sitting with. The man whose handwriting now vouches for Lincoln's signature may also have written one of the most famous letters that Lincoln ever signed.

It is the same pattern we found with George Washington's letter that sold for eight times his signature, whose words were in the hand of his aide. Behind many great signatures stood a secretary doing the writing.

What Hay's note is, and is not

A note like Hay's is testimony. It is one man saying, in his own hand, that he recognised his employer's signature. It is persuasive because of who he was and how much of Lincoln's handwriting passed through his office, not because it can be tested the way paper and ink can.

That makes it a different kind of evidence from a modern certificate, not a lesser one. A modern authenticator compares a signature with known examples. Hay was looking at the signature of a man he worked beside every day.

Two cautions follow. The first is that the note is now part of the object, which makes it worth copying, and a famous mark is exactly what a forger reaches for first. The second is that Hay's note vouches for the signature on the front of the photograph and nothing else. It does not prove when the photograph was taken or where it has been since.

What to check before buying

Read the back. On a Lincoln carte de visite, the verso matters: Hay's note, the photographer's back mark, and any trace of a revenue stamp all tell part of the story.

Expect both kinds of evidence at this level. The 2023 portrait came with Hay's note, two modern letters of opinion, and a family provenance going back generations. That combination is what carries the very top of the market.

Identify the photograph. Lincoln's portraits are catalogued by sitting in Lloyd Ostendorf's book of his photographs, and a serious listing gives the reference number.

The thing worth sitting with

The autograph hobby now runs on certificates from companies founded long after everyone who could have watched Lincoln sign was dead.

Hay's line on the back of a photograph is something older and stranger: the word of a man who saw the signature made, or at least saw thousands like it, and who may himself have written some of what Lincoln put his name to. A century and a half on, buyers still take him at his word.

This index records certified sales of Lincoln's signed material. You can read how we work the numbers out.

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