Lincoln's Letter to a Boy

The boy, whose father was a journalist, had told all his friends he'd shaken Lincoln's hand. They didn't believe him and mocked George for claiming he'd met the man who was now president. So his teacher wrote a letter to the White House hoping to learn the truth.
The president responded in a brief note dated March 19 and sent to the boy in New York City.
"Whom it may concern, I did see and talk with master George Evans Patten, last May, at Springfield, Illinois. Respectfully, A Lincoln"
The Raab Collection expects to get about $60,000 for the letter, The Associated Press reported. This is the only know surviving letter Lincoln wrote to an individual child, according to the Philadelphia-based dealer.
However, Lincoln did write to a group of 195 children who sent him a petition in 1864, The Guardian reported.
The kids asked the president to free "all the slave children in this country."
On April 5, Lincoln replied.
"Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust that they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it."
The letter sold last year for $3.4 million, a record for a manuscript in the U.S.