Museum obtains rare copy of 13th Amendment\nFORT WAYNE -- A museum benefactor has paid an undisclosed price for one of 13 known copies signed by President Abraham Lincoln of the congressional resolution that led to the constitutional abolition of slavery.\nThe Lincoln Financial Group Foundation paid a "record-setting price" for the 1865 sheepskin copy of the resolution authorizing the 13th Amendment that will be displayed in Fort Wayne's Lincoln Museum, museum officials said Friday.\nThey did not disclose the price, but Lincoln memorabilia broker Daniel Weinberg estimated its value at up to $1.5 million.\n"Within Lincoln memorabilia, it stands right there at the top," said Weinberg, who owns The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago. "What is Lincoln known for but emancipation and saving the Union? Certainly, this is as significant as it gets for a Lincoln document."\nMuseum registrar Cindy Van Horn said the document now in Fort Wayne was purchased from a private collector in California. It becomes the sixth of its kind to be put on public display, she said. The other five are in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the New York Historical Society, the Illinois Historical Society and the Huntington Library in California.\nThe remaining seven copies are either in private collections or their whereabouts are unknown, Weinberg and Van Horn said.\nAlthough some consider the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to be the defining document on the abolition of slavery, historians have noted that it only affected those states still in rebellion on Jan. 1, 1863.\nThe 13th Amendment ultimately was ratified by 36 states, although Lincoln never saw it enacted. A required three-fourths of the state legislatures had not yet approved it before he was assassinated on April 14, 1865.\nThe Lincoln Museum's copy of the resolution, unveiled at a ceremony Friday night, is one of only three known copies signed by Lincoln and 36 senators, museum president Joan Flinspach said. The other copies were signed by Lincoln and members of the House.\nA series of ink smudges near the senators' signature have led museum officials to conclude, after chemical tests, that one of the senators spilled ink on the document, then tried to blot it, Flinspach said.\n"It just makes this so human," she said. "You can actually visualize this happening."
City says it can't afford security for presidential visits\nEVANSVILLE -- After being "used like a pair of work gloves" by the Secret Service, Evansville no longer can afford to provide security for presidential and vice presidential visits, the city attorney said.\nEvansville City Attorney David Jones also criticized the Secret Service for refusing to provide evidence, testimony and witnesses to help defend the city against a lawsuit brought by environmental activist following a 2002 arrest outside a fund-raiser featuring Vice President Dick Cheney.\nA federal judge ruled Thursday the city must pay undetermined damages to the activist for violating his free speech rights.\n"This is not fair," Jones told the Evansville Courier & Press for a story published Saturday. "We've been used like a pair of work gloves, and when we were no longer handy, we were just discarded."\nJones said the Secret Service planned security for the private event at which city police arrested activist John Blair for violating a no-protest zone.\nEvansville Police Chief Brad Hill said the Secret Service's security plan for Cheney's visit required the police department to use both on-duty and off-duty officers. Hill said no tally was made of the cost involved, but called it the "largest security effort" undertaken in his 23 years on the force.\nU.S. District Judge Larry McKinney ruled Thursday that police violated Blair's First and Fourth Amendment rights. The size of the no-protest zone "burdened speech substantially more than was necessary to further the defendants' goal of safety," McKinney wrote.\nMcKinney noted the police had been unable to present any evidence that a "particularized threat" to Cheney existed to justify the size of the no-protest zone.\nA Secret Service agent who no longer works for the agency told police that protesters had to be kept at least 500 feet away from the entrance to The Centre, a convention hall where Cheney was appearing at a Republican fund-raiser for Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind.\nThe Associated Press left a message Saturday seeking comment from the Secret Service at the agency's offices in Washington.
Woman charged with killing ex-husband despite body not being found\nMARION -- Authorities on Friday charged a woman with murder in the death of her ex-husband, despite not having the man's body nor the murder weapon.\nJoyce Ann Hawkins, 43, of Gas City was being held at the Grant County Jail after a hearing in Grant Superior Court in which prosecutors accused her of killing 32-year-old Timothy Hawkins, who disappeared more than a year ago.\nProsecutors said Timothy Hawkins was last seen by family members on March 8, 2004.\nHis remains have not been found, nor has a handgun police say Joyce Hawkins used to shoot him. But authorities have enough other evidence to merit the charge, said Chief Deputy Prosecutor Bill Heck.\n"If other evidence is sufficiently strong, certainly a successful prosecution can take place," he said.\nTimothy Hawkins was a driver for New Mexico-based J & R Schugel Trucking Inc. The company's Columbus, Ohio, office received a text message on March 9, reportedly from Hawkins, stating he was quitting his job and abandoning his tractor-trailer, a probable-cause affidavit said.\nThe next day, a police officer found the truck abandoned in a private lot in Pendleton, just east of Interstate 69 on Indiana 38, in central Indiana.\nAn Indiana state police forensics expert found traces of blood in the truck cab.\nSix months after the disappearance, Joyce Hawkins, while serving a jail sentence for intimidation and disorderly conduct, told a Gas City police officer that she had accidentally shot her ex-husband in his truck the day he was last seen, in rural Grant County, the affidavit said.\nShe returned several hours after the shooting, drove a short distance, took the body from the truck, poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. She said she sent the text message to the trucking company and threw the gun in the Mississinewa River, the affidavit states.
Federal authorities say woman will not be deported to Africa\nMUNCIE -- A nurse and mother of two children who was arrested last year for a long-standing deportation order learned that for now federal authorities will not send her back to Africa.\nPolice arrested Fatu Flake, 41, in August 2004 during a traffic stop after a background check showed she had a 15-year-old deportation order. The order would have returned her to Sierra Leone.\nU.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., helped her win a stay of deportation in early December, and Flake was released from an Illinois detention center.\nA Chicago immigration court on Wednesday terminated the old order. A new order allows Flake to stay in Muncie until January 2007, when a change of status hearing was likely to designate her as a resident alien, according to court documents.\nFlake was a licensed practical nurse at Ball Memorial Hospital and married to Wiley Flake. She said Thursday she was grateful for the media's attention and for the efforts of Pence and Bayh.\n"I feel wonderful," she said, "You just don't know."\nThe deportation order came in 1989 after Flake's ex-husband contacted authorities about her illegal stay in the United States.\n"The end result is that she's free to stay and go about her life and be with her family," Pence spokesman Skip Brown said.
