April 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox, John Wilkes Booth fires his fatal shot, and General Sherman's army marches into the shattered city of Raleigh. Somewhere within those tumultuous days, an infantry man rifles though the North Carolina in search of Conferedate momentos. What he finnds is no ordinary souvenier. Instead, he returns home with a touchstone of our republic: one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights. Lost Rights follows that precious document's epic passage over the following 138 years from the New York businessman who purchased it for $5.00, to the folk art expert that hid it under his bed, to a little known historian who devines the truth, and the FBI sting operation on the 32nd floor of a Philidelphia office tower after an offer to sell for $5 MILLION!
Part history, part detective story, and part true crime yarn, Lost Rights is as provacitive as it is entertaining. Written by David Howard