
Found: Stolen Alexander Hamilton Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette - agronaut
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/found-stolen-alexander-hamilton-letter-missing-decades-180972239/
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twblalock
The contents of the letter:
[https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-07...](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-0775)

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justsayinstuff
>I am My Dear Marquis with the truest affection Yr. Most Obedt

What does Obedt mean here? Was Hamilton really literally a servant?

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dflock
No - it's just a very polite/formal way of singing a letter to royalty/gentry.
Like "Yours sincerely" turned up to 11.

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y96V89C668e7Q74
When something like this is found, is the family just out of luck as far as
the value of the item goes, or do they somehow get compensated? Obviously they
didn't know it was stolen when they bought it from the rare document dealer.
Is there insurance for cases like that?

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slg
Also how much time has to pass before the stolen nature becomes immaterial? I
would imagine that a majority of artifacts in most history museums fit some
definition of the word "stolen". Is this just different because it was stolen
within the last century?

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JadeNB
I'm sure that a lot of suitably ancient theft is shrugged off—I guess even
that suitably ancient theft eventually becomes synonymous with possession—but
the example of the Elgin marbles
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles))
shows that it's not always so.

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slg
A lot of these pieces, including the Elgin Marbles, weren't part of an ancient
theft. Many of them weren't stolen until the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries.
For example, the UK has also refused to return certain pieces of artwork that
the Nazis stole from Holocaust victims. That theft occurred at roughly the
same time this letter was stolen.

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JadeNB
> A lot of these pieces, including the Elgin Marbles, weren't part of an
> ancient theft. Many of them weren't stolen until the 18th, 19th, or 20th
> centuries.

I'll grant that it's getting into terminological quibbles, but I'd call the
18th century (or the early 19th, as for the Elgin marbles) probably about as
ancient as a theft can be while still allowing us to have some reasonable idea
of who the 'true' owners are. Farther back than that, I imagine one gets into
the mists of increasingly inaccurate histories, not to mention of mutually
conflicting but equally viable claims on who is the rightful owner and who the
thief.

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kmlx
i present you with an 18th century australian shield being claimed:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
news/aboriginal-m...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
news/aboriginal-man-private-viewing-ancestral-shield-james-cook-australia-
british-museum-a8896501.html)

> An Aboriginal man demanding the return of an ancestral shield seized by
> James Cook in 1770 has become the first living member of his clan to hold it
> after being invited to a private viewing by the British Museum.

> Mr Kelly said repatriation was important in light of “all the stuff that’s
> happened in the past” and it would be a “huge moment in time to have the
> British Museum and others actually return things to the Aboriginal people
> because it would be a great step towards the healing process.”

> Mr Kelly’s claim to the artefacts has been backed by a motion passed in 2016
> by New South Wales’ parliament, which acknowledged his clan as the shield’s
> rightful owners; Australia’s Senate followed suit two months later.

I would love to read how they came to that conclusion.

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kennywinker
Chorus: “32,000 troops in new york harbour”

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Asparagirl
Immigrants, they get the job done!

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hirundo
Note to self: don't steal stuff that will still be scorching hot 80 years
later. Except kisses.

