Don't Mess With Bill of Rights Cause We're Locked and Loaded

By MATTHEW EISLEY, Staff Writer

After 140 years away from home, North Carolina's original draft of the U.S. Bill of Rights returned Thursday to the state Capitol, where it was stolen at the end of the Civil War.
Federal authorities delivered the faded cream-color parchment to Gov. Mike Easley during an afternoon ceremony in the Old Senate Chamber, one floor above its last repose in the possession of the people of North Carolina.

A Union soldier reportedly swiped the prized paper in April 1865, and it was in private hands until federal agents seized it two years ago.

The transfer occurred on the order of federal trial judge Terrence Boyle, who ruled Thursday that North Carolina should hold the historic document.


Boyle did not say who actually owns it, a question still in dispute. And it will be awhile before many Tar Heels see it. But now North Carolina has it.

"This is a great day in history," Easley told a crowd of legislators, state lawyers, federal authorities and news reporters. He helped coordinate the document's seizure from a Connecticut antiques dealer in March 2003.

The governor later said he was amazed to touch the document Thursday.

"To think that I had my hand on something that George Washington had his hand on was awesome," he said.

The handwritten document, copies of which President Washington sent to each colony in 1789 to encourage support for the new U.S. Constitution, had 12 proposed amendments.

Only after Congress proposed the amendments did North Carolina approve the Constitution.

Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights, which define the basic rights of U.S. citizenship and set limits on government powers, such as free speech, religious freedom and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney, who formally signed over the document to Easley, credited a team of federal and state law enforcers for bringing it home.

"My heart is beating so fast," he said after the transfer. "It was stolen from this building in 1865. And now it's back."

State and federal authorities think a Union soldier from Ohio stole the document from the Capitol when Gen. William T. Sherman's Army occupied Raleigh.

The next year, another Ohio man bought the purloined parchment for $5. He later offered to sell it to North Carolina, which refused to pay for stolen goods. The relic remained in the man's family, which in 1995 again offered to sell it to the state but refused to return it for free.

Then five years ago, Connecticut antiques dealer Wayne Pratt bought it from the family for $200,000 -- half paid by friend and investor Bob Matthews, a Connecticut developer.

The pair later offered to sell it to a Philadelphia history museum for $5 million. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called Easley in March 2003 to see whether he wanted to help buy it.

Easley had other ideas.

At his instruction, and with the help of Whitney and state Attorney General Roy Cooper, a team of state and federal lawyers devised a trick to get it back without paying. At a meeting in Philadelphia, an FBI agent posing as a buyer arranged a bogus bank wire transfer, then seized the document as contraband.

The legal wrangling began.

Pratt and Matthews claimed that they had been cheated out of up to $30 million.

Under the threat of criminal prosecution for selling stolen property, Pratt gave up his interest to the state two years ago.

But Matthews hung on, arguing in federal court in Raleigh and Philadelphia that he is entitled to half of the document's value.

Boyle ruled Monday in Raleigh that the immediate legal question of custody is who possessed the document just before its seizure, and that was Pratt's agent. Because Pratt has given his interest to the state, the state properly possesses the document, the U.S. District Court judge said.

Boyle noted that Matthews has said under oath that he was only a passive investor and never possessed the document.

That is not the end of it.

"This order does not affect the parties' ownership claims," Boyle wrote in his ruling.

Matthews' attorney, Mike Stratton of New Haven, Conn., said he will appeal Boyle's decision to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. He also said if Easley doesn't give the document to Matthews, he will sue the state for violating the man's legal rights under three of the amendments in the Bill of Rights itself.

And Stratton blasted Boyle, whom he has often criticized, for deciding the case without a trial.

"He acts in a kinglike manner," Stratton said. "Due process means a trial, evidence, testimony. That would be the Seventh Amendment."

State leaders see it differently.

When Cooper's chief of staff, Julia White, called him Thursday afternoon to give him the good news, she said he replied, "Oh -- that's great!"

Easley said he is not worried about losing the document on appeal. And as for giving it back, no way. That might take -- or start -- another civil war.

"I don't think that they're going to take it back now," he said. "We've got the Highway Patrol locked and loaded."