Existing comment:
Thomas Jefferson's portable desk:
Made by Benjamin Randolph, Philadelphia, 1776. Mahogany
Thomas Jefferson wrote his "rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence on this desk. In one section, later deleted by Congress, he accused King George III of waging "cruel war against human nature itself" for supporting the slave trade in his empire.
In 1825, Jefferson gave this desk to Joseph Coolidge, husband of his granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge. The Coolidge family presented it to the United States in 1880. |