WASHINGTON ( CNN ) -- Few items are more highly prized among collectors of historical artifacts than a handwritten letter from President Lincoln . This letter from President Lincoln to Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase has been returned to the government . Now , there 's one fewer in circulation . An Arizona collector handed over to the federal government Thursday a rare handwritten letter from Lincoln to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase . The letter , dated four days before Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863 , had been missing for more than 60 years . Federal officials , who have not ruled out its possible theft from a government collection , discovered it two years ago during routine monitoring of online auctions . They have been negotiating for its return ever since . In the short note , torn from the center of a bound volume , Lincoln tells Chase to do a small favor on behalf of someone recently fired from his job with the federal government . `` Mr. ( Robert ) Stevens , late Superintendent of the Mint at San Francisco , asks to have a copy , or be permitted to examine , and take extracts , of the evidence upon which he was removed , '' Lincoln writes . `` Please oblige him in one way or the other . '' Larry Cutler , a former prosecutor who collects artifacts ranging from Greek antiquities to presidential documents , said he had owned the document for several years and considers it a `` cornerstone '' example of Lincoln 's compassion . Stevens , according to Cutler , was `` a guy who was let go or lost his position or otherwise fired , and he wanted to look at his personnel file to find the reasons why he was let go . '' But officials at the National Archives suggested that there was more involved than just Lincoln 's well-known practice of personally responding to letters from constituents . Jim Hastings , a senior official at the Archives , said Lincoln was taking care of some political business even as the Civil War raged . Stevens was the brother-in-law of Sen. Edward Baker of Oregon , a close colleague of Lincoln 's when the two practiced law in Illinois . Baker , who was politically influential in the western United States , was killed in the Civil War two years before Lincoln requested the favor for Stevens . Hastings said `` this document shows his regard for the senator . It shows his interest , even in the midst of the Civil War , in political issues on the West Coast . ... It 's quite important . '' Cutler said his nature as a prosecutor made him question government officials when they first sought to retrieve the letter , which had been in private hands for decades . Initially , according to Cutler , an investigator reached him on his cell phone and asked him to just send the document back by registered mail . `` I do n't work like that , '' Cutler said . He said , `` it took them quite a while to prove to me it was once theirs . '' Cutler asked them this month whether he `` could see the volume that they claimed held the other half of the letter . '' `` They opened it up , and it did n't match , '' he said . `` My half of the letter was not the same size of the half they have . '' Cutler was later convinced , however , when investigators showed how an untrimmed edge matched the torn remains in the volume , along with other evidence they felt established the source of Cutler 's document . He declined to say how much he paid for the Lincoln letter at an auction in 2006 but said a similar document in the president 's handwriting is currently for sale at an asking price of $ 78,000 . With television cameras , reporters and photographers capturing the moment , Cutler handed the formerly lost Lincoln letter to a National Archives official . `` Here it is , '' he said . `` I appreciate the opportunity '' to donate it during the bicentennial of Lincoln 's birth . CNN 's Alan Silverleib contributed to this report .
Rare handwritten letter is from Lincoln to Treasury Secretary Smith . Letter is dated four days before Lincoln delivered Gettysburg Address . Larry Cutler says he had owned the letter for several years . Cutler returned the letter to the National Archives on Thursday .