RALEIGH, N.C. -- An original copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights stolen by union soldiers in 1865 now officially belongs to the people of North Carolina and to no one else, Attorney General Roy Cooper said Monday.

“The Bill of Rights is more than words on a piece of paper," he said in a press release. "It’s a powerful part of our history and a symbol of our liberty. It belongs to the people and it belongs here in North Carolina, for good.”

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An order issued Monday by Wake County Superior Court Judge Henry W. Hight, Jr. ends all remaining claims to the document and declares that North Carolina owns its original copy of the Bill of Rights to the exclusion of all others.

Connecticut antiques dealer Wayne E. Pratt purchased the stolen document in 2000. Pratt relinquished his claims to the document in federal court in September of 2003 and North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights returned to the state in August of 2005.

The Monday judgment ends a lengthy legal battle through state and federal courts that began after North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights resurfaced in 2003, when Pratt offered it for sale to the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia. 

Pennsylvania officials contacted the state about the document, which experts had determined to be North Carolina’s original copy. Cooper and others worked with officials in Philadelphia to recover the document, missing from the state since 1865.

The document dates back to 1789, when Congress requested President George Washington to send 13 handwritten copies of the proposed U.S. Bill of Rights to the original states for ratification. 

After North Carolina ratified the Bill of Rights, the document was preserved with the state’s other archival papers in the Capitol.  During the occupation of Raleigh by U.S. General William Sherman’s army in April-May 1865, many of the state’s archival records—including the Bill of Rights—were unlawfully taken by Union troops as souvenirs.

State officials have attempted to recover North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights several times since 1865.  Reports from 1897 indicate that the document hung in the Indianapolis office of Charles Shotwell, who had bought it for $5 from an Ohio soldier in 1865 but declined to return it to North Carolina.  

According to Cooper's office, in 1925, an agent for Shotwell contacted the state about purchasing the document. The North Carolina Historical Commission responded that it has been stolen and was the property of North Carolina. 

The location of the document was unknown for 70 years until a Washington, D.C. attorney representing Pratt offered to sell it to the state in 1995.  North Carolina again asserted that it would not pay for property stolen from the state.