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Items that President Abraham Lincoln had the night he was assassinated – including white leather gloves with splatters of blood on them – are up for auction, drawing ire from the collection’s former owner.
On Wednesday, a Chicago auction house will be selling some of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation’s 1,540-piece collection, bought in 2007 from collector Louise Taper.
Taper, who sold the items hoping they would live on in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, was horrified to learn the items would soon be “dispersed into the wind,” she told WBEZ Chicago.
“My intent was for these historic items to reside in a place for the public to enjoy and learn from,” she said.
The foundation said it would auction off 114 items of the 1,540-piece collection to finally pay off the $23 million loan it took out to buy the artifacts in 2007.
While the foundation anticipated being able to pay back the loan through private donations, it was still $9.7 million in debt several years ago when it launched a GoFundMe asking for help, the Washington Post reported.
The foundation has contemplated auctioning some of its Lincoln collection over the years but avoided doing so after an uptick in fundraising in 2019, though it was not immediately clear how much was raised then.
“Proceeds from the sale will be used to satisfy our obligation to retire the outstanding loan balance from the Foundation’s purchase of the collection,” the foundation said in a statement. “Any excess funds will go toward our continued care and display of our extensive collection.”
The items being sold include the first-known sample of Lincoln’s handwriting from 1824, which is valued as high as $400,000.
The writing, a yellowed page of mathematical equations, features then-15-year-old Lincoln’s cursive handwriting at the top corner, which reads, “Abraham Lincoln is my nam[e] / And with my pen I wrote / the same / I wrote in both hast[e] (sic) and speed / And left it here for fools / to read.”
Other items set to be auctioned off include a swatch of a coat Lincoln was wearing the night he was assassinated, which was appraised for as much as $150,000, and a single cuff button with the letter “L” that he was also wearing that night. The cuff button was appraised to be worth as much as $300,000.
The most eye-catching piece being auctioned is a pair of blood-stained white leather gloves Lincoln had in his coat pocket at Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination.
The gloves were appraised at as much as $1.2 million.
If each item being auctioned sells for its maximum appraised value, it could yield more than $6 million, according to WBEZ.
The Foundation has not publicly stated how much it hopes to raise through the auction, or how much is left to pay off on the loan.
English (US) ·