Gloves Lincoln Wore to Ford's Theater Sell for $1.5 Million at Auction

New York Times

23-05-2025

A pair of leather gloves worn by President Abraham Lincoln to Ford's Theater on the night of his assassination fetched $1.5 million at auction this week, part of a trove of relics from his life and death that a debt-saddled presidential foundation had put on the block.
One of two handkerchiefs that Lincoln had with him on that fateful date in American history, April 14, 1865, sold for $826,000, according to Freeman's | Hindman in Chicago, the auction house that handled Wednesday's sale.
Like the gloves, which a friend of the Lincolns had framed for display on his dining room wall, the handkerchief was described in an auction catalog as having been potentially stained with the president's blood.
And a cufflink-style gold and onyx button with the letter 'L' on it, which a doctor removed to check for Lincoln's pulse as he lay on his deathbed, went for $445,000.
The auction of the items from the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, which was conducted in person, online and by phone, raised nearly $7.9 million, the auctioneers said.
The total included a 28 percent buyer's premium, which auction houses tack onto the hammer price to help cover expenses from sales.
The buyers were not identified by the auction house, which said that the proceeds had nearly doubled pre-sale estimates for the collection.
But the piecemeal sale of the artifacts, known as Lincolnania, did not escape controversy, drawing criticism from a prominent collector who said that she had sold them to the foundation so that they could be displayed publicly.
The foundation, the nonprofit that put the 144 items up for sale, said in a statement on Wednesday that the auction's proceeds would significantly help retire loan debt that it has been carrying since 2007.
The group used the money from a loan to help buy a $25 million trove of Lincoln artifacts from the collector, Louise Taper, 90 percent of which were still in its possession after the auction, the foundation said.
'As a national nonprofit, this marks a significant step forward for our organization and its future philanthropic and educational mission,' Erin Carlson Mast, the foundation's president and chief executive, said in the statement.
The foundation, which was created in 2000, did not say how much of the loan had been repaid.
In 2018, the organization made headlines when it created a GoFundMe page, saying that it had privately raised $15 million to help it keep the $25 million collection but needed to come up with the remainder of the money in 20 months. That appeal raised $35,000, according to the group's GoFundMe page.
The foundation had acquired the artifacts from Ms. Taper, a philanthropist and collector, for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. The museum opened in 2005 in the city where Lincoln practiced law and lived while he was in the Illinois Legislature and briefly in Congress.
Ms. Taper did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, but she told the Chicago television station WBEZ this week in an email that she had never intended for the collection that she had painstakingly curated to be 'dispersed to the wind.'
'I am appalled,' Ms. Taper told the station.
The auction also featured a War Department reward poster offering $30,000 for information leading to the capture of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln. It sold for $762,500.
A ticket stub from the April 14, 1865, production of 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theater, during which Lincoln was assassinated, fetched $381,500. In 2023, two tickets from that performance sold for $262,500.
Not all of the sought-after artifacts were intertwined with Lincoln's assassination.
A first printing of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address from 1865 sold for $165,600, and an 1824 book that was twice signed by Lincoln and believed to be one of the earliest surviving examples of his handwriting went for $521,200.