The blood-stained leather gloves that were in Lincoln’s pocket the night he was assassinated have been sold for $1.52 million at a controversial auction.
The gloves were among the treasured artifacts associated with President Abraham Lincoln that were sold on Wednesday.
One of two handkerchiefs Lincoln had with him on April 14, 1865, the night he was shot, went for $826,000.
A “Wanted” poster featuring photos of three suspects in the assassination conspiracy, led by John Wilkes Booth, sold for $762,500, far higher than the top estimated price of $120,000.
The earliest known sample of the 16th president’s handwriting, from a notebook in 1824, fetched $521,200.
A total of 144 items were up for bid, 136 of which sold.
They were auctioned to pay off the remainder of a two-decade-old loan that the Lincoln Presidential Foundation used to buy a one-of-a-kind cluster of Lincoln artifacts from a California collector.
The items were bought in 2007 from collector Louise Taper, who expressed anger at the auction before it took place.
Taper said she sold the items, hoping they would live on in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which opened in 2005.
The items were separated from a collection that was intended to be available for public display forever, but wound up in the middle of an interagency feud amid a lingering $8 million debt.
The auction at Freeman’s-Hindman in Chicago raised $7.9 million, but that includes buyers’ premiums of roughly 28 percent tacked onto each sale to cover the auction house’s administrative costs.
Phone and email messages seeking comment were left for the foundation. Its website said proceeds from the auction would be put toward retiring the debt and “any excess funds will go toward our continued care and display of our extensive collection.”
The artifacts were supposed to give the library and museum, which was rich in Lincoln-related manuscripts, a boost in what it lacked — the meaty kind of curios that draw tourists.
But fundraising was slow, forcing the sale of non-Lincoln portions of the collection and threats by the foundation to sell more before it finally extended the loan.
In 2012 a controversy arose over what had been the crown jewel of the group — a stovepipe hat, appraised at $6 million, that Lincoln was said to have given as a gift to a southern Illinois supporter. That story came under intense scrutiny, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, resulting in a 2019 study that found there was no evidence the hat belonged to Lincoln. It was not part of Wednesday’s auction.
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