Items on Abraham Lincoln’s body the night he was assassinated, his earliest known handwriting and other extraordinary relics from his life are being auctioned this week in a sale that drew bitter criticism Tuesday from the items’ former owner.
On Wednesday, a Chicago auction house will be selling part of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation’s 1,540-piece collection of Lincolniana, which was purchased in 2007 from a West Coast collector, Louise Taper.
With the sale just hours away, Taper voiced intense displeasure at seeing a collection that took her the better portion of her life to amass and that she had intended for the public to see into perpetuity “dispersed to the wind.”
“I am appalled,” Taper said in a series of emails with WBEZ.
The original thought nearly two decades ago was to showcase the one-of-a-kind treasures in the then newly-opened Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. They were there until an acrimonious divorce between the foundation and state-owned museum that led to the artifacts being trucked out in 2022.
“My intent was for these historic items to reside in a place for the public to enjoy and learn from,” Taper said.
A source of friction between the museum and foundation has been the foundation’s inability to fully retire the $23 million loan it originally took out for the collection. Now, it says it has no choice but to sell off 144 of its Lincoln heirlooms to pay off remaining debt, which last year was disclosed at nearly $8 million.
“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 not-for-profit said on its website. “Any excess funds will go toward our continued care and display of our extensive collection.”
What is being sold is a mix of intensely personal relics that help bring to life an icon and a martyr who has always been central to Illinois’ cultural and historic identity.
And what’s in this entire collection, at least while it was on public display, enabled a generation of Lincoln museum-goers to experience the 16th president from his early boyhood to his final night of life in Ford’s Theatre.
“I do think it’s just absolutely tragic. Some of this stuff will go into private collections and not be seen for generations and generations,” said Marsha Malinowski, president and CEO of Marsha Malinowski Fine Books & Manuscripts in New York City.
Items being sold by the Freeman’s/Hindman auction house include the first-known example of Lincoln’s handwriting from 1824, an item appraised as high as $400,000.
It’s a yellowed page of mathematical equations. And on a corner of the page, Lincoln, who was about 15 at the time, wrote in pristine cursive, “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 eye-catching pieces to be auctioned include a swatch of the coat Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated, which is appraised for as much as $150,000, and a single cuff button with a letter “L” that Lincoln also was wearing at Ford’s Theatre. That item is appraised for as much as $300,000.
But arguably the most significant piece being sold is a pair of white leather gloves Lincoln had in his left coat pocket when he was assassinated. They bear splatters of blood.
Freeman’s/Hindman’s description of the piece says Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, gifted the gloves to a family friend. Her son, Tad Lincoln, delivered them to the friend at the University of Chicago.
The gloves are appraised at as much as $1.2 million.
If every item sells for its maximum, appraised value, the auction could yield more than $6 million, according to listings in the auction house catalogue.
“Those items are so rare and iconic. It’s very difficult to guess what they’re going to sell for,” said Malinowski, a nationally known manuscript expert who prior to owning her own firm was the longtime head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s auction house.
The foundation, with a $9.7 million debt six years ago, was contemplating an auction of some of its Lincoln collection but avoided doing so after it reported an uptick in fundraising in 2019. Earlier that year, the foundation sought state help in retiring its debt, but Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic-led legislature never delivered funding.
The foundation’s current president and CEO, Erin Carlson Mast, declined multiple requests from WBEZ for an interview about the auction and the rationale in selling off the cache of prized Lincoln heirlooms.
Likewise, Mast did not respond to Taper’s criticism of the auction.
Neither the governor’s office nor the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum would comment on the upcoming auction.
A Pritzker spokesman also declined to say whether Illinois’ billionaire governor, whose charitable foundation reported a $148 million balance at the end of 2023, had any interest in buying any of the Lincoln items for sale.
The governor and first lady MK Pritzker have a history of purchasing Lincoln artifacts at auction and donating them to the presidential museum.
In 2022, the couple spent more than $400,000 on an iconic bust of Lincoln which they then gave to the museum.
And last year, the Pritzkers donated an 1861 presidential decree ordering a Union blockade of Southern ports. The couple purchased that document bearing Lincoln’s signature for $471,000 at auction.
Not included in the Lincoln Presidential Foundation’s sale bill for this week is a stovepipe hat which was part of its major 2007 purchase from Taper.
The hat, once billed as the showpiece of the foundation’s Taper haul with an appraised value $6.5 million, became a lightning rod of criticism because of gaping holes in its provenance that were first reported in 2012 by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The foundation has never publicly acknowledged that the hat may not have been Abraham Lincoln’s.
But a 2013 report by officials at the Chicago History Museum and Smithsonian, which was first disclosed by WBEZ, concluded there was “insufficient” documentation to conclude the hat ever rode atop Lincoln’s head. The foundation also commissioned a DNA test of the hat by the FBI that was inconclusive.
In 2019, a report by Illinois’ then-state historian cast new and more profound doubts about the hat’s authenticity. The report said the hat did not appear to be in Lincoln’s size, that it was once sold by a downstate antique shop for just $1 in the 1950s and that descendants of the hat’s original owner were unaware of its purported Lincoln lineage.
The overwhelming majority of items for sale this week appear to have a clear chain of custody.
However, at least a few items bear less descriptive provenances.
They include a lock of Lincoln’s hair, a piece of marble that supported Lincoln’s coffin and a chair from Ford’s Theatre from the night Lincoln was fatally shot. In each instance, Freeman’s/Hindman describes the foundation-owned items as “purportedly” the real deal.
Several historians and manuscripts experts interviewed by WBEZ described Wednesday’s auction as one of the most significant sales of Lincoln artifacts in nearly 75 years — on par with the 1952 auction of letters and manuscripts by Illinois Lincoln collector Oliver Barrett.
In 2009, two years after her Lincoln collection was being displayed on a regular basis at the presidential museum, Taper received the highest honor bestowed by the state of Illinois — the Order of Lincoln. Then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich praised her for the “lasting and significant ways” she helped keep Lincoln’s memory alive.
“For years, people asked me what I intended to do with my collection,” Taper said at a Springfield ceremony as she accepted the award. “And I didn’t think I was ready to face that decision. But in the end, as collectors, we all have to give these things up, and what better place for mine to be than in Springfield, Illinois.
“It’s been a joy and privilege for me to collect Lincoln and be a part of his story, but it’s a real joy for us to share our collection,” she said. “These pieces touched our hearts.”
In an email back-and-forth with WBEZ on Tuesday, Taper said she “didn’t start collecting Lincoln on a whim.
“I was a single mother barely making ends meet when I fell for Abraham Lincoln and all he stood for. I have been collecting for more than 40 years and created one of the finest Lincoln collections ever put together. Especially by a woman,” she said. “I am sorry to see it dispersed to the wind and removed from public view.”
Malinowski, the New York manuscript expert, characterized the foundation’s inability to repay the loan to buy Taper’s collection as an epic failure.
“The fact they couldn’t afford to keep it and couldn’t repay the loan, it’s just a travesty,” Malinowski said. “From the minute that they had made the arrangements to acquire this, there should have been huge publicity. There should have been marketing to get people to support it. To have this material ‘come home to Illinois’ would have been huge. And it seems as if that just didn’t happen, and here we are.
“I think it’s really sad,” she said.
Dave McKinney covers Illinois government and politics for WBEZ and was the longtime Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times.