Abraham Lincoln’s blood-stained leather gloves are headed for auction

Auctioneers in Chicago hope to get $4m for 140 items owned by Civil War president

History buffs can soon bid on a pair of blood-stained gloves President Abraham Lincoln carried during his assassination in 1865 (Freeman's)

American history buffs will soon be able to bid on a set of 140 rare artifacts that formerly belonged to President Abraham Lincoln.

A pair of blood-stained white kid-leather gloves carried by the president during the night of his assassination on April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., an original campaign torch, and his documents, will all be sold by Freeman's | Hindman in Chicago, Illinois, the president’s birth state.

Individual items in the May 21 Lincoln Legacy auction range from $100 to $800,000, while the entire collection is expected to rake in $4m. The gloves are priced from $800,000 to $1.2 million.

“Each of the items featured in this sale has been curated with care to reveal a nuanced and, at times, surprising portrait of the person who would become one of America’s greatest leaders,” Freeman’s | Hindman CEO Alyssa Quinlan said.

The auction is being presented on behalf of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, a national non-profit that owns an expansive collection of Lincoln-related materials.

The organization is retaining 1,400 items for continued scholarly research, programming and loan exhibitions.

One of the earliest examples of Lincoln's handwriting. He drafted the note as a 15-year-old (Freeman's)

Some of the items date back to the president’s teenage days.

In one of the documents, a 15-year-old Lincoln writes: “Abraham Lincoln is my name / And with my pen I wrote / the same / I wrote in both hast and speed / and left it here for fools / to read.” Auctioneers are hoping to fetch $300,000 to $400,000 for the writing, which is featured on a double-sided sum book leaf covered in long division practice sums and signed three times.

In 1837, Lincoln authored the anonymous Adams Handbill, a printed public notice distributed in Springfield, Illinois, ahead of the year’s state elections. The organization is asking for $200,000 to $300,000 for the only surviving copy of the president’s first printed work.

Other offerings include wearable items, early photographs and small keepsakes. A single cuff button with the letter “L” that the president wore as Actor John Wilkes Booth shot him is valued at $200,000 to $300,000. A surgeon reportedly removed the item to check Lincoln’s pulse.

Similar items have done well at auction. In 2021, the Norcross family paid $4.4m for a signer’s copy of the Declaration of Independence, the highest auction price for an American document printed in the 19th century. A year later, a 1787 letter from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson transmitting a copy of the US Constitution went for $2.4m, doubling pre-sale estimates.

Lincoln remains one of the country’s most beloved presidents. He served between 1861 and 1865, operating as commander-in-chief during the US Civil War. His victory kept the country intact and stopped the South from seceding. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, eliminating slavery in the US.

He was shot just a month into his second term.