Lincoln: Blood-stained gloves sold for $1.3 million

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at the Ford Theatre. Now, the bloody gloves that the then US Head of State was wearing have been auctioned and sold for 1.3 million euros, reports the Associated Press .

The gloves are part of a collection of 144 items that belonged to the Lincoln Presidential Foundation and were sold at an auction at Freeman's/Hindman in Chicago.

The second most valuable item was a handkerchief he had on him that night, which sold for €732,000. One of the “Wanted” posters with the faces of the conspirators and Wilkes Booth fetched around €675,000. The notebook containing the oldest known example of Lincoln’s handwriting, dated 1824, sold for €461,000.

According to the Washington Post , all of these items had been purchased from specialist collector Louise Taper by the Lincoln Presidential Foundation for around 22 million euros 18 years ago to be publicly displayed as part of the museum collection created by the institution.

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However, the fundraising carried out at the time by the foundation to cover the amount paid only yielded around 1.7 million euros, requiring a loan to pay the remaining 20.3 million euros. By the date of the auction, despite several campaigns to try to raise funds to pay the debt, around 7.1 million euros remained to be paid.

“The proceeds from the sale will be used to satisfy our obligation to settle the balance of the loan from the Foundation’s purchase of the collection,” the foundation said in a statement. In total, the auction sales raised around 7 million euros — which will be taken with auction house fees included in this amount.

The collector who sold the collection to the museum told state radio station WBEZ on Tuesday that she was “shocked” that the items were being sold. “ My intention was for these historical objects to be in a place where the public could enjoy them and learn from them ,” Taper said.