Abraham Lincoln artifacts to be auctioned to pay off foundation’s debt
A page from a childhood workbook. Remnants from the campaign trail. The small cuff button he wore on the night he died.
These yellowing relics offer a glimpse into the legendary life of President Abraham Lincoln. Once a part of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation’s prized Lincolniana collection, lent out and displayed in museums and historical sites across the country, they are up for auction Wednesday as the foundation seeks to pay off its long-lingering debts.
The foundation said in March that it would be auctioning off 144 items — less than 10 percent of its 1,540-item collection — to close out the loan it took out to buy the artifacts in 2007.
“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,” it said in a statement. “Any excess funds will go toward our continued care and display of our extensive collection.”
The foundation, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, had acquired the artifacts, valued at $25 million, from the Louise and Barry Taper Collection through a $2 million donation and a $23 million loan. Though the foundation expected to pay back the loan through private donations, it was still $9.7 million in debt seven years ago when it asked for donations via GoFundMe.
David Gerleman, a historian at George Mason University who has studied Lincoln’s writings, called the breakup of the collection “a woeful calamity for both academics and the general public,” and expressed dismay that it is “likely unavoidable” that once these items are bought by private collectors, “they may never be viewed again.”
“I fear this is another example of key pieces of American history disappearing into private hands of only those who can afford them while public museums struggle to stay open and maintain their collections for public benefit,” Gerleman said in an email.
Louise Taper told WBEZ, Chicago’s public radio station, that she was appalled by the auction. “My intent was for these historic items to reside in a place for the public to enjoy and learn from.” She could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
The foundation has not publicly said how much it hopes to raise through the auction, which is being managed by Freeman’s-Hindman in Chicago. The estimated values of the 144 lots range from $200 to $300 for a satirical business card printed during the 1864 presidential campaign to as much as $1.2 million for the stained leather gloves carried by Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination.
It also has not disclosed how much is left on the loan. At the time of the 2018 fundraiser, then-CEO Carla Knorowski said the foundation had already raised more than $15 million in private donations to retain the collection. The GoFundMe raised $35,000. According to its annual report, the foundation received more than $1.3 million in contributions in 2023, the latest year available.
Other items up for auction include documents and letters signed by Lincoln, a campaign lantern from his first presidential race and locks of hair from the Lincoln family — Lincoln, his wife and his son Willie, who died at the age of 11 during Lincoln’s first term in office.
A page from his 1824 “sum book” — valued between $300,000 and $400,000 — bears the earliest known example of his handwriting, in the form of a poem bursting with youthful humor, scrawled in graceful cursive: “Abraham Lincoln is my name,” the 14-year-old wrote in a top corner, “and with my pen I wrote the same. I wrote in both haste and speed, and left it here for fools to read.”
Lincoln’s famous sense of humor is also on display in a signed manuscript described as one of the only surviving examples of his “frontier ribaldry.”
The president’s “spoonerisms” transpose parts of a word for laughs: “He said he was riding bass-ackwards on a jass-ack, through a patton-cotch, on a pair of baddle-sags, stuffed full of binger-gred, when the animal steered at a scump, and the lirrup-steather broke, and throwed him in the forner of the kence and broke his pishing-fole.”
The “Bass-Ackwards” manuscript is valued between $200,000 and $300,000.