The white kid-leather gloves Abraham Lincoln carried in his coat pocket the night John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford's Theatre are back on public view — not in Illinois, where they once sat in state care, but inside a museum in Simi Valley, California. The blood-stained gloves are now among the most popular attractions at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, on loan from an anonymous private owner whose identity remains unknown even to the institution displaying them.
From a $1.5 Million Auction to a California Display Case
The gloves sold for $1.5 million at a Chicago auction in May 2025, part of a sale the Lincoln Presidential Foundation held to help pay down debt tied to its original 2007 acquisition of the artifacts, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Reagan Library Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Giller has said the gloves were the first case visitors wanted to see once the exhibit opened. The museum connected with the gloves' anonymous buyer after reaching out to Christie's Auction House about Revolutionary War items, and it was at that point the buyer offered to loan the assassination gloves along with a ticket stub and a campaign button, according to KCLU.
The loan is part of the Reagan Library's “America 250” exhibition, which runs from May 22 through September 13, 2026, and features roughly 100 historical artifacts, including more than 30 rare documents temporarily transferred from National Archives vaults across ten presidential libraries nationwide, as reported by the Jewish Journal. The Reagan museum also acquired an actual cannon used by Union soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg for the show, which is billed as commemorating the nation's semiquincentennial. The exhibit closes Sunday, and per the Sun-Times, the gloves' owner has only agreed to loan them to the Reagan museum until then, leaving their next stop unclear.
A Coat Pocket, a Widow's Sale, and Decades in Private Hands
The gloves' documented history stretches back to the night Lincoln was shot. Robert Todd Lincoln received his father's blood-soaked coat in 1865 with the gloves still tucked in its left pocket, per the Sun-Times account. Mary Todd Lincoln later sold the gloves to Captain Benjamin Richardson in 1868, and they remained outside public institutions for more than a century until collector Louise Taper purchased them from a Richardson descendant in 1990.
Taper sold the gloves and other Lincoln items to the Lincoln Presidential Foundation in 2007 as part of a $25 million acquisition that also included a beaver-fur stovepipe hat. That purchase saddled the foundation with a $23 million loan, and a planned transfer that would have given the museum outright ownership of the gloves after the debt was repaid was never completed, according to the Sun-Times.
Years of Financial Strain Led to the Chicago Sale
The foundation's finances never recovered. A 2018 GoFundMe campaign titled “Save Lincoln Artifacts. Donate NOW!” raised only about $35,000 toward its $9.7 million target, as documented by Smithsonian Magazine. The Illinois General Assembly failed to approve a 2019 legislative effort to retire the foundation's roughly $9 million debt. The Lincoln Presidential Foundation and the state-run museum had a contentious relationship, and the Taper Collection was transferred out of the Lincoln museum in 2022 amid that breakdown.
By May 2025, the foundation put artifacts up for auction in Chicago, and other relics sold alongside the gloves fetched striking sums: $826,000 for Lincoln's blood-stained handkerchief, $445,000 for a monogrammed cuff button, and $381,200 for a Ford's Theatre orchestra ticket stub, according to WTTW News. An anonymous bidder known only as “Paddle 1231” purchased roughly $4 million of the sale's $8 million total, including the gloves and the handkerchief, according to reporting from the Lincolnian. It remains unknown whether that bidder is the same person who now owns the gloves and arranged their loan to the Reagan Library.
“Appalled”: A Collector's Objection and an Expert's Read
Louise Taper told Chicago public radio station WBEZ that she was appalled that more than 140 former Lincoln relics were being dispersed, saying her original intent in selling the collection to the foundation in 2007 was for the items to remain permanently available for public benefit in Springfield. Marsha Malinowski has said a private collector likely bought the gloves specifically because they wanted them exhibited publicly rather than kept hidden away. Jacob Friefeld, director of the Center for Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield, has weighed in on the foundation's contentious history as the artifacts' path from state stewardship to private ownership continues to draw attention. James M. Cornelius, the former curator of the Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, previously oversaw the very collection now scattered among auction buyers.
The Stovepipe Hat That Never Made It to Auction
Notably absent from the 2025 sale was the beaver-fur stovepipe hat also acquired in the 2007 Taper deal, appraised at $6.5 million. The Lincoln museum removed the hat from public display after questions about its authenticity first surfaced in a 2012 Chicago Sun-Times report. The foundation later tested the hat for signs of Lincoln's DNA, and Samuel Wheeler authored a 2019 report casting further doubt on its authenticity; the tests failed to prove the hat belonged to the 16th president, according to Illinois Public Media. The hat's fate remains separate from the gloves', and its authenticity dispute is still unresolved.
Renewed scrutiny arrived in March 2026, when Freeman's auction house in Chicago put another 190 historic items up for sale, including relics tied to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and John Wilkes Booth, raising fresh questions about whether more Taper Collection pieces were being sold off, per NPR Illinois. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum still houses an original copy of the Gettysburg Address bearing Lincoln's signature, a reminder of what remains under public stewardship even as other pieces of his legacy pass through private hands.
For now, visitors to the Reagan Library have until Sunday, September 13, to see the gloves Lincoln was carrying the night Booth shot him in the back of the head at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., where the president had gone to watch a performance of Our American Cousin. Whether they return to public view afterward, and where, remains an open question tied to the wishes of an owner who, so far, has chosen to stay anonymous.
