Proposed glove auction a slap in the face to all Illinoisans

The only time I ever saw these gloves was in September 2009.

I was in Springfield, one of many volunteer chaperones for a group of middle schoolers on a field trip from the parish school where my wife teaches.

I was happy enough to go, of course. One need not be a Lincoln scholar to be a member of the bar of the State of Illinois, but a certain interest in Mr. Lincoln kind of comes with the ARDC card. Or it should.

Anyway, the school asked me to go. They'd found that school parents tended to pay too much attention to their own kids on these trips, or exert insufficient control over their other charges when chaperoning, lest their child sustain some social embarrassment. By 2009, my own kids were long out of that school; I was a stranger to these kids.

Sounds great, I said.

And, they said, the kids may even listen to you a little, because you're a little more... mature.

No problem, I said.

And, they added, you're a lawyer. You can explain things to the kids at the Capitol and at the Lincoln Museum....

Sure thing, I said. Happy to help.

And, of course, you probably knew Lincoln personally. Rode with him on the Circuit....

That's when I got mad.

But I went anyway.

And those of you who have been blessed with children will be unsurprised to learn that none of my young charges were anywhere near as interested in Lincoln and the Lincoln sites as I was. And am. City kids: Looking out the bus windows in the early morning, shouting, "look at the horses!" as they saw animals grazing near the Interstate in the fog just after sunrise. They were looking at cows.

We stopped at New Salem and the kids were more interested in chasing chickens than in listening to the reenactors at the Rutledge Tavern, even when I engaged the reenactors in a discussion of young Mr. Lincoln's infatuation with the ill-starred Ann Rutledge.

It wasn't much better at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. There were no chickens for the kids to chase, but I found it hard to keep my kids together (my one absolute task) as we drifted far too quickly from exhibit to exhibit.

Then I reached the "Treasures" room.

Where I saw these gloves.

Just behind a pane of glass.

Politicians often wore gloves in the 1860s when shaking hands. Lincoln rode his own horse to and from Washington when he stayed out at the Soldiers' Home during the last three summers of his presidency (he survived at least one assassination attempt while making this commute); I imagine he may have used gloves then, too.

These particular gloves were in his pocket on Friday, April 14, 1865.

Yes, those are blood stains.

I stood there gobsmacked. Transfixed. Transformed.

I have been back to the ALPM on similar field trips every three years since 2009, in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021 (a very early coming-out-of-Covid outing), and 2024. The gloves have not been on display on any of those occasions. I've asked about them every time.

And it looks like they will never be on display again.

They're about to be sold.

Auctioned.

The Lincoln Presidential Foundation was, at one time, the fundraising arm of the ALPM. They had a falling out in 2021. The museum has its own collection of Lincoln memorabilia, obviously, but so does the LPF.

And now the LPF has engaged Chicago's Freeman's | Hindman auction house to conduct a sale of some of its Lincoln treasures. (Click here to download the 192-page auction catalog.) Among the items to be sold are these gloves (Lot 114). The auctioneers expect the gloves to fetch somewhere between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

The sale is scheduled for May 21.

The LPF is doing nothing illegal by selling stuff that it owns. I understand that, of course. But these gloves are different from the paper scraps and autographs and other bric-a-brac that are listed in the catalog. This is, of course, why they are expected to fetch so high a price. But the value of these gloves goes beyond mere dollars. These are relics. Powerful. Meaningful. Inspirational. While I acknowledge the LPF's legal right to dispose of its property as it sees fit, I am dismayed at the prospect of these gloves being sold into private hands and potentially lost forever.

I've reached out to the ALPM for comment about the sale, but have so far received no response.

I write this in hopes that some well-heeled FWIW reader or readers (I know there are some) can find a way to save these gloves for the people of the State of Illinois. They are a true treasure, and I hope that some means can be found by which they may be secured, preferably for the ALPM, but in any event preserved for public display in Illinois. In the Land of Lincoln.