An Illinois nonprofit bearing Abraham Lincoln’s name is so deep in debt that it is considering selling some of the 16th president’s possessions, including one of his iconic stovepipe hats and the bloodstained gloves from the night of his assassination.
In 2007, the private nonprofit, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, in Springfield, Ill., borrowed $23 million to purchase an expansive collection of Lincoln artifacts from a private collector. More than a decade later, the foundation has more than $9 million remaining on the loan, Carla Knorowski, the foundation’s chief executive, said.
For 11 years, the state-run Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has had access to the collection, and that organization’s leaders say their priority is to keep the items available for public viewing.
Other headliners in the collection of 1,400 artifacts include locks of Lincoln’s hair, his presidential seal, unpublished letters to his wife, pages with scrawled arithmetic from when he was a boy and the quill that sat on his desk the night he was shot in 1865.
Before the foundation acquired these items, they were part of what was considered the largest privately held collection of Lincoln-related artifacts in the world, according to the museum. The collector, Louise Taper, has had a passion for Lincoln since the 1970s.
When the foundation purchased the $25 million collection, $2 million worth of artifacts were given as a charitable donation, leaving the foundation to pay the remaining $23 million.
If some of the items in the Taper collection were ultimately sold, the state-run museum would hardly be bereft of Lincoln exhibits. The museum has thousands of items, including a printing of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by the president and the House of Representatives’ resolution for the 13th Amendment to end slavery.