Lincoln’s Legacy: Historic Americana from the Life of Abraham Lincoln

A white linen handkerchief; 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (501 x 501 mm); scattered soiling.

ONE OF TWO HANDKERCHIEFS IN PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S POCKETS DURING THE 14 APRIL 1865 PERFORMANCE OF OUR AMERICAN COUSIN AT FORD'S THEATRE.

The demand for items relating to the life and, in particular, death of President Lincoln began almost before he took his last breath. In the chaos following the fatal shot and the removal of his body from Ford's Theatre to the Peterson House, across the street, souvenir hunters descended on the theater. With his assassination having taken place on Good Friday and at the end of a great and bloody conflict, items potentially stained with his blood took on almost holy connotations, especially those he may have carried with him.

Following Lincoln's autopsy at the White House on the morning of April 15, his personal effects were returned to Mary Lincoln. In the years that followed she sold some personal items of her own and of her husband's in order to address her mounting financial difficulties. Though her husband's estate left her with enough to live comfortably on, the lavish spending habits which had caused such a scandal while she was First Lady were only exacerbated by her grief, and in 1868 she published a public appeal for aid in the New York World. Among those who responded was an old family friend, and collector of presidential memorabilia, Captain Benjamin Richardson. Captain Richardson had previously purchased George Washington's coach, and hoped to add Lincoln relics to his collection, that he intended to display in a presidential museum that he was planning.

This handkerchief and a pair of gloves, both possibly stained with the president's blood, were gifted to Captain Richardson at the University of Chicago by Lincoln's son, Tad. Richardson had the gloves and handkerchief displayed in his dining room for several years. Upon Richardson's death, the relics were then passed to his granddaughter Ella Gouverneur. They then remained in the family for many years.

This handkerchief is illustrated on pp. 102-103 of Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt's history of the assassination and its aftermath, Twenty Days (1965).

Provenance:

Mary Todd Lincoln

Captain Benjamin Richardson, American collector of presidential memorabilia, gifted from above, thence by descent to

Ella T. Gouverneur (1866-1935), granddaughter of above

Theresa Osterhoudt (b. 1891), daughter of above (Osterhoudt photo credit in Kunhardt, p. 311)

Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, California

Exhibition:

The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America, at the Huntington Library, October 1993-August 1994

Blood on the Moon, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, 19 April-16 October 2005