Abe Lincoln’s library faces so much debt it’s considering selling his stuff
Sometimes, even Abraham Lincoln needs a GoFundMe campaign. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, which supports Lincoln’s museum in Springfield, Ill., has found itself $9.7 million in debt on a loan it took out 11 years ago to purchase a collection of rare artifacts from a private collector.
Now, hundreds of Lincoln’s personal possessions, including a beaver fur stovepipe hat that Lincoln purportedly wore, as well as letters and other artifacts, are at risk of ending up on the auction block if the foundation can’t pay off the hulking debt through state funding or private donations.
Or even a GoFundMe campaign titled, “Save Lincoln Artifacts. Donate NOW!” On Wednesday, the foundation and its board members agreed to begin hunting for prospective auction houses. The move is a necessary precaution in the event the foundation cannot make the payment deadline in October 2019, the foundation said.
As of early Friday morning, the Lincoln Museum’s GoFundMe page to help save the collection from auction has raised $10,239, still well short of the $9.7 million goal. “It’s certainly not a day any of us wanted to see come to pass,” Carla Knorowski, the foundation’s CEO, told the
Washington Post about the decision. “Having said that, it’s something that we internally have been preparing for just in case. But every day that I wake up, that my colleagues wake up and our board wakes up, we are working to figure out how we can raise money towards this, and how we can successfully bring this campaign to a conclusion.”
Perhaps the most recognizable item at stake is a beaver fur stovepipe hat that Lincoln purportedly wore as a state lawmaker in Springfield. The famous top hat is just one of three of its kind preserved over time, Knorowski said, although some have questioned its authenticity.
The collection offers rare items, such as bloodstained white gloves the president had in his pocket the night he was assassinated, as well as his billfold, eyeglasses and presidential seal, still checkered with red chips of wax wedged into the cracks. Knorowski said there’s also a page from his 1824 “sum book,” in which Lincoln scribbled long division and wrote a poem in the top corner, bearing the earliest known example of his handwriting. “Abraham Lincoln is my name,” 14-year-old Lincoln wrote, “and with my pen I wrote the same. I wrote in both haste and speed, and left it here for fools to read.”
The artifacts are all part of the Louise and Barry Taper Collection, one of the most comprehensive collections of Lincoln’s personal belongings. In 2007, the foundation acquired more than 1,000 artifacts valued at $25 million from the Taper collection. The money came in the form of a $2 million donation and a $23 million loan, which the foundation expected to pay back in private donations.