Wishing to shake hands with anyone who approached, and at formal receptions they numbered in the thousands, Abraham Lincoln usually carried two pairs of kid-leather gloves in his coat pockets. This pair from his left pocket on the night he and Mary attended a play at Ford’s Theatre became stained with his blood after Booth’s bullet struck the left back of his skull. And Booth was not done: Mary’s silk handfan was then stained by the dagger-drawn blood of the friend who shared their box. So began Mary’s 17 years of widowhood, perhaps the most tragic public life in American history.
