When Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, he was carrying two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a pocketknife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, and a brown leather wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note and nine newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president and his policies. Given to his son Robert Todd Lincoln upon Lincoln’s death, these everyday items, which through association with tragedy had become relics, remained with the Lincoln family for more than seventy years.