If this week’s “Lincoln’s Legacy” auction is any indication, public interest in the life of former president Abraham Lincoln is still measurable.

The Wednesday sale at Freeman’s | Hindman in Chicago nearly doubled the pre-auction estimate with nearly $7.9 million raised in four hours of auctioneering. Apparently, many were not put off by the macabre, considering that the top-selling item was a pair of blood-stained leather gloves that the 16th U.S. president was carrying with him on the night that an assassin struck him at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Those yellowed kid gloves sold for $1.5 million, which exceeded the presale estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million.

The sale was presented on behalf of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, a nonprofit that increases access to educational programs, exhibits and sites that highlight Lincoln’s life and legacy. Held in his home state of Illinois, the auction had 140 or so items and 94 percent of the lots sold. Another item that Lincoln had on the ill-fated night that John Wilkes Booth shot him — a white linen handkerchief had a final bid of $826,000 after a nearly 10-minute bidding war in the room and online. Lincoln died the following day.

The buyer of the blood-stained gloves, who is remaining anonymous thus far, also bought the handkerchief and the third top-selling item — a U.S. War Department poster announcing a $100,000 reward for Lincoln’s assassin and his accomplices John H. Surratt and David Herold, which sold for $762,500 — well above the opening pre-auction estimate of $80,000.

There was also another historic keepsake — a single cuff button inscripted with the initial “L” more than doubled pre-auction projections, bringing in $445,000. That gold and black enamel cuff button had been removed from Lincoln’s wrist by Dr. Charles Sabin Taft as he searched for the president’s pulse, according to the auction house.

In addition, a double-sided leaf notebook that Lincoln used as a boy in school, which has the earliest surviving examples of his handwriting, sold for $521,200. In one corner, he wrote, “Abraham Lincoln is my name / And with my pen I wrote / the same / I wrote in both hast and speed / and left it here for fools / to read.”

The auction in Chicago was geared to offset the loan that the Lincoln Presidential Foundation took out in 2007 to purchase a collection of 1,500 items. After the sale, the nonprofit’s president Erin Mast said thanks to the “excellent auction results, the foundation is well on its way to meeting two important goals: significant reduction of our long-standing obligation to retire the loan and continued care and stewardship of the 1,400 items we have retained.”

The sale isn’t the only Lincoln-centric cultural attraction that has gotten attention this week. The dark comedy Broadway show “Oh Mary” about Mary Todd Lincoln, written by Cole Escola, has received five Tony nominations including best play and best direction of a play. The show’s costume design, which was handled by Holly Pierson, also received a Tony nominee.