“It’s Lincoln’s life story in objects,” Darren Winston told me the other day. Winston is the head of books and manuscripts at Freeman’s Hindman, which is staging the upcoming auction titled “Lincoln’s Legacy.” The 144 items up for sale in Chicago, on May 21, include manuscripts, letters, campaign ephemera, keepsakes, and personal effects that are being consigned by the Lincoln Presidential Foundation in Springfield, Illinois. (The estimate is around $4 million.) The artifacts span Abraham Lincoln’s teen years through the end of his life, and also include items related to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.