Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

“You speak of eternal life. You speak of indulging the mind and body,” said Abe. “But what of the soul?”

“And what use is a soul to a creature that shall never die?”

Abe couldn’t help but smile. Here was a strange little man with a strange way of seeing things. Only the second living man he’d ever met who knew the truth of vampires. He drank to excess and spoke in an irritating, high-pitched voice. It was hard not to like him.

“I begin to suspect,” said Abe, “that you would like to be one of them.”

Poe laughed at the suggestion. “Is not our existence long and miserable enough?” he asked, laughing. “Who in God’s name would seek to prolong it?”

IV

On the following afternoon, June 22nd, Abe wandered along St. Philip Street by himself. Allen Gentry hadn’t returned from whatever depravities he’d enjoyed the night before, and Poe had staggered off to his own boardinghouse at dawn. After sleeping half the day away, Abe had decided that some fresh air and a stroll were desperately needed to chase the fog from his mind and bitter taste from his mouth.

I happened upon some great commotion in the street as I neared the river—a large crowd gathered around a platform, which had been decorated in reds and whites and blues. A yellow banner flew above this makeshift stage, upon which were the words SLAVE AUCTION TODAY! ONE O’CLOCK! More than a hundred men were crowded in front of the platform. More than twice that number of Negroes milled about nearby. Pipe smoke choked the air as prospective buyers mingled—the rare laugh breaking through the din, their pencils and papers held ready as the hour neared. The auctioneer, a man every ounce as plump and pink as a hog, then stepped before them and began: “Honored gentlemen, I am pleased to present the day’s first lot.” Upon this, the first Negro, a man of perhaps five-and-thirty years, took the stage and bowed heartily, smiling and standing tall in his ill-fitting suit (which looked to have been purchased for the occasion). “A bull, name of Cuff! Still in the prime of his strength! As fine a field hand as you are ever likely to see, and sure to sire a brood of sons with backs every bit as sound!” That this “bull” seemed so fervent in his hope of being bought—standing up straight, smiling and bowing as the auctioneer described his many uses—I could not help my pity and revulsion. The rest of this man’s life… all the future generations of his progeny. All of it rested on this moment. All of it in the hands of a man he had never met. A man willing to pay the highest price.

All told, there were more than two-hundred slaves scheduled to be auctioned over a two-day period. For a week leading up to the sale, they’d been held in a pair of barns, where prospective buyers had been free to come and inspect them.

This inspection involved all manner of invasion and humiliation. Men, women, and children, ages three years to five-and-seventy, were made to stand bare before strangers. Their muscles were pulled at; their mouths pried open and their teeth inspected. They were made to walk and bend and lift, lest they be concealing any lameness. They were made to list their talents. To assist in driving up their own price.

This ran counter to their own interests, for the higher the price, *the less likely they would ever be able to save enough money to buy their freedom from the kind masters who allowed them to do so.

The theater of it all! Men and women! Children and infants presented to this surly mob—this collection of so-called gentlemen! I saw a Negro girl of three or four clinging to her mother, confused as to why she was dressed in such clothes; why she had been scrubbed the night before; made to stand on this platform while men shouted numbers and waved pieces of paper in the air. Again I wondered why a Creator who had dreamt such beauty would have slandered it with such evil.

If Lincoln saw any irony in the fact that he had come downriver to sell goods to many of these same plantation owners, he never wrote of it.

“Gentlemen, I now ask your attention be turned to a fine specimen of family if ever there was! The bull by name of Israel—his teeth of the regular sort, and his build uncommonly large. You shall not find a better planter of rice in this or any parish! His wife, Beatrice—with arms and back almost as strong as that of a man’s, yet hands delicate enough to mend a lady’s dress! Their children—a boy of ten or eleven years, fated to become as strong a worker as his father, and a girl of four, her face as sweet as an angel’s. You shall never find four better specimens!”

Each slave followed his own sale with keen interest, his eyes darting around as each bid was shouted out. If he was purchased by a master with a reputation for kindness, or one who had purchased some of his near relations, he would leave the stage with something like contentment—even joy on his face. But if he was sold to a man who seemed especially cruel, or knew that he would never see his loved ones again, the quiet anguish on his face was indescribable.

One buyer in particular drew my interest—a man whose pocketbook seemed bottomless, and whose purchases seemed senseless. He arrived at the auction after it had begun (this alone was unusual) and snapped up a dozen slaves, with seemingly no regard for their sex, or health, or skills. In fact, he seemed interested only in those Negroes described as “bargains.” But his purchases were only part of the reason he drew my suspicion. He was a slender man in a fine waist-length coat—shorter than I (though still quite tall), with a graying beard meant to conceal the scar that ran the length of his face, from his left eye, across his lips, to his chin. He held a parasol to shade himself from the sun, and wore dark glasses over his eyes. If he was not a vampire, he certainly admired their fashion. What was the meaning of it? Why had he purchased two older women of similar abilities? A boy with a lame leg? Why did he need so many slaves at all?

I resolved to follow him and find the answer.

V

Twelve slaves walked barefoot, winding their way north on a muddy road that traced the Mississippi. They were male and female, ranging from fourteen to sixty-six years of age. Some had known each other their whole lives. Some had met only an hour or two before. Each of the twelve had a rope around their waist connecting them to the others. In front of this convoy, their new gray-bearded master; behind it, a white overseer, his rifle ready to cut down any slave who dared to run. Both men rode comfortably on horseback. Abe was careful to keep his distance as they wound their way through the woods.

I walked a quarter of a mile behind the group. Close enough to hear the overseer’s occasional barking, but far enough for my careful footfalls to escape the ears of a vampire.

Night had begun to fall by the time they reached a plantation eight miles north of the city, and a mile from the east bank of the river.

It looked no different than any of the plantations I had seen up and down the Mississippi. A blacksmith’s shop. A tanning yard. A grist mill. Storehouses, machinery, looms, sheds, stables, and some five-and-twenty slave quarters surrounding the planter’s house. These were one-room cabins where a dozen Negroes might live together, sleeping on dirt floors or corn husk beds, their pine torches burning so the women could tend to their quilting work long into the night. By day the dark fields around me would be filled with noise and work. Gangs of a hundred men digging trenches in long rows. Women driving plows in the searing heat. The white overseers riding among them on horseback, looking for the slightest offense to punish by flogging their naked backs. In the center of it all stood the master’s house. Those slaves “fortunate” enough to work here were spared the backbreaking toil of the fields, but by no means was theirs an easy existence, for they were just as likely to be flogged for the slightest transgression. Furthermore, female slaves of any age might well find themselves at the mercy of master’s unspeakable whims.