Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

FIG. 11.2 - ABE’S HOPES WERE REALIZED WHEN SLAVES BEGAN REVOLTING AGAINST THEIR VAMPIRE CAPTIONS IN THE WAKE OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

Word was spreading. The days of America’s vampires were numbered.

On November 19th, 1863, Abe rose before a crowd of 15,000. He pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, cleared his throat, and began to speak:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…

He’d come to Gettysburg to dedicate a memorial to the 8,000 men who had given their lives in the three-day Union victory. As he spoke, Ward Hill Lamon (who can be seen sitting next to Abe in one of the few surviving photos of the event) scanned the crowd anxiously—his hand on the revolver inside his coat; his stomach in knots—for he was the only man protecting the president that day.

For three hours we sat upon that stage. Three hours of ceaseless worry—for I was certain that an assassin would strike. Every face seemed to wear an expression of hatred for the president. Every movement seemed prelude to an attempt on his life.

At first, Abe had insisted on going to Gettysburg without any guard, worried that the sight of armed men would be “inappropriate” at an event honoring those who’d died for their country. Only after Lamon half-jokingly threatened to sabotage the president’s train to prevent the trip did Abe agree to bring him along.

… that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abe folded the paper and took his seat to moderate applause. He’d spoken for all of two minutes. In that short time, he’d given perhaps the greatest speech of the nineteenth century, one that would be forever ingrained in America’s consciousness. And in that short time, Ward Hill Lamon, Abraham Lincoln’s most devoted human bodyguard, had reached a decision that would forever alter the course of America’s history.

FIG. 14C-3. - WARD HILL LAMON SITS IMMEDIATELY TO ABE’S RGHT IN THE MOMENTS AFTER THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, NERVOUSLY SCANNING THE CROWD FOR VAMPIRE ASSASSINS. A CLOSER LOOK AT THE EDGE OF THE PHOTO SUGGESTS THAT HIS FEARS MAY HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED.

The anxiety at Gettysburg had been more than he could bear. As they rode back to Washington, Lamon respectfully told the president that he could no longer guard him.

V

On the night of November 8th, 1864, Abe walked though driving wind and rain, alone.

I resolved to sit in the telegraph office alone and await the returns, just as I had in Springfield four long years ago. If I lost, I did not wish to be consoled. If I won, I did not wish to be congratulated. For there were many reasons to welcome the first outcome, and mourn the second.

The war had claimed nearly 500,000 lives by Election Day. Despite these unimaginable losses, growing war-weariness, and deep divides over emancipation in the North, Abe and his new vice president, Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, won in a landslide against George B. McClellan (the same McClellan Abe had confronted after Antietam). Eighty percent of the Union Army voted to reelect its commander in chief, an astonishing number given the fact that Abe had run against a former Union general, and given the miserable conditions they’d endured for years. On hearing the election results, Union troops outside the Confederate capital of Richmond gave such a cheer that its beleaguered citizens were sure the South had just surrendered.

They had reason to expect defeat. Richmond had been surrounded for months. Atlanta (the heart of Southern manufacturing) had been captured. Across the South, emancipated slaves continued to escape to Northern lines by the tens of thousands—crippling Southern agriculture, and forcing Confederate vampires to scavenge for easy blood. As a result, the dreaded “ghost soldiers” who had slaughtered and terrorized Union troops became increasingly scarce. By the time Abe was inaugurated for the second time on March 4th, 1865, the war was all but over.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

During the procession that followed his address, a battalion of Negro soldiers joined the others marching past the president’s reviewing stand.

I was moved to tears as they passed, saluting me—for in each of their faces I saw the face of a nameless victim crying out for justice; of a little girl passing by on the Old Cumberland Trail all those many years ago. On each of their faces I saw the anguish of the past, and the promise of the future.

General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army on April 9th, 1865, effectively ending the Civil War. The following day, Abe received a letter in a familiar scrawl.

Abraham,

I beg you put enmity aside long enough to read a few words of congratulations.

It brings me joy to report that our enemy has begun its exodus—many back to Europe, others to South America and the Orient, where they are less likely to be hunted. They have looked to the future, Abraham—and they have seen that America is now, and shall forever be, a nation of living men. Like your namesake, you have been a “father to many” these four long years. And like your namesake, God has asked impossible sacrifices of you. Yet you have endured it all as brilliantly as any man could have hoped. You have blessed the futures of those who share this time on earth, and those who have yet to live.

She would be proud.

Ever,

—H

As a boy, Abe had vowed to “kill every vampire in America.” While that had proven impossible, he’d done the next best thing: he’d driven the worst of them out of America. There was one vampire, however, who refused to leave… who believed that the dream of a nation of immortals was still within reach—so long as Abraham Lincoln was dead.

His name was John Wilkes Booth.

FIG. 3E - JOHN WILKES BOOTH (SEATED) POSES FOR A PORTRAIT WITH CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS IN RICHMOND, CIRCA 1863. IT IS ONLY KNOWN PICTURE OF BOOTH IN HIS TRUE VAMPIRE FORM.

THIRTEEN

Thus Always to Tyrants

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

—Abraham Lincoln, in a speech at Chicago, Illinois

July 10th, 1858

I

On April 12th, 1865, a lone man walked across the White House lawn toward the towering columns of the South Portico—where, on clear spring afternoons such as this, the president himself could often be seen on the third-floor balcony. The man walked briskly, carrying a small leather attaché. The legislation that would create the Secret Service was sitting on Abraham Lincoln’s desk that Wednesday evening, and would remain there for the rest of his life.