well over a year after his election, Abe arrived in Washington with his family for the beginning of his term. They took a small room at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse * —a room made all the more cramped by the addition of a fourth family member.
We are doubly blessed with another boy, Edward Baker, born this 10th of March [1846]. He is every bit the laughing rascal Bob is, though I suspect he has a sweeter disposition. My love is not diminished slightly at his being the second. I am every bit the servant of Eddy’s smile—nibbling at his toes to make him laugh… smelling his hair when he sleeps… holding his sleeping chest to mine. What a simpleton these boys make of their father!
This time there was no fear of Edward falling ill or dying. No bargaining with God (at least none that Abe saw fit to record in his journal). Perhaps he’d grown more confident as a parent. Perhaps he was simply too busy to obsess over it. Busy keeping tabs on his thriving law practice back in Springfield. Busy adjusting to a new city and a new level of political intensity. Busy with everything but hunting vampires.
[Henry’s] letters arrive monthly. He begs I reconsider. Insists that it is crucial I take up my errands again. I answer each one with the same simple truths: that I will not risk leaving my wife a widow, or my children fatherless. If I am truly meant to free men from tyranny, I tell him, then I must do so in the spirit of that old adage concerning the pen and the sword. My sword has done its part. My pen must take me the rest of the way.
Washington turned out to be a disappointment on nearly every level. Abe had come expecting a gleaming metropolis filled with men of the “finest minds, and dedicated to the service of their constituents.” What he found were “a few brilliant beacons in a fog of fools.” As for his dreams of life in a big city, Washington, D.C., felt more like Louisville or Lexington—albeit with a handful of gleaming architectural wonders. “A few palaces on a prairie,” as Abe liked to say. The cornerstone of the Washington Monument had yet to be laid. Neither it nor the Capitol would be completed in his lifetime.
One of Washington’s greatest disappointments was its abundance of slaves. They worked at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse where Abe stayed with his family. They were auctioned off on the streets he took to work. They were kept caged on the future site of the National Mall, where Abe’s giant likeness would one day keep watch for all eternity.
[There is] in view from the windows of the Capitol a sort of livery stable, where droves of Negroes are collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses. Men—chained together and sold! Here, in the shadow of an institution founded on the promise that “All men are created equal”! Founded with cries of “give me liberty, or give me death!” It is more than any honorable man can bear.
In one of the few highlights of his congressional career, Abe introduced a bill to outlaw slavery in the District of Columbia. He’d been careful to write it in such a way that “it seemed neither severe to slave owners, nor feeble to abolitionists.” But there was only so much a first-term Congressman could do, brilliant or not. The bill never came to a vote.
His legislative failures notwithstanding, Abraham Lincoln made quite an impression in the halls of Congress —and not just because of his towering height. His contemporaries described him as “awkward and gangly,” with pantaloons that “scarcely came to within six inches of his ankles.” Though he was not yet forty, many Democrats (and a few of his fellow Whigs) took to calling him “Old Abe” on account of his “rough, ragged appearance and tired eyes.”
I related this to Mary one night while she bathed our boys, and confessed that it annoyed me. “Abe,” she said with nary an upward glance or moment’s hesitation, “one might find men in Congress who possess twice your good looks, but not one who possesses half your good sense.”
I am a fortunate man.
But unflattering nicknames were the least of his concerns, as he wrote only days after taking office:
A man cannot walk from one end of the chamber to the other without hearing talk of vampires! Never have I heard the subject so often discussed, and by so many! These long years I have thought myself privy to some dark secret—a secret I have kept hidden from my wife and kin. Yet here, in the halls of power, it is the secret everyone seems to know. Many in our delegation are rife with whispers about “those damned Southerners” and their “black- eyed” friends. Jokes are told over meals. Even [Senator Henry] Clay * participates! “Why does Jeff Davis wear his collar so high? To hide the bite marks on his neck.” There must be some truth in their jests, however, for I have yet to hear of a Southern congressman who isn’t beholden to vampire interests, sympathetic to their cause, or fearful of their reprisal. As to my own experiences with [vampires], I shall remain silent. It is a part of my life that I do not wish to visit again—whether in practice or conversation.
Abe was startled awake by shattering glass.
A pair of men had broken through the windows of our second-floor room. There was no pistol under my pillow. No ax beside my bed. Before I had time enough to stand, one of them struck my face with such force that the back of my skull splintered our headboard.
I struggled to regain my senses as one of the devils grabbed Mary, covering her mouth to stifle the screams. The other took Bob from his small bed, and the creatures made off the way they came—out the windows and onto the street below. I willed myself upright and gave chase, leaping from the window without hesitation, tearing my flesh on shards of glass as I did. On the dark, scarcely peopled streets of Washington now. I could hear Bob’s screams ahead of me in the dark. I ran after them with a panic I had never known. A rage.
The tears in my eyes… the uncontrollable grunts… the torn muscles of my legs. Block after block, turning onto this street, that street, as Bob’s voice changed direction. But his screams grew ever fainter on the wind, and my legs ever weaker. I collapsed… weeping at the thought of my son—my helpless little boy carried off into that darkness—that darkness where not even his daddy could reach him.
Abe lifted his trembling head, astonished to find himself in front of Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse.
And now… now a terrible thought came over me, and the panic returned.
I bounded up the stairs and into our room. Silence… empty beds… broken windows… curtains fluttering—and Eddy’s crib against the far wall. I could not see its contents from here. I could not bear to look. What if he was gone?
How could I have left him? How could I have abandoned my ax? No… no, I could not look—I could only stand in the doorway, weeping—for I knew in my heart he was dead like the others.
And then his cries rang out, thank God, and I hurried across the room, eager to feel his warmth in my arms. But upon reaching his crib and looking down into it, I saw his white sheets awash in blood. Not Eddy’s blood—no, for there was a demon lying there in his place. Lying atop those soaked sheets with a stake through his heart and a hole in the back of his skull. Lying motionless in the crib, the blood pouring from his familiar body… at once a child and a man. His weary eyes open, yet empty. Staring into mine. I knew him.
It was me.
Abe woke—his heart pounding. He turned to his left and saw Mary sleeping peacefully beside him. Checked his sleeping boys and found them unharmed.
He scribbled four words in his journal that night before trying (unsuccessfully) to go back to sleep.
