Enclosed were various train and steamboat schedules, $500, and the name of a boardinghouse in New York City where a room had been rented under the name A. Rutledge.
Oh, how [the letter] annoyed me! Henry was clever indeed—for though he claimed to have little enticement to offer, every word was designed to entice: the self-censure; the flattery; the promise of an explanation—even the name left at the boardinghouse! That he would have me abandon my affairs, my family, and cross a thousand miles without so much as an intimation of the purpose!
And yet I could not refuse.
And this was more annoying than the letter itself, for Henry was right. It was time. Time for what, I knew not. Only that the whole of my life… the suffering, the errands, the death… that it had all been leading to something more. I had felt this, even as a child—the sense that I had been placed on a long, straight stretch of river from which there could be no deviation. Carried ever faster by the current… surrounded by wilderness on both sides… destined to collide with some unseen object far, far downstream. I had never spoken of this feeling, of course, for fear of being thought vain (or worse, being proven wrong—for if every young man who was assured of his future greatness was proven correct, the world would be brimming with Napoleons). Now, however, the object was beginning to take shape, though I could not yet make out its features. If a thousand miles was the price of seeing it clearly at last, then so be it. I had traveled farther for less.
Abe arrived in New York City on July 29th. Not wanting to raise suspicion (or leave his family unattended), he’d decided to take Mary and the boys along for a “spontaneous” trip to experience the wonders of New York City.
They couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit.
The city was in the midst of a violent summer. Two rival police forces had been locked in a bloody battle for legitimacy since May, leaving crime largely unchecked—a field day for muggers and murderers alike. The Lincolns reached New York just three weeks after the worst gang rioting in the city’s history, rioting in which witnesses described seeing men perform “impossible feats.” Abe had seen New York only once before, briefly passing through on his way north. Now he was able to appreciate the largest, most energetic of all American cities for the first time.
The drawings do it no justice—it is a city without end or equal! Each street gives way to another more grand and bustling than the last. Buildings of such size! Never have I seen so many carriages crowded together. The air rings with the clopping of horseshoes against cobblestones and the murmur of a hundred conversations. There are so many ladies carrying so many black parasols, that if a man were to look down from a rooftop, he would scarcely see the sidewalk. One imagines Rome at its height. London and its grandeur. * Mary insists we stay a month at least! For how else can we ever hope to appreciate such a place?
On the night of Sunday, August 2nd, Abe rose from bed, dressed in the dark, and tiptoed out of the room where his family slept. At precisely eleven-thirty, he crossed Washington Square and walked north, just as the note slipped under his door that morning had instructed. He was to meet Henry two miles up Fifth Avenue, in front of the orphanage at the corner of Forty-fourth Street.
With each passing block the streets grew emptier. Darker. Here, the grand buildings and murmuring sidewalks melted into rows of two-story homes, nary a candle alight in any window. Nary a gentleman about. Passing though Madison Square Park, I marveled at the unfinished skeleton of some immense, unknown structure. ** Marveled at the absolute quiet. The barren streets. I began to imagine myself the only soul in New York, until the sound of heels against cobblestones caught my ear.
Abe glanced over his shoulder. The silhouettes of three men followed close behind.
How had they escaped my notice until now? In light of the city’s recent troubles, I thought it best to double back and head south to Washington Square, back to the safety of gaslight and crowded streets. Henry could wait. Oh, what a damned fool I was! I had ventured out unarmed, knowing too well that many a gentleman had been robbed (or worse) on these streets of late—and that the police could hardly be counted on to intervene. Silently cursing myself, I turned left down Thirty-fourth Street. My heart sank as I heard their footsteps follow me around the bend—for now there could be no question of their intent. My pace quickened. Theirs quickened. “If only I could reach Broadway,” I thought.
He wouldn’t. His pursuers broke into a sprint. Abe did the same, making another left and running between two lots in hopes of eluding them.
My speed could still be trusted—but as fast as I was, [they] were faster. All hope of escape lost, I turned and met them with my fists.
Abe was nearly fifty years old. He hadn’t wielded a weapon or been in a fight for fifteen years. Even so, he managed to land a few blows on each of his assailants before one of them landed his own, knocking him out cold.
I woke in absolute darkness, the faint rumble of a coach’s wheels beneath me.
“Put him out again,” said the unfamiliar voice.
A sharp, oh so brief pain on the top of my head… the universe before me in all of its color and majesty… and then… nothing.
“I am deeply sorry,” said the familiar voice, “but we can trust no living man with our whereabouts.”
It was Henry.
My hood was presently removed, and I found myself in the center of a grand, two-tiered ballroom, its intricate ceiling thirty feet above my aching head; its long, dark red curtains drawn; the whole lit dimly by chandeliers. Gold upon gold. Marble upon marble. The finest carvings and furnishings, and a floor of wood so dark and polished it might have been black glass. It was the most splendid room I had ever seen or, for that matter, ever thought possible.
Three men of varying age and build stood behind Henry, each leaning against the hearth of a kingly marble fireplace. Each with contempt in his eyes. These, I assumed, were my assailants. A pair of long sofas faced each other in front of the fireplace, with a low table in between. Upon this, a silver tea service reflected the light of the fire, casting strange, intoxicating patterns on the walls and ceiling. A diminutive, graying gentleman sat on the left sofa, teacup in hand. I had seen him before… I was sure of it… but in my confused state I could not place him.
My senses returning, I noticed perhaps twenty more gentlemen scattered about the room, some standing behind me, some seated in high-backed chairs against the walls. Another twenty loomed above, looking down from the shadowy mezzanines on each side of the room. It was clear [they] meant to keep their faces hidden.
“Please,” said Henry. He motioned for Abe to sit across from the diminutive gentleman.
I hesitated to come any closer until Henry (sensing the reason behind my reluctance) motioned to my assailants, and they removed from the fireplace. “I give you my word,” he said as they went, “no further harm shall befall you tonight.” Believing him sincere, I took a seat across from the gentleman whom I could not yet place, clutching the back of my head with my left hand and steadying myself with the other.
“Vampires,” said Henry—tilting his head toward the three men who now took their seats along the wall.
“Yes,” said Abe. “I’d worked that out on my own, thank you.”
Henry smiled. “Vampires,” he said, motioning around the ballroom. “The cursed, bloodsucking lot of us. The exceptions being yourself… and Mr. Seward here.”
Senator William Seward was the former governor of New York, one of the leading antislavery voices in Congress, and the man widely expected to be the Republican presidential nominee in 1860. He and Abe had met
