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.
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 attache. 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.
At three minutes before four o’clock, the man entered the building and gave his name to one of the butlers.
“Joshua Speed, to see the president.”
A lifetime of war had finally taken its toll on Abe. He’d felt increasingly weak since Willie’s death. Clouded and unsure. The lines in his face were deeper, and the skin beneath his eyes sagged so as to make him appear forever exhausted. Mary was nearly always depressed, and her rare moments of levity were spent on frenzied fits of decorating and redecorating, or on seances to “commune” with her beloved Eddy and Willie. She and Abe hardly spoke beyond simple civilities. Sometime between April 3rd and April 5th, during his journey downriver to inspect the fallen city of Richmond, the president scribbled the following poem in the margins of his journal.
Melancholy,
my old friend,
visits frequent,
once again.
Desperate for distraction and companionship, Abe invited his old friend and fellow vampire hunter to spend a night at the White House. Upon being notified of Speed’s arrival, Abe politely excused himself from a meeting and hurried into the reception room. Speed recalled Abe’s entrance in a letter to fellow hunter William Seward after the president’s death.
Placing his right hand upon my shoulder, the president paused momentarily as our faces met. I daresay he found mine surprised and saddened, for when I studied him, I saw a frailty that I had never encountered before. Gone was the broad-shouldered giant who could drive an ax clean through a vampire’s middle. Gone were the smiling eyes and confident air. In their place was a hunched, gaunt gentleman whose skin had taken on a sickly pallor, and whose features belonged to a man twenty years his senior. “My dear Speed,” he said, and took me into his arms.
The two hunters dined alone, Mary having confined herself to bed with a headache. After dinner, they retired to Abe’s office, where they remained well into the early morning hours, laughing and reminiscing as if they were above the store in Springfield again. They spoke of their hunting days; of the war; of the rumors that vampires were
