Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

SEVEN

The Fatal First

I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

—Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning

April 1st, 1838

I

Abe was on the second floor of a plantation house. He’d seen so many of them on his trips down the Mississippi—the oversize, four-columned wonders built by the hands of slaves. But he’d never been inside. Not until tonight.

I held Jack in my arms, his innards visible through the slit that ran across his belly. I saw the color leave his face… saw the fear in his eyes. And then the nothingness. My brave, sturdy friend. The roughest man in Clary’s Grove. Gone. And yet I could not grieve him now—for I too remained perilously close to death.

It had been another simple errand, another name on Henry’s list. But this place was different. Extraordinary. Abe was on his knees, certain he’d stumbled into some kind of vampire hive.

How many there were I did not know. I set Jack’s body down and entered a long second-floor hallway, ax in hand, my long coat torn by the very claws that had taken my friend’s life. Open doors ran the length of this corridor, and as I walked cautiously forward, each revealed a scene more horrid than the last. In one, the tiny bodies of three children hung from ropes by their ankles—their throats cut. Pails placed beneath them to catch their blood. In another, the withered, white-eyed corpse of a woman in a rocking chair. One of her skeletal hands rested atop the head of a child in her lap, not quite as decayed as she. Down the corridor… the remains of a woman lying in bed. Farther… a squat vampire with a stake through his heart. All the while I heard the sounds of the floors creaking around me. Above and below. I crept down the corridor… closer to the grand staircase at its end. On reaching its railing, I turned back to perceive the whole of the hallway. Suddenly there was a vampire before me—though I could not see his face against the light. He took the ax from my hand and threw it aside… lifted me clear off the ground by my collar. Now I saw his face.

It was Henry.

“It is your purpose to free men from tyranny, Abraham,” he said. “And to do so, you must die.” Upon this, he threw me over the railing. My body fell toward the foyer’s marble floor. And fell. For all time.

It was the last nightmare Abe would ever have in New Salem.

It had taken him months to emerge from the crippling depression brought on by Ann’s death—and while it had renewed his hatred of vampires, he found himself without the energy and passion to hunt them. Now, when a letter from St. Louis arrived in Henry’s handwriting, it might go unopened for days (and once opened, it might be weeks before Abe attended to the name inside). Sometimes, if the errand required too much travel, he sent Jack Armstrong in his stead. His despondency is clear in an entry dated November 18th, 1836.

I have given too much of myself already. Henceforth, I shall hunt only when it is convenient for me to do so, and only because it honors the memory of my angel mother… only because it honors Ann’s memory. I care not for the unsuspecting gentleman on the darkened city street. I care not for the Negro sold at auction, or the child taken from its bed. Protecting them has not profited me in the least. On the contrary, it has left me even poorer, for the items my errands require are furnished at my own expense. And the days and weeks spent hunting are days and weeks without a wage. If what Henry says is the truth—if I am truly meant to free men from tyranny—then I must begin by freeing myself. There is nothing for me here [in New Salem]. The store is failed, and I fear the village is not far behind. Henceforth my life shall be my own.

Abe had been encouraged to pursue law by his old Blackhawk War friend John T. Stuart, who had a small practice in Springfield. After studying entirely on his own (and only in his spare time), Abe obtained a law license in the fall of 1836. Shortly thereafter, Stuart asked him to partner up. On April 12th, 1837, the two men ran an advertisement in The Sangamon Journal announcing their new venture, located in Springfield at “Number Four Hoffman’s Row, Upstairs.” Three days later, Abe rode solemnly into Springfield on a borrowed horse, carrying everything he owned in a pair of saddlebags. He was twenty-eight years old, and he was penniless—“the whole of my money going toward my debts, and the requisite books of my new profession.” He tied up outside A. Y. Ellis & Co., a general store on the west side of the square, “and moseyed in with not so much as an acorn in my pocket.” The clerk was a slender man named Joshua Fry Speed, twenty-four years old, with jet-black hair and a “graceful” face that framed two “unnervingly” blue eyes.

I found him at once odd and bothersome. “Are you new to Springfield, sir? May I interest you in a hat, sir? What news from the county, sir? Must you routinely stoop to fit through doorways, sir?” Never had I been asked so many questions! Never had I been so unwillingly dragged into conversation! I would not have dreamt of treating my customers in such a way during my own tenure as a clerk. I could not go from one shelf to the next without him buzzing about like a horsefly asking questions, when all I cared to do was conclude my business and be on my way. To this end, I handed him a list of goods—including the chemicals I required for my hunts.

“You will forgive my saying so,” said Speed, “but these are strange requests indeed.”

“They are what I require. I shall be glad to furnish you with the names of the—”

“Strange indeed—sir, are you certain we have not met?”

“Sir, are you able you order them or not?”

“Yes, I am sure of it! Yes… yes, I saw you give a speech July last at Salisbury! On the need for improving the Sangamon? Do you not remember, sir? Joshua Speed? A fellow Kentuckian?”

“I really must be on my—”

“A fine speech indeed! Of course, I believe you quite mistaken on the subject—every dollar spent on that miserable creek is a dollar wasted. But what a speech!”

He pledged to order the whole of my list at once, and (much to the relief of my weary ears) busied himself copying its contents. Before taking my leave, I inquired as to whether he knew of any rooms for rent—preferably cheap ones, as I had no money to pay at the moment.

“Well, sir… if you have no money, am I to take your meaning as ‘cheap,’ or ‘free’?”

“On credit.”

“Ah, ‘credit,’ yes… you will forgive my saying so, but I have learned that ‘credit’ is a French word meaning ‘I shall never pay you.’ ”

“I square my debts.”

“Oh, I doubt it not, I doubt it not. All the same, sir—you shall not find such a room in Springfield. People here are strangely accustomed to trading their wares for money.”

“I see… well, thank you for your time. Good day.”

Perhaps he pitied my circumstances or my weary countenance. Perhaps he was merely as friendless as I. In any case, he stopped me and offered to share his own room above the store “on credit—until such time as you are able to strike out on your own.” I will admit that I considered refusing him. The idea of sharing a room with such a pestering fly! I should rather take my chances in a stable loft! But, having no better option, I thanked him and accepted.

“You will, of course, require time to move,” said Speed.

Abe walked outside. A moment later, he returned with his saddlebags and set them on the floor.

“I am moved.”

II

Springfield was booming. Wooden shacks and oxcarts were giving way to brick buildings and carriages, and there seemed to be two politicians for every farmer. It was a long way from New Salem—and even farther from the frontier hardship of Little Pigeon Creek. But for all the excitement and advantage of urban life, there also came a cruelty that Abe was unaccustomed to. His description of one incident is a window into the growing violence of a growing city, and further evidence of Lincoln’s lingering melancholy.

I witnessed a woman and her husband shot and killed today—the latter being the responsible party in both deaths. I was on the street in front of our office, talking with a client, Mr. John S. Wilbourn, when I heard a scream and saw a woman of perhaps five-and-thirty years running out of Thompsons’. ^* A man came running after her with a pepperbox, ^** leveled it, and shot her square in the back. She fell face forward in the street, grabbing at her gut, then rolled onto her back and made an effort to sit upright. She could not. Wilbourn and I raced toward her at once, caring not that her husband stood over her, pistol in hand. Others came into the street, alerted by the noise, and as they did they were met with the sound of a second shot. This one left a hole in the husband’s head. He, too, fell—blood pouring from the wound with every beat of his heart.

It is a strange thing how quickly the body dies. How fragile a force our presence is. In an instant the soul is gone—leaving an empty, insignificant vessel in its stead. I have read of those sent to the gallows and gillotines [sic] of Europe. I have read of the great wars of ages past, and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to their deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts. But in doing so we forget that they were each as alive as we, and that one length of rope—one bullet or blade—took the whole of their lives in that last, fragile instant. Took their earliest days as swaddled infants, and their grayest unfulfilled futures. When one thinks of how many souls have suffered this fate in all of history—of the untold murders of untold men, women, and children… it is too much to bear.

Fortunately, Lincoln’s duties as a lawyer and lawmaker kept him too busy to dwell on death for very long. When he wasn’t required at a committee hearing or a vote, he was likely deposing a client in his office, or filing a suit at the Springfield courthouse (most of his cases concerned land disputes or unpaid debts). Twice a year, Abe joined a group of his fellow lawyers on a three-month tour of the eighth Judicial Circuit, an area made up of fourteen counties in central and eastern Illinois. There were dozens of settlements on the circuit, and precious few courthouses. So when the weather permitted, the courthouse came to them, lawyers, judge, and all. For Abe, these trips were more than an escape from the long, candlelit hours at his desk. They were a chance to catch up on his vampire hunts.

Knowing that my work would take me twice yearly around the circuit, I deferred certain errands until such time as they were more suitable. By day my fellow lawyers and I tried cases, using churches or taverns as our courts. In the evenings we gathered at the supper table and discussed the business of the coming day. And at night, when all but a few were asleep in the overstuffed rooms of our boardinghouse, I ventured out with my coat and ax.

One hunt in particular stood out in Abe’s memory:

I’d received a letter from Henry bearing the instructions: “E. Schildhaus. Half mile beyond the north end of Mill Street, Athens, Illinois.” Rather than set out straightaway and dispense God’s justice, I chose to wait until such time as my work brought me to Athens. And so arrived the day, two months later, when our traveling mob was due in the little town to the north, and the lawyers gathered at the tavern that was to serve as our courthouse. Here they were introduced to the plaintiffs and defendants whose cases they would argue in just a few hours’ time. Having been sick most of the night before, I was unable to join Stuart until midday, by which time our case was already before the judge. It was a matter of some small debt owed by our client—an older red-haired woman named Betsy. I recall only that we lost, and that I contributed nothing to the effort beyond a parting, apologetic handshake with her—much distracted by my illness. That night, Stuart having turned in along with most of our mob, I unpacked my coat and ax and quietly made for the address on Henry’s letter. As I was feeling feverish, I had elected to simply knock on the door and drive my ax into whoever opened it, so that I might return to bed with the utmost expediency. The door swung open.

It was my client, Betsy—her red hair held in place by an ivory comb. I closed my coat in hopes of hiding the ax beneath it.

“May I help you, Mr. Lincoln?”

“I—I apologize for intruding at this late hour, ma’am. I must be mistaken.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, ma’am. I understood this to be the home of an E. Schildhaus.”

“Indeed it is.”

A vampire and a woman under one roof?

“Mr. Lincoln, you must excuse my asking, but are you well? You look rather pallid.”

“Fine, ma’am, thank you. May I… do you think I might speak with Mr. Schildhaus a moment?”

“Mr. Lincoln,” she said, laughing, “you are speaking with her.”

E. Schildhaus…

Elizabeth…

Betsy.

She caught sight of the ax in my coat. Read my face. My eyes. My thoughts. At once I was on my back fighting to keep her fangs from my neck, my ax knocked out of reach. I pulled at her red hair with my right hand and reached into my coat with the left. Here I found a small knife, which I used to stab any part of her that I could reach: her neck, her back, the very arms she pinned me with. I brought the blade down again and again, until at last she released me and sprang to her feet. I did the same, and we circled each other cautiously—I holding the knife in front of my body; she staring at me with those black marbles. Then, just as quickly as she had attacked, she stopped… and held her hands in the air as if to surrender.

“I must know… what quarrel have we, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Your quarrel is with God. I merely wish to offer Him the opportunity to judge you.”

“Very good,” she laughed. “That is very good. Well, for your sake, I pray you are a better combatant than you are a lawyer.”

She struck at me, and in doing so knocked the knife from my hand—my strength diminished by fever. Her fists flew about my face and belly faster than I could perceive them, and I tasted the salt of fresh blood in my mouth. She drove me back with each blow, until I could no longer keep my feet steady beneath me. For the first time since the night Henry had saved my life, I felt death looking over my shoulder.

Henry was wrong….

I collapsed, and she was on me at once—my arm shaking as I again held her by the hair. And then her fangs were in my shoulder. The pain of punctured flesh and muscle. The heat of blood rushing to the wound. The pressure in my veins. I stopped pulling at her hair and laid my hand flat upon her head, as if comforting a friend in a time of grief. All apprehension left me now. All pain. The warmth of whiskey. An unknown joy.

These are the last moments of my life.

I struck the martyr against the ivory comb in her hair. It lit—brighter than the sun, a halo behind her head. Her red hair burst into flame and I felt her fangs leave me; heard her screams as she rolled on the ground—the fire spreading to her clothes, refusing to let her go. With the last of my strength, I got to my knees, retrieved my ax, and buried it in her brain. She was no more, but I had not the strength to bury her, or walk the mile to my boardinghouse. I dragged her body inside, closed the door, and—after helping myself to a torn strip of her bedsheets to dress my wounds—helped myself to her bed.

I do not expect I shall ever again have the opportunity of defending and murdering a client in the same day.

When Abe rode circuit, his hunts were confined to darkness. But when he worked out of Springfield, he grew increasingly fond of hunting during the day.

One of my favorite tricks was setting a sleeping vampire’s house alight when the sun was highest in the sky. This left the devil with two unsavory options: meet me in the daylight, where he would be weak and half blind, or remain inside and burn. I cared not which he chose.

By the time Abe won reelection to the State Legislature in 1838, he was becoming known around Springfield as an eloquent speaker and capable lawyer. A man with ability and ambition to match. A man worthy of esteem. He was twenty-nine years old, and in just over a year’s time, he’d gone from a penniless newcomer on a borrowed horse to a man who moved with the capital’s elite (though thanks to his debts, he remained penniless). He charmed dinner party guests with his backwoods folksiness and impressed fellow legislators with his easy grasp of the issues. “His table manners are a bit rough,” wrote fellow Whig Ebenezer Ryan to a friend, “and his suits in need of mending. But he is possessed of the finest mind I have ever known, and has a gift for forming his thoughts into eloquent turns of phrase. I expect he could be governor someday.”

Abe also thought less often of Ann Rutledge.

It is true what they say of time. I find my melancholy much improved of late, and take to my errands with renewed zeal. Mother sends news that she and my half-siblings are in good health. ^* I have a fine partner in Stuart, a pestilent but well-meaning friend in Speed, and the respect of the finest men in Springfield. Were it not for my debts, I should be the happiest of men. And yet I cannot escape the feeling that there is something missing.

John T. Stuart had a plan.

It had taken some convincing, but he’d finally managed to drag his junior partner to the cotillion at his cousin Elizabeth’s.

Having much business to attend to, I did not think it a good use of my time. Yet Stuart kept at me—pestering me as [his stepbrother] John had years before. “Life is more than papers, Lincoln! Come now! It shall do our health wonders to be out among people.” This continued for the better part of an hour, until I had no choice but relent. On reaching the Edwardses’ house (before I’d so much as shaken the snow from my soles), Stuart whisked me through the house and introduced me to a young lady seated in the parlor. It was then that his scheme became clear.

Her name was Mary Todd—Stuart’s cousin, and a new arrival to Springfield. Abe recorded his first impressions of her that very night, December 16th, 1839.

She is a fascinating creature, just this week turned one-and-twenty, but so gifted in conversation—and not in the stilted, learned manner of excessive breeding, but rather in a natural, God-given way. A tiny, witty thing with a pleasing round face and dark hair. Fluent in French; trained in dance and music. My eye could not help but return to her, time and time again. More than once I caught her staring back, her hand cupped to the ear of a friend—both laughing at my expense. Oh, I am keen to know her more! When the evening was all but concluded and I could bear it no longer, I greeted her with a low bow, saying “Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way.”

Legend has it that Mary later told friends: “And he certainly did.”

She was strangely drawn to the tall, unrefined lawyer. Despite the gulf of wealth and breeding that divided them, there were a few crucial similarities that would form the basis of their relationship: Both lost their mothers at a young age, and continued to be defined by that loss. Both were decisive, emotional creatures—prone to soaring highs and abyssal lows. And both enjoyed nothing more than a good joke (especially when it came at the expense of “some deserving charlatan”). As Mary would write in her diary that winter, “He is not the handsomest suitor I have ever known, nor the most refined—but he is without question the cleverest. Yet there is a sadness that accompanies his wit. I find him quite strange… strange yet intriguing.”

But as much as she was intrigued by Abe, Mary was torn, for she was already being courted by a short, stocky Democrat named Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas was a rising star in his party, and a man of considerable means, especially when compared to Lincoln. He could provide Mary with the lifestyle she’d grown accustomed to. But while he was undeniably brilliant and undeniably rich, he was also (in Mary’s words) “undeniably dull.”

“In the end,” she recalled in a letter written years later, “I decided that it was more important to laugh than eat.”

She and Abe became engaged in late 1840. But while the two were “in hearty love and a hurry to get hitched,” there was still the small matter of getting permission from Mary’s father. The young couple wouldn’t have to wait long for his answer. Mary’s parents were due in Springfield for Christmas. It was to be Abe’s first encounter with his future in-laws.

Robert Smith Todd was a wealthy businessman and a fixture in Lexington, Kentucky, society. Like Abe, he was both lawyer and lawmaker. Unlike Abe, he’d amassed a great deal of wealth, some of which he’d used to purchase slaves for the mansion that he shared with his second wife and some of their fifteen children.

I am unnerved at the prospect of being judged by a man of such influence and accomplishments. What if he should think me a fool or a peasant? What then of our love? I can think of nothing else. It has given me no shortage of worry these two weeks.

Abe needn’t have worried. The meeting went better than he could have hoped—at least according to the poem Mary dashed off to Lexington the next day, December 31st:

My darling Abe was at his best,

our darling father, most impressed.

The happy news (you might have guessed),

is that our union has been blessed!

As one post rider carried her poem to Lexington, another delivered a letter to her newly blessed fiancé. It was addressed “urgent” in Henry’s unmistakable scrawl—and carefully worded (as all the letters that passed between him and Abe were) to avoid any direct mention of vampires lest it be delivered to the wrong hands.

Dearest Abraham,

Received your letter of 18th December. Please accept my heartiest congratulations on your engagement. Miss Todd seems to be possessed of many fine qualities, and judging by your lengthy description of each, you have clearly been possessed by them.

However, I must caution you, Abraham, and I do so only after much deliberation—for I know that this letter will not come as welcome news. The woman to whom you are engaged is the daughter of a Mr. Robert Smith Todd, known to all of Lexington as a gentleman of means and might. But know the truth: that his power is built on treacherous ground. That he is more a friend to my kind than yours. That his allies are the very worst of us—the sort whose names I have sent you these many years. He has been their champion in the statehouse. Their private bank in matters of business. He has even profited from the sale of Negroes intended for that cruelest of fates.

It is not my intention to discourage you from the match, for the daughter cannot be held to account for the sins of the father. However, being so intimately connected with such a man could prove dangerous. I ask only that you give the matter serious consideration, and keep your wits about you—whatever your decision may be.

Yours ever,

—H

History would remember the next day as Lincoln’s “fatal first” of January.

Well, it is done. I have destroyed the woman I love without so much as an explanation. I have destroyed her happiness and my own. I am the most miserable creature that ever lived, and I deserve whatever sorrows are in store. I expect—nay, I hope there will be many.

Abe had called on Mary that morning and broken off the engagement, muttering through his tears (“I recall not a word of it”) before running out into the cold.

I knew that I would never be able to shake her father’s hand again, nor look him in the eye without betraying my rage. To think that my children would share his blood! A man who conspired against his own kind! A man who profited from the deaths of innocents, their color be damned! I could not bear it. And what was I to do? Tell Mary the truth? Impossible. I had but one choice.

For the second time in five years, his thoughts turned to suicide. And for the second time in five years, it was his mother’s dying wish that kept him from following through.

John T. Stuart was visiting with relatives. All but a few of his fellow legislators had left to welcome the New Year in their respective districts. There was only one person in all of Springfield whom Abe could turn to.

“But you are in love with her!” said Speed. “Why in the devil would you go and do such a stupid thing?”

Abe sat on his bed in the tiny room above A. Y. Ellis & Co.—the bed he shared with the half-mad “pestering fly” buzzing about the room.

“I ache to be with her, Speed… but I cannot.”

“On account of her father? The same man who gave you his blessing not—not six or eight days ago?”

“The same.”

“You ache to be with her… her father has given his blessing. You must explain how courtship works here in Illinois, for I have clearly misunderstood some part of it.”

“I have since learned that her father is a party to wickedness. That he keeps the worst kind of company. I can have none of it.”

“If I loved a woman as you love Mary, her father could dine with the devil himself and it would not alter my affections.”

“You do not understand….”

“Then make me understand! How can I be of any use if all you do is speak in riddles?”

Abe could feel it on the tip of his tongue.

“You can trust me to keep any secret, Lincoln.”

“When you say ‘dine with the devil,’ well… you are closer to the truth than you know. I say he keeps company of the worst kind. What I mean to say is… he is a friend of evil, Speed. A friend of creatures who care not for human life. Creatures who would kill you or me and feel all the remorse of an elephant who stepped on an ant.”

“Ah… you mean he is a friend of vampires.”

Abe felt the blood leave his fingertips.

III

Joshua Speed had never felt at home with the other “well-bred boys” of St. Joseph’s Academy. He liked to play pranks. Tell jokes. He liked to dream of life on the wild frontier, “where men were few and arrows flew.” He couldn’t stand the thought of suffering his father’s quiet life of privilege. He yearned for something more—to strike out on his own and see the world. When he was nineteen, this yearning led him to Springfield, where he bought a stake in A. Y. Ellis. But filling orders and keeping inventory hadn’t proved the “wild frontier” he was looking for.

In early 1841, not long after Abe’s fatal first of January, Speed sold his interests and returned to Kentucky, leaving Lincoln to enjoy the room above the store by himself.

Arrived at Farmington. Must sleep.

It was August, and Abe had come to the Speed family’s Kentucky estate, Farmington, for some much-needed time away from his troubles. He hadn’t ventured out in months for fear of running into Mary or her friends, and his name was “treated as a profanity in every parlor in Springfield.” Speed had written his old roommate and insisted he come for “as long as is necessary to heal your troubles.”

Abe was more relaxed than he had been in years, or ever would be again. He took leisurely rides around the estate on horseback. Ventured into Lexington. Lazed afternoons away on the porch of the giant plantation house (the first he had actually set foot inside, his nightmares notwithstanding). If there was one drawback to life at Farmington, it was the inescapable sight of slaves. They were everywhere—in the house; in the fields.

Riding on the road to town today, I saw a dozen Negroes chained together like so many fish upon a trotline. It causes me no small discomfort to be among them. To be surrounded by them. Not only because I think their servitude a sin, but because they remind me of all that I wish to forget.

Abe and Joshua Speed talked the days away. They spoke of Britain’s might; of the steam engine. And they spoke of vampires.

“My own father dealt with the devils, I am ashamed to say,” said Speed. “They were hardly a secret among men of his stature, and a poorly kept one in our home, my older brothers having been enlisted in his efforts to win their favor.”

“So he sold Negroes to them?”

“The old and the lame, as a rule. He believed it a double blessing—a way to be rid of a useless slave and make a profit doing so. Once or twice he sold off a healthy buck, or a wench with child. Those fetched a higher price as they had more bl—”

“Enough! How can you speak of them so? Speak of men as cattle led to slaughter?”

“If I have given the impression that I take their murders lightly, I apologize. I do not, Abe. Nor have I ever. To the contrary, vampires are chief among the reasons that I never sought the warmth of my father’s esteem, or mourned his passing with more than a few tears. How could I accept it, when I have heard the screams of men and women feasted upon to line his pockets? When I have seen the faces of those demons through the spaces between wooden planks? If I could banish it from my memory… if I could atone for what was done here, I would do so.”

“Then atone for it.”

Speed needed little convincing. He needed only be told that hunting vampires was both dangerous and thrilling, much like the wild frontier of his imagination. As I had with Jack, ^* I shared the whole of my knowledge—teaching him how and when to strike; sparring with him to build his poise. Like Jack, he was impatient, too eager to run headlong into the fight. But where Jack could rely on his strength to carry the day, the slender Speed could not. I tried to impress upon him the immense force and quickness possessed by vampires; how very close he would be to death. I feared he did not fully understand. Yet such was his eager spirit that I found myself once again excited at the prospect of hunting.

Abe came up with an audacious plan, one that would put his inexperienced friend at minimal risk and kill six birds with one stone. In late August, Joshua Speed wrote a letter to six of his father’s former associates, each a frequent buyer of unwanted slaves. Each a vampire.

The day having arrived, I found myself filled with apprehension. How could I have been so rash? Six vampires! And with a novice as my partner! How I wished we had more time! How I wished we had Jack by our side!

But it was too late to turn back. Six men joined Joshua Speed on the shaded porch of the overseer’s ^** —one a gray-bearded man of seventy; one boyish and barely in his twenties; the other four in between. All of them wore dark glasses and carried folded parasols.

Speed had arranged for several Negroes to gather near the house, and instructed them to “make merry with their gospel.” Such was their singing and clapping that one could hear little else while waiting on the porch outside. As we had planned, Speed invited the vampires in one by one, taking their money and leading them to the waiting feast inside.

Five can’t catch me and ten can’t hold me—ho, round the corn, Sally…

But it was I who waited with my ax—and on their rounding the corner from the hall to the parlor, I swung it at their throats with the whole of my strength (which, in those days, was considerable). Of the first five vampires, all but one had his head taken on the first try. Only the third required a second effort, the blade having lodged in his face instead of his neck.

I can bank, ginny-bank, ginny-bank the weaver—ho, round the corn, Sally…

The last vampire was the youngest in appearance, but elderly in spirit. He grew annoyed at being made to wait on the porch alone, and helped himself inside the house. Unfortunately he did so just as the head of his colleague rolled into the hall.

The boyish vampire ran to his waiting horse, jumped on its back without breaking stride, and galloped off.

Speed was first through the door. He jumped on the second horse, dug his heels in, and gave chase before I could even mount the third. It was an old-fashioned horse race now, and Speed rode reckless, standing on his stirrups and beating his foot against the animal’s belly. The vampire saw him gaining and did the same, but his horse was a good ten years slower. Speed pulled up alongside without so much as a pocketknife to stab him with or a pebble to throw.

Speed pulled his feet from the stirrups one at a time, held the horn of his saddle with two hands, and stood. With both horses in a full gallop, he jumped, grabbing the vampire and dragging him to the ground. Both men tumbled in the dirt as their horses sped on. Speed struggled to his feet, dizzy—the sun blinding. Before he’d had time to shake the dust from his ears, a fist knocked him ten yards through the air and onto his back. He gasped for breath and brought a hand to his face, where a gash had been opened on his left cheek. The sun was suddenly eclipsed by the shape of a vampire standing over him. “You ungrateful little cur,” he said. Speed felt his innards rattle as the vampire delivered a kick to his gut.

“Who do you suppose paid for all this land?”

Another kick. Another. Speed saw flashes of color with the pain; felt his mouth fill with a strange taste. He couldn’t help but be sick.

The vampire grabbed him by the collar. “Your father would be ashamed,” he said.

“I… c-certainly hope s-so… ,” muttered Speed.

The vampire raised a clawed hand and prepared to bring it down on Speed’s throat.

Fortunately the head of an ax burst through his chest before he had the chance.

As the vampire fell to his knees, grabbing helplessly at the blade, blood pouring from his mouth, Abe pulled up on his reins and dismounted. Quickly placing two hands on the handle and one foot on the vampire’s back, he freed the ax, then delivered a fatal blow to the creature’s skull.

“Speed,” he said, rushing to his friend’s side. “My God…”

“Well,” said Speed, “I believe that’s enough atonement for one day.”

Abe found Springfield “lonesome and lifeless” upon his return. His time at Farmington had done wonders for his melancholy, “but with no friend to share my lonely hours, what difference if I be in the happiest or worst of moods?”

I care not that [Mary’s father] is a scoundrel, only that I love his daughter unconditionally. Speed is right—what is there in the world but our own small happiness? I have given the matter my serious consideration. Let Henry protest. Let the consequences come. I have resolved to pledge myself anew if she will have me.

“And why should I marry the man who left me to suffer alone?” asked Mary as Abe stood in the doorway of her cousin’s house. “The man who left me without so much as an explanation!”

Abe looked down at the hat in his hands. “I do not—”

“Who made a mockery of my name in this city!”

“My dearest Mary, I have only my humble—”

“Pray, what sort of husband would such a man make? A man who, at any moment, might suffer a change of heart and leave me to suffer anew? Tell me, Mr. Lincoln, what enticement have I to pledge myself to such a man?”

Abe looked up from his hat. “Mary,” he said, “if it is my faults you wish to address, then we shall find ourselves standing here a week’s time. I do not come to torment you further. I come to merely lay myself at your feet; to beg your forgiveness. I come with a pledge to spend my life reconciling whatever grief I have caused you these long months. If my offer is insufficient—if the sight of me brings you anything other than happiness—then you may close that door knowing that my face shall never trouble you again.”

Mary stood in silence. Abe took a small step back, expecting the door to be slammed in his face at any moment.

“Oh, Abraham, I love you still!” she cried, and leapt into his arms.

Their engagement resumed, Abe wasted no time. He bought two gold wedding rings (on credit, of course) at Chatteron’s in Springfield. He and Mary settled on a simple engraving to grace the inside of both.

Love is Eternal

Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married on a rainy Friday evening on November 4th, 1842, in the home of Elizabeth Edwards, Mary’s cousin. In all, there were fewer than thirty guests looking on as they exchanged vows.

After the ceremony, Mary and I stole away to the parlor while dinner was served, so that we might spend our first moments as husband and wife in quiet solitude. We shared a tender kiss or two, and looked at each other with a certain perplexity—for it was a strange thing to be married. A strange and wonderful thing.

“My darling Abraham,” said Mary at last. “Do not ever leave me again.”

IV

On May 11th, 1843, Abe wrote to Joshua Speed.

What a wonder these months have been, Speed! What bliss! Mary is as devoted and loving a wife as one could want, and I am pleased, Speed—so very pleased to share the happy news that she is with child! We are both overjoyed, and Mary has already begun the task of preparing our home for the arrival. What a fine mother she will make! Please write me immediately, for I wish to know how your recovery is progressing.

The evening of August 1st, 1843, was an unusually hot one, and the open window did little to relieve the heat in Abe and Mary’s tiny second-floor room at the Globe Tavern. Passersby looked up at that open window with intense curiosity as sounds bled into the night air—first of a woman’s pain, and then of a shrill cry.

A son! Mother and child in the best of health!

Mary has done perfectly. It is not six hours since the child’s birth, and already she holds little Robert in her arms, singing to him sweetly. “Abe,” she said to me as he fed, “look what we have done.” I admit that tears filled my eyes. Oh, if only this moment could stretch on for all eternity.

Robert Todd Lincoln (Mary insisted; Abe held his tongue) was born a scant ten months after his parents’ wedding day.

I find myself staring at him for hours on end. Holding him against my chest and feeling the gentle rhythms of his breath. Running my fingers over the smooth skin of his fat, delightful feet. I admit that I smell his hair when he sleeps. Nibble at his fingers when he holds them near. I am his servant, for I shall do anything to earn his slightest smile.

Abe took to parenthood with a passion. But two decades of burying loved ones had taken their toll. As the months went on and Robert grew, Abe seemed increasingly obsessed with losing his son, whether to sickness or some imagined accident. In his journal entries, he began to do something he hadn’t in years: he began to bargain with God.

My only wish is to see him become a man. To have his own family gathered beside him at my grave. Nothing else. I shall happily trade every ounce of my own happiness for his. My own accomplishments for his. Please, Lord, let no harm come to him. Let no misfortune befall him. If ever you require one to punish, I beg you—let it be me.

In accordance with his hopes of seeing Robert reach adulthood, and in hopes of preserving the happiness he’d found in married life, Abe came to a difficult decision in the autumn of 1843.

My dance with death must end. I cannot risk leaving Mary without a husband, nor Robert without a father. I have this very morning written Henry and told him that he should no longer count on my ax.

After twenty years of battling vampires, the time had come to hang up his long coat for good. And after eight years in the State Legislature, his moment to be recognized had come as well.

In 1846, he was nominated as the Whig candidate for the United States Congress.