“My God, Armstrong… what’s come over you?”
Jack pulled the ax blade—crunch—from what had formerly been the vampire’s face. He looked up at Abe, out of breath.
“I pretended he was you.”
Abe held his tongue on the journey home.
Ann Mayes Rutledge was the third of ten children—daughter of New Salem’s cofounder, James, and his wife, Mary. She was four years Abe’s junior, but every bit his equal when it came to her appetite for books. She’d been away during most of Abe’s first year and a half in New Salem, tending to a sickly aunt in Decatur and reading everything she could get her hands on to pass the time. There is no record of what happened to her aunt (either she died, got better, or Ann simply grew tired of caring for her), but we know that Ann returned to New Salem before or during the summer of 1834. We know this because she and Abe first met on July 29th at the home of Mentor Graham, whose library both borrowed from, and whose tutelage both sought from time to time. Graham remembered her as a twenty-something with “large, expressive blue eyes,” a “fair complexion,” and auburn hair—“not flaxen as some have said.” She had “a good mouth and good teeth in it. Sweet as honey and nervous as a butterfly.” He also remembered the moment when Abe first made her acquaintance. “I have never seen a man’s jaw hang quite so low before or since. He looked up from his book and was hit square in the heart by that ancient arrow. The two exchanged pleasantries, but I recall the conversation being one-sided, for Lincoln could hardly keep his wits about him—so struck was he by this lovely vision. So amazed was he by her love and knowledge of books.”
Abe wrote about Ann that very day.
Never has there been such a girl! Never has a creature so beautiful and so bright existed in one body! She is a good foot shorter than I, with blue eyes and auburn hair and a shining, perfect smile. She is a bit slender, though it cannot be held against her, for it suits her kind, delicate nature. How shall I ever sleep again knowing she is out there in the night? How shall I ever keep another thought in my head when she is all I care to think about?
Abe and Ann saw more of each other, first at Mentor Graham’s, where they carried on lively discussions of Shakespeare and Byron; then on long, late summer walks, where they carried on lively discussions of life and love; then on Ann’s favorite hilltop overlooking the Sangamon, where they hardly talked at all.
I am almost ashamed to record it here, for I fear it may somehow cheapen the thing itself, but I cannot resist. Our lips met this afternoon. It happened as we sat upon a blanket, watching the occasional flatboat drift silently by below. “Abraham,” said she. I turned, and was surprised to find her face so close to my own. “Abraham… do you believe what Byron says? That ‘love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey’?” I told her that I believed it with all my heart, and she pressed her mouth to mine without another word.
It is the moment that I wish to remember with my dying breath.
Three months remain before I am required in Vandalia, and I plan to fill every moment of them with Ann’s company. She is the most fetching… most tender… most brilliant star in the heavens! Her only fault is that she lacks sense enough to avoid falling in love with such a fool as I!
Abe would never write with such flowery flourish again. Not of his wife; not even of his children. It was the stomach-turning, obsessive, euphoric love of youth. A first love.
December came “too quickly.” He bade Ann a tearful farewell and rode to Vandalia to take his oath as a member of the legislature. The prospect of being a “rail-splitter seated beside men of letters” (which had previously given him fits of excitement) now hardly mattered at all. For two agonizing months, he sat in the Capitol thinking of Ann Rutledge and little else. When the session closed at the end of January, he was “out the door before the sound of the gavel ceased to echo,” and sped home for what would be the best spring of his life.
There is no music sweeter than the sound of her voice. No painting more beautiful than her smiling face. We sat in the shade of a tree this afternoon, Ann reading Macbeth as I lay my head across her lap. She held the book in one hand, and played with my hair with the fingers of the other—gently kissing my forehead with each turn of the page. Here, at last, is all that is right with the world. Here is life. She is the antidote to all the darkness that poisons this world. When she is near I care nothing of debts or vampires. There is only her.
I have resolved to ask her father’s permission to marry. There is but one insignificant obstacle in the way of my doing so, and I shall see to its removal at once.
That “insignificant obstacle” was named John MacNamar—and contrary to Abe’s flippant reference, he posed a serious threat to their happiness.
That’s because he and Ann were engaged to be married.
[MacNamar] is by all accounts a man of questionable character, who pledged his love to Ann when she was but eighteen, only to depart for New York before such time as they could marry. The few letters she received from him in Decatur were hardly those of a man in love, and it has been ages since she has received any word from him at all. Until he releases her, however, I shall not be satisfied. But I take heart (for the course of true love has never run smoothly * ) and expect that all shall be swiftly and happily resolved.
Abe did what he did best. He wrote John MacNamar a letter.
IV
On the morning of August 23rd, Abe jotted ten innocuous words in his journal:
Note from Ann—not feeling well today. Off to visit.
It had been a perfect summer. Abe and Ann met nearly every day, taking long, pointless walks along the river, stealing kisses when they were sure no one was looking. It didn’t matter—all of New Salem and Clary’s Grove knew the two were in love, thanks in part to Jack Armstrong’s constant griping on the subject.
Her mother met me at the door and told me that she wished no visitors, but on hearing our voices, Ann called me in. I found her lying in bed, an open copy of Don Juan on her chest. With Mrs. Rutledge’s permission, we sat alone. I took her hand in mine and remarked on its warmth. Ann smiled at my concern. “It is merely a fever,” she said. “It shall pass.” As we talked, I could not help the feeling that something else troubled her. Something more than a summer cold. I pressed her, and her tears confirmed my suspicions. I could scarcely believe what she next imparted.
Ann’s long-lost fiancé, John MacNamar, had returned.
“He came to see me night before last,” she said. “He was furious, Abe. He looked sickly; acted strangely. He told me of your letter, and demanded my answer in person. ‘Tell me now that you love this other man!’ he said. ‘Tell me that, and I shall leave this place tonight and never return!’ ”
Ann gave her answer: she loved no man but Abraham Lincoln. True to his word, MacNamar left that night. Ann would never see him again. Abe’s fury is evident in an entry made that evening.
I wrote this MacNamar of our love—asking him to do the gentlemanly thing and release her. Rather than reply, he crossed a thousand miles of wilderness to waylay a woman he had ignored these three long years! To claim her as his own after casting her aside! Scoundrel! Had I been there when the coward appeared, I would have broken his skull and cut strops * from his back! Yet I rejoice, for he is gone—and with him the only impediment to our happiness. I shall delay no longer! When Ann is recovered, I shall ask her father’s permission.
But Ann would not recover.
By the time Abe returned on the morning of the 24th, she was too sick to speak more than a few labored words at a time. Her fever grew worse; her breathing shallow. By midday, she couldn’t speak at all, and slipped in and out of consciousness. When she did wake, it was to nightmarish delusions—her body convulsing to the point that her bed rattled against the floor. The Rutledges joined Abe at her side, keeping her compresses cool, the candles burning. The doctor had been there with his sleeves rolled up since midday. At first, he’d been “certain” it was typhoid. Now he wasn’t so
sure. Delusions, convulsions, coma—and all in such a short time? He’d never seen anything like it.
But Abe had.
A dread crept over me throughout the course of the day and evening. An old, familiar dread. I was a boy of nine again, watching my mother sweat and suffer through the same nightmares. Whispering the same futile prayers; feeling the same unbearable guilt. It was I who had brought this upon her. I who had written the letter demanding she be released. And who had I demanded this of? A man who left mysteriously and returned sickly and ashen… a man who had waited till nightfall to confront his betrothed… a man who would sooner see her suffer and die than see her in the arms of another.
A vampire.
This time there was no last embrace. No momentary reprieve. This time she merely slipped away. God’s finest work. Defiled.
Finished.
Ann Rutledge died on August 25th, 1835. She was twenty-two years old.
Abe didn’t take it well.
FIG. 1-3. - ABE WEEPS AS ANN RUTLEDGE WASTES AWAY IN AN ETCHING FROM TOM FREEMAN’S BOOK ‘LINCOLN’S FIRST LOVE’ (1890).
25th August, 1835
Mr. Henry Sturges
200 Lucas Place, St. Louis
By Express
Dear Henry,
I thank you for your kindness these several years, and beg a parting favor of you. Below is the name of one who deserves it sooner. The only blessing in this life is the end of it.
John MacNamar
New York
—A
For the next two days, Jack Armstrong and the Clary’s Grove Boys kept watch over him in round-the-clock shifts. They stripped him of his pocketknife and carpentry tools; took away his flintlock rifle. They even confiscated his belt for fear that he would hang himself with it. Jack saw to it that Abe’s hidden stash of hunting weapons was moved well beyond his reach.
For all their care, there was one weapon they missed. None of them thought to look beneath my pillow, where I kept a [pistol] hidden. Jack having briefly left my side that second night, I retrieved it and pressed the barrel to the side of my head—resolved to be done with it. I imagined the ball penetrating my skull. I wondered if I would hear the shot, or feel the pain of it tearing through me. I wondered if I would see my brains strike the opposite wall before I died, or if I would see nothing but darkness—a bedside candle blown out. I held it there, but I did not fire….
Live…
I could not….
I could not fail her. I threw the weapon on the floor and wept, damning myself for cowardice. Damning everything. Damning God.
Rather than kill himself that night, Abe did what he always did in times of immense grief or unbridled joy—he put pen to paper.
The Suicide’s Soliloquy *
Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through
Though I in hell should rue it!
Sweet steel! Come forth from out your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!
Henry Sturges galloped into New Salem the next morning.
He sent the others away at once, claiming to be a “close cousin.” The two of us alone, I imparted the whole of Ann’s murder, making no attempt to hide my grief. Henry took me in his arms as I wept. I remember this distinctly, for I was doubly surprised—both that a vampire could show such warmth, and by the sensation of his cold skin.
“It is the fortunate man who does not lose one so loved in his lifetime,” said Henry, “and we are not fortunate men.”
“You have lost one as beautiful as she? As kind?”
“My dear Abraham… one could fill a cemetery with the women I have wept over.”
“I do not wish to live without her, Henry.”
“I know.”
“She is too beautiful too… too good….”
“I know…”
Abe could not help his tears.
“The more precious His gift,” said Henry, “the more anxious God for its return.”
“I must not be without her….”
Henry sat on the bed beside Abe, holding him in his arms… rocking him like a child… debating with himself.
“There is another way,” he said at last.
Abe sat up straight on the bed; ran a sleeve over his tears.
“The older of us, we… we can wake the deceased, provided the body is whole enough, and less than a few weeks dead.”
It took Abe a moment to comprehend what Henry had said.
“Swear to me you speak the truth….”
“She would live, Abraham… but I warn you—she would be cursed to live forever.”
Here was the answer to my grief! A way to see the smile of my beloved again—to feel her delicate fingers in mine! We would sit in the shade of our favorite tree, reading Shakespeare and Byron for all time, her finger carelessly twirling my hair as I lay in her lap. We would walk the years away on the banks of the Sangamon! The thought of it brought such relief. Such bliss…
But it was fleeting. For when I pictured her pale skin, her black eyes and hollow fangs, I felt nothing of the love we had shared. We would be united, yes—but it would be a cold finger gently twirling my hair. Not in the shade of our favorite tree, but in the darkness of our curtained house. We would walk the years away on the banks of the Sangamon—but it would be only I who grew old.
I was tempted to the point of madness, but I could not. I could not indulge the very darkness that had taken her from me. The very evil that had taken my mother.
Ann Rutledge was laid to rest at the Old Concord Burial Ground on Sunday, August 30th. Abe stood silently as her coffin was lowered into the earth. A coffin he’d insisted on making himself. He’d inscribed a single line on its lid:
In solitude, where we are least alone.
Henry was waiting outside my cabin upon my return from the funeral. It was not yet midday, and he held a parasol over his head to shield his skin, dark glasses over his eyes. He asked me to follow him. Not a word passed between us as we walked a half mile into the woods to a small clearing. There I saw a pale, blond-haired little man tied to a post by his arms and ankles, stripped naked and gagged. Firewood and kindling had been piled at his feet, and a large jug placed on the ground near him.
“Abraham,” said Henry, “allow me to introduce Mr. John MacNamar.”
He writhed at the sight of us—his skin covered in blisters and boils. “He is quite new,” said Henry. “Still sensitive to light.” I felt the pine torch as it was placed in my hand… felt the heat on my face as it was lit. But my eyes never left John MacNamar’s. “I expect he shall be even more sensitive to flame,” said Henry. I could think of nothing to say. I could only look at him as I approached. He shook as I did, trying to free himself. I could not help but pity him. His fear. His helplessness.
This is madness.
Still, I longed to see him burn. I dropped the torch on the woodpile. He struggled against his bonds to no avail. Screamed until his lungs bled with nary a sound. The flames grew waist-high almost at once, forcing me back as his feet and legs began to blacken and burn. So great was the heat that his blond hair blew continually upward, as if he stood in a gale. Henry remained close to the flames—nearer than I was able. With the jug in hand, he repeatedly poured water over MacNamar’s head, chest, and back, keeping him alive as his legs were burned to the bone. Prolonging his agony. I felt tears on my face.
I am dead.
This went on for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes until—at my insistence—he was finally allowed to die. Henry doused the flames and waited for the charred corpse to cool.
Henry placed a gentle hand on Abe’s shoulder. Abe brushed it away.
> “Why do you kill your own, Henry? And do me the honor of the truth, for I deserve as much.”
“I have never given you otherwise.”
“Then say it now and be done with it. Why do you kill your own? And why do—”
“Why do I send you in my stead, yes, yes I know. My God, I forget how young you are.”
Henry ran a hand over his face. This was a conversation he had hoped to avoid.
“Why do I kill my own? I have given you my answer: because it is one thing to feed on the blood of the old and the sick and the treacherous, but quite another to take sleeping children from their beds; quite another to march men and women to their deaths in chains, as you have seen with your own eyes.”