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 wicke
dness. 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.
&nbs
p; “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.”