Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abe folded the paper and took his seat to moderate applause. He’d spoken for all of two minutes. In that short time, he’d given perhaps the greatest speech of the nineteenth century, one that would be forever ingrained in America’s consciousness. And in that short time, Ward Hill Lamon, Abraham Lincoln’s most devoted human bodyguard, had reached a decision that would forever alter the course of America’s history.
FIG. 14C-3. - WARD HILL LAMON SITS IMMEDIATELY TO ABE’S RGHT IN THE MOMENTS AFTER THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, NERVOUSLY SCANNING THE CROWD FOR VAMPIRE ASSASSINS. A CLOSER LOOK AT THE EDGE OF THE PHOTO SUGGESTS THAT HIS FEARS MAY HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED.
The anxiety at Gettysburg had been more than he could bear. As they rode back to Washington, Lamon respectfully told the president that he could no longer guard him.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
V
On the night of November 8th, 1864, Abe walked though driving wind and rain, alone.
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,