Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

that was still taking shape in his head. Atzerodt, an older, rough-looking German immigrant and carriage repairman, was an old acquaintance of Booth’s. The boyishly handsome Powell, not yet twenty-two years old, was a former rebel soldier, member of the Confederate Secret Service, and friend of the Surratts. A meeting was arranged for seven that evening. Booth gave no reason for it.
He merely told the men to be on time, and to bring their nerve.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
III
Abe was in fine spirits.
“Laughter shook his office door all morning,” wrote Nicolay years later. “At first I mistook the sound for something else—so accustomed had I grown to the president’s cheerlessness.” Hugh McCullough, Treasury Secretary, remembered “I never saw Mr. Lincoln so merry.” Abe had been buoyed by the reunion with his hunters, and by the telegrams flying out of the war office on an almost hourly basis. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses Grant five days earlier at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively bringing the war to a close. Jefferson Davis and his government were on the run.
In order to personally congratulate Ulysses Grant on his brilliant defeat of Robert E. Lee, the Lincolns had invited him and his wife to the theater that evening. There was a new comedy at Ford’s, and a few hours of carefree laughter was exactly what the president and Mrs. Lincoln needed. However, the general had respectfully declined, as he and Julia were to leave Washington by train that evening. This set off a flurry of replacement invitations, all of which were promptly (and respectfully) declined for one reason or another. “One would think that we were inviting them to an execution,” Mary is reported to have remarked during the course of the day. It mattered little to Abe. No amount of rejection—respectful or otherwise—could sully his mood that warm Good Friday afternoon.
I am strangely buoyant. [Speaker of the House Schuyler] Colfax called this morning to discuss reconstruction, and upon observing me for a quarter hour, paused and asked if I had eschewed my coffee for a Scotch—such was my disposition. Neither the Cabinet nor [Vice President Andrew] Johnson were successful in their efforts to dampen my spirits today (though both tried mightily to do so). However, I dare not speak of this happiness aloud, for Mary would surely see such boastfulness as a bad omen. It has long been her nature—and mine—to distrust these moments of quiet as prelude to some unforeseen disaster. And yet the trees bloom beautifully today, and I cannot help but take note.
The journal entry was dated April 14th, 1865. It was the last Abe would ever make.
By late afternoon, with the day’s official business done, the president prepared to take a late afternoon carriage ride with his wife. Though not as jovial as her husband, Mary also seemed to be in unusually good spirits, and she’d asked Abe to join her for a “brief turn about the yard.” As the president stepped out of the North Portico, a one-armed Union soldier (who’d been waiting there most of the day in hopes of such an encounter) shouted, “I would almost give my other hand if I could shake that of Abraham Lincoln!” Abe approached the young man and extended his hand. “You shall do that, and it shall cost you nothing.”

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
IV
Booth arrived in Lewis Powell’s rented room at seven o’clock sharp, accompanied by a short, nervous twenty-two-year-old pharmacist named David Herold, whom he’d met through Mary Surratt. Atzerodt was already there. Booth wasted no time.
In a few hours, the four of them would bring the Union to its knees.
At precisely ten o’clock, Lewis Powell was to kill Secretary of State William Seward, who was currently bedridden after falling from a carriage. Powell, who was unfamiliar with Washington, would be led to Seward’s house by the nervous pharmacist. After the secretary was dead, the two conspirators would ride across the Navy Yard Bridge and into Maryland, where they would meet up with Booth. At the same time, Atzerodt was to shoot Vice President Andrew Johnson in his room at the Kirkwood House, before joining the others in Maryland. As for Booth, he would return to Ford’s Theater. There, he would kill the president with a single-shot derringer pistol before plunging a knife into General Grant’s heart.
With the Union government decapitated, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet would have time to