Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

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