Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

“vampires” pass my lips. Now, with the truth out at last, each of us told the other his story: I of my mother’s death; of my years spent hunting vampires. Douglas of the fateful day when—as a young, ambitious Democrat in the Illinois State Legislature—he was approached by a pair of “sallow” men from the South. “It was then that I first learned of [vampires],” he said. “It was then that I first became intoxicated by their money and influence.”
Douglas repaid their support by railing against abolitionists in the Senate and by using his natural talent for speechmaking to rally proslavery forces across the country. But he’d begun to question his vampire patrons in recent years.
“Why do they reject compromise with the North?” he asked. “Why do they seem intent on war at any cost? And why, by God, do they care so fervently for the institution [of slavery] at all? I could see no logic in it, and I could not, in good conscience, continue down the path to disunion.”
It became clear that Douglas did not know the whole truth; clear that—while guilty of some small treachery—he could not be judged with the likes of the traitorous [Jefferson] Davis. Moved by his remorse, I determined to tell him all: the marriage of slavery and Southern vampires. Their plan to enslave all but the fortunate few of our kind; to keep us in cages and chains as we had kept the Negro. I told him of their plan to create a new America; a nation of vampires—free from oppression, free from darkness, and blessed with an abundance of living men to feast upon.
By the time I finished speaking, Douglas wept.
That night, Abe sat at the head of a long table in his office, with Secretary of State William Seward to his left. They were joined by the rest of the Cabinet, all of them anxious to hear why they’d been summoned from their supper tables and rushed back to the White House.
“Gentlemen,” I said at last, “I wish to speak to you this evening about vampires.”
Abe had met with his Cabinet on a near daily basis since the inauguration. They’d discussed every detail of the coming war: uniforms, supply lines, commanders, horses, provisions—everything but the truth of what they were really fighting for, and who they were really fighting against.
And yet I had asked these men to plan me a war! Was it not akin to asking a group of blind men to pilot a steamboat?
The encounter with Douglas had changed Abe’s mind. When they parted company that evening, he had ordered Nicolay to reconvene the Cabinet at once.
I thought it crucial that these men—these men who were to be my counsel through untold miseries—knew exactly what they faced. There would be no more revelations in this office. No more half-truths or omissions. Now, just as I had with Douglas, I would tell them the whole truth—with Seward there to endorse every word of it. My history. My hunting. My alliance with a small band of vampires called the Union, and the unthinkable consequences of the coming war.
Some were shocked to hear vampires spoken of at all. [Secretary of the Navy Gideon] Wells and [Secretary of the Treasury Salmon] Chase, it seemed, had managed to go the whole of their lives thinking them nothing more than myth. Wells sat in ashen silence. Chase, however, grew indignant. “I will not stand for folly in the face of war!” he declared. “I will not be summoned from my home to be made a fool for the president’s amusement!” Seward rose to my defense, insisting that every word was true, and admitting his own complicity in keeping it from the rest of the Cabinet. Chase remained unconvinced.
He was not alone in his doubts. [Secretary of War Edwin] Stanton—who had long believed vampires real, but confined to the shadows—was the next to speak. “What sense can it make?” he asked. “Why would [Jefferson] Davis… why would any man conspire against himself? Why would any man hasten his own enslavement?”
“Davis has only his own survival in mind,” I said. “He and his allies are pilot fish—cleaning the teeth of sharks to avoid being themselves bitten. Perhaps they have been promised power and riches in this new America, exemption from chains. But know this—whatever they have been promised is a lie.”
Chase could bear it no longer. He rose from his seat and left the room. I waited for others to join him. Satisfied that none would, I continued.
“Even now,” I said, “there is a part of me that finds it all impossible to