Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

sort than you have known before.
But while Abe was picking himself up and soldiering on, Mary was only getting worse.
She cannot bring herself to leave her bed for more than an hour’s time. Nor can she attend to Tad, who grieves not only for a brother, but a mother as well. I am ashamed to admit that there are moments when the very sight of her angers me. Ashamed because it is no fault of hers that she suffers fits of rage, or believes the charlatans who “commune” with our beloved sons for money. She has borne more than any mother ought to bear. I fear that her mind has gone, and that it shall never return.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
II
Though Abe refused to have any direct contact with Henry or the Union, he was pragmatic enough to accept their help in winning the war. In New York, the grand ballroom (where Abe first learned of the Union and its plans for him) had been transformed into a war room, complete with maps, chalkboards, and a telegraph. They acted as envoys to the sympathetic vampires of Europe. They fought where they were able, and supplemented the White House’s intelligence with that collected by their own spies. This intelligence was delivered to Seward, who—after reading and burning the messages—related their contents to the president. From an entry dated June 10th, 1862:
Today comes word that the Confederates are handing Union prisoners over to Southern vampires for the purpose of torture and execution. “We hear of men,” said Seward, “hung upside down and stretched between posts. Using a logger’s saw, two vampires slowly cut the prisoner in half beginning at his [groin]. As they do, a third vampire lies on his back beneath the poor wretch—catching the blood that runs down his body. Because the prisoner’s head is nearest the ground, his brain remains nourished, and he remains conscious until the blade tears slowly back and forth through his stomach, then chest. The other prisoners are made to watch this before being made to suffer it themselves.”
Rumors of Confederate “ghosts” and “demons” snatching men from their tents and drinking their blood spread through the Union ranks during the war’s second summer. Soldiers could be heard singing a popular song around their campfires at night.
From Flor’da to Virginny you can hear him revel,
for ol’ Johnny Reb’s made a deal with the devil.
Sent him up north, that snake-eyed liar,
to drag us boys off to the lake of fire…
In at least one case, these rumors led a group of Union soldiers to turn on one of their own. On July 5th, 1862, Private Morgan Sloss was murdered by five of his fellow soldiers while encamped near Berkley Plantation in Virginia.
They pulled him from his tent in the dead of night and beat him, all the while accusing him of being a “blood-drinkin’ demon.” (Had the boy actually been a vampire, he would have made a better show of defending himself.) They tied him to a hitching post, and set on him with sticks and shovels—demanding he confess. “Tell us yer a blood-drinkin’ demon and we’ll let ya go!” they cried, all the while thrashing him till he wept and begged for mercy. After a quarter of an hour of this, the mumbled confession at last came from his bloodied lips. I suspect the boy would have confessed to being Christ Himself if it had meant an end to his agony. His confession noted, he was then doused in lamp oil and burned alive. The fear he must have felt… the confusion and the fear… I cannot think of it without my fists clenching in anger. If only by some miracle of time and heaven I could have been there to intervene.
Abe found the incident deeply troubling—not only for its cruelty, but because it meant that the Confederate strategy was working.
How can we hope to win this war when our men have begun killing each other? How can we hope to prevail when they will soon be too frightened to fight? For every vampire sympathetic to our cause, there are ten fighting for the enemy. How am I to contest them?
As it often did for Abe, the answer came in a dream. From an entry dated July 21st, 1862:
I was a boy again… sitting atop a familiar fence rail in the cool of a cloudy day, watching travelers pass on the Old Cumberland Trail. I remember seeing a horse cart filled with Negroes, each of them shackled at the wrist, without so much as a handful of loose hay to comfort the bumps of the road, or a blanket to relieve them from the winter air. My eyes met those of the youngest, a