Abraham Lincoln_ Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith [79]
In the same letter, Abe admitted to being “unnerved” by his “lack of anguish” over Armstrong’s passing. He grieved, sure. But this was a “different sort of grief,” unlike the crippling depression that had followed his mother’s death, Ann’s, and Eddy’s.
I fear that a life of death has made me numb to both.
Four years later, Abe would defend Jack’s son, “Duff” Armstrong, when he stood trial for murder. Abe refused payment. He worked tirelessly, litigated passionately, and (with a stroke of legal brilliance) won Duff his freedom, * a final thank-you to a brave friend.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
II
The same year that saw Abe mourn the loss of an old friend saw him dragged back into politics by an old rival.
Abe had known Senator Stephen A. Douglas since they were both young Illinois state legislators (and eager suitors of Mary Todd). Though a Democrat, Douglas had long been opposed to allowing slavery into territories where it didn’t already exist. But in 1854, he suddenly reversed himself and championed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a bill that repealed the federal ban on the spread of slavery. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30th, enraging millions of Northerners and stirring up long-simmering tensions on both sides of the issue.
Try as I might, I could not ignore my anger. It seeped into my mind as water is drawn into the roots of a tree, until at last it permeated the whole of my being. Sleep provided no refuge, for I was nightly visited by a sea of black faces, each the nameless victim of a vampire. Each of them crying out to me. “Justice!” they cried. “Justice, Mr. Lincoln!”
That [slavery] existed at all was insult enough. That I knew the institution to be doubly evil made it all the worse. But this! The idea of slavery’s diseased fingers reaching farther north and west! Reaching into my own Illinois! It would not stand. I had retreated from politics, but when asked to debate [Douglas] on the issue, I could not refuse. Those ghostly faces would not permit me to.
On October 16th, 1854, Lincoln and Douglas squared off in front of a large Peoria, Illinois, crowd. A reporter with the Chicago Evening Journal described his amazement at witnessing Abe speak.
His face [began] to light up with the rays of genius and his body to move in unison with his thoughts. His speaking went to the heart because it came from the heart.
“I cannot but hate it!” said Mr. Lincoln of the proposal. “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself!”
I have heard celebrated orators who could start thunders of applause without changing any man’s opinion. Mr. Lincoln’s eloquence was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of the conviction of the speaker himself.
“I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world!” he continued. “Enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites!”
His listeners felt that he believed every word he said, and that, like Martin Luther, he would go to the stake rather than abate one jot of it. In such transfigured moments as these he was the type of the ancient Hebrew prophet as I learned that character at Sunday school in my childhood.
Though it failed to sway Douglas or his allies in Congress, the speech would nonetheless prove a turning point in Abe’s political life. His anger over the slavery issue (and by extension, the vampire issue) had nudged him back into the political arena. His genius and eloquence that night in Peoria would ensure that he