How It All Goes Down
Starve the Devils
- This chapter starts with a quote from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, in which he says he hoped for peace but also said that he'd be willing to cut people to avenge slavery.
- In 1864, Abe goes to Fort Stevens, near Washington, D.C., to do some antiquing.
- Wait, no, we mean, to watch a battle. But since Abe no longer fears death, he just stands up and lets sharpshooters take aim at him.
- Time for a rewind.
- Let's go back two years. Abe no longer has vampire guards and doesn't fear death. But he's not so suicidal anymore, which is a plus.
- But by contrast, Mary Todd Lincoln is super depressed after Willie's death. She never really recovers.
- And the war is not going great, either. It doesn't help that the Southern vampires are scaring the Northern soldiers so badly.
- Some Northern soldiers even killed one of their own because they thought he was a vampire.
- But then a dream gives Abe the answer. He remembers watching a group of slaves on the Old Cumberland Trail (as we read about in Chapter One, which was a really long time ago).
- In this dream, the slaves get taken to a barn and fed to vampires (as he saw happened outside of New Orleans in Chapter Four).
- So the next day, Abe lays out a plan to his cabinet: let's free the slaves in the rebel states and get them to kill vampires for us.
- Everyone agrees, but Seward asks Lincoln to wait for a victory to make this sort of proclamation.
- Which brings us to Sept. 17, 1862. Union forces under George B. McClellan kinda-sorta beat Robert E. Lee's Confederates at Antietam.
- Funnily enough, Lee was friendly to Lincoln before the war and McClellan hates Lincoln. (Oh, the Civil War, so full of funny like that.)
- McClellan probably could've won the war if he had only followed up by attacking, but McClellan was always too cautious, so it was only a kinda-sorta victory.
- In fact, Abe goes to see McClellan and accuses him of being a vampire. McClellan isn't a one; he's just not a great general.
- But Antietam—the bloodiest day in American history—still counts as a victory, so Abe issues the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, declaring all slaves in the seceded states to be free.
- And just to prove that the 1860s is pretty much the same as today, the reactions to this in the North ranged from "You don't go far enough!" to "You go too far!"
- But the important thing is that the slaves in the South decide they have had it up to here, and they start fighting back against vampires.
- Then we jump to the Gettysburg Address (in 1863). We might all know the "Four score and seven years ago" part, but what you don't know is that Ward Hill Lamon is Abe's only bodyguard at Gettysburg and he nearly has a nervous breakdown.
- That's when Lamon decides that he can't guard Abe anymore. This can't mean anything good.
- In 1864, Lincoln gets reelected as president, beating his opponents, including the ever-so-annoying non-vampire George B. McClellan.
- This is good news for Lincoln and bad news for the South.
- By that time, the war is going pretty well for the North. Richmond is surrounded, the Confederates have fewer vampires fighting for them, and General Lee surrenders on April 9, 1865. (Maybe we should've started with the whole "surrendering" thing. That's kind of the most important part.)
- After that, Henry sends Abe a congratulatory letter, telling him that many evil vampires have been migrating back to Europe and onward to South America and Asia.
- But at least one vampire remains—Count Chocula. No, wait, we mean John Wilkes Booth. Cut us some slack. They kind of look alike.