From Out of the Top Hat: A Blog from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

The recent release of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter takes the well-known story of our Sixteenth President and places it in a fictional world of vampires.  In this fantasy world, Nancy Hanks Lincoln is killed by a vampire, a death witnessed by a young Abraham.  Seeking to avenge his mother’s death, Abraham Lincoln learns the secret art of killing vampires.

While the film has not yet realized the success of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel upon which it was based, many critics are dismissive about the connection between Lincoln and vampires.  In fact, Lincoln and vampires were first paired during the Civil War.  Rather than being the hunter of vampires, Lincoln was often shown as a demonic associate or a vampire himself. 

Lincoln uses the devil's ink to free the slaves.

Adalbert Volck, a Baltimore dentist, engraver, and strong supporter of the Confederate cause, created a series of engravings highly critical of Lincoln and his policies.  In October 1862, Volck finished his engraving “Writing the Emancipation Proclamation.”  Lincoln is shown in a satanic pose, holding the Constitution under foot and composing the Emancipation Proclamation from a devil’s inkwell on a table with a ram’s head at the top of each leg and an all-seeing eye as decoration.  Outside the window at left are flying bats, but it is unclear if they are vampire in nature. 

The famed British cartoonist Matt Morgan’s last Lincoln drawing for Fun, an illustrated magazine, showed a frightened Columbia in bed with Lincoln sitting on top of her stomach.  The caption read “Columbia’s Nightmare.”  Morgan joined the Comic News shortly after leaving Fun in October 1864.  One of his early cartoons for his new employer showed Lincoln, with Satan’s tail, in a tug-of-war with George B. McClellan over a map of the northern states; it is entitled “Pull Devil — Pull Baker,” here an expression roughly meaning ‘both will take revenge.’

Morgan revisited Lincoln as the enemy of Columbia in a post-election cartoon, “The Vampire.” Lincoln is depicted as hovering over a kneeling Columbia, declaring ‘Columbia, thou are mine; with thy blood I will renew my lease on life — Ah! Ah!”  That Lincoln’s critics saw his policies as undermining the Republic, represented by Columbia, is clear.  And Morgan would like his audience to believe that Lincoln, as vampire president, drained the life blood from the Republic in a prolonged and needless Civil War.

Leaving nothing to the imagination, Southern Punch ran a cartoon on November 14, 1863, “Abduction of the Yankee Goddess of Liberty.  The Prince of Darkness (Abraham Lincoln) Bears Her Away To His Infernal Regions.”  The Yankee Goddess protests, “Monster of Perdition, let me go!”  While Lincoln replies, “Never!  You have been preaching about the Constitution too long already.  I was the first to rebel against constituted authority. ‘Hell is murky!’ You go thither!”

Whether Satan or Vampire, Lincoln was seen as the embodiment of evil by many illustrators with Southern sympathies.  It is no wonder that Mary Lincoln later used the term “vampyre press” to describe her own critics.  Ironically, one of Lincoln’s great admirers was an Irish writer who is best known for taking the 1819 story of The Vampyre by Dr. John William Polidori and creating the novel that is the foundation for all other vampire plots.  Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula remains the silver standard for vampire novels, just as Tod Browning’s 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi sets the bar for vampire films.

Everyone loves a winner, which may account for the continuous battle over who owns the Lincoln story.  Three states — Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois — claim to have been crucial influences upon Abraham Lincoln during his formative years.  The Illinois General Assembly wisely adopted the slogan “Land of Lincoln” in 1955 and had it placed on license plates, ensuring its wide promotion.  To make certain that no other state would infringe on the claim, Congress passed a special act that same year giving Illinois the exclusive use to the phrase “Land of Lincoln.” 

Writers have also been territorial about the Sixteenth President.  John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary, was incensed at Ida Tarbell in the 1890s when he discovered that she intended to write a popular biography of Abraham Lincoln.  Nicolay, having recently finished a 10-volume Lincoln biography with John Hay, protested to Tarbell that “you are invading my field.”  His real concern was that a competing Lincoln biography diminishes “the value of my property.”

Not the same old Lincoln story for a new book and movie, opening June 2012.

Perhaps only a handful of Lincoln books have made the kind of sales that give one pause.  Carl Sandburg, David Herbert Donald, and Doris Kearns Goodwin come immediately to mind.  The recent announcements that two feature-length films are now in production — Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a loosely based adaptation of the Goodwin bestseller — recalls an earlier era when two other Lincoln films were in production at the same time.

 Starring Raymond Massey, Robert Sherwood’s play Abe Lincoln in Illinois was a Broadway hit in the fall of 1938.  New York critics and audiences applauded Massey’s dramatic interpretation of a young Abraham Lincoln.  Hollywood frequently took Broadway hits and quickly turned them into motion pictures.  RKO Pictures wasted no time in purchasing the film rights and began production.  Little did they know that screenwriter Howard Estabrook had written a screenplay in 1935 for Fox Film Corporation entitled Young Lincoln.  But production ceased when Fox merged with Twentieth Century to become Twentieth Century-Fox.  Screenwriter Lamar Trotti, who had finished production of a biopic on Alexander Graham Bell in November 1938, then began rewriting Estabrook’s script, which had taken on the new title Lawyer of the West.  Darryl Zanuck, the producer of the film, changed the name of the film to Young Mr. Lincoln.

The competing Lincoln films resulted in a lawsuit in which Robert Sherwood sued Twentieth Century-Fox.  Sherwood claimed that the Twentieth Century-Fox film was a blatant facsimile of Sherwood’s play, using the same plot elements, a similar title, and similar promotional campaign, and drawing upon the popularity of Lincoln created by Sherwood’s play.  Sherwood said that “there was little public interest in any portion of the life of Lincoln” until his play generated a widespread public awareness.  In many respects, Sherwood’s assertions were similar to those of John G. Nicolay: “you are invading my field” and diminishing “the value of my property.”

Twentieth Century-Fox countered with the obvious fact that Lincoln’s historical life was in the public domain.  All of the facts and events relating to Lincoln’s life would be similar in any biographical film.  Moreover, the claim that Lincoln was unknown to the larger public until Sherwood’s play appeared was easily dismissed with an abridged listing of films and major plays and books published on Lincoln from 1900 to 1939.  Among those dealing with Lincoln’s early life were Carl Sandburg’s 2-volume work The Prairie Years (1926), D. W. Griffith’s 1930 film Abraham Lincoln, and John Drinkwater’s 1919 hit play Abraham Lincoln.  The court sided with Twentieth Century-Fox, allowing the John Ford film that starred Henry Fonda to move toward release a year before Abe Lincoln in Illinois.  And Sherwood need not have worried, since both films were eagerly embraced by audiences.