Robert Todd Lincoln: Vampire Accomplice
The amazing true story and also some shit I made up
Robert Todd Lincoln had only a small part to play in the book Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. His role is mostly remembered as urging his father to give up hunting vampires, a request the elder Lincoln honored for a time.
But let us reflect on this episode with Cold Case Files scrutiny, blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Because author and guy-whose-life-I-want Seth Grahame-Smith may have missed an Oliver Stone-sized story by obscuring the biggest historical conspiracy of all:
Robert Todd Lincoln was an accessory to multiple assassinations, all at the behest of an unknown, undead lord.
If I was a homicide detective, the kind that used to make his living every single night during primetime because God forbid 1990s-2000s America go one night without a cop show, and I was looking into the murder of really big political figures — hell, it’s sweeps week, so let’s say the assassination of three presidents — where would I start?
I might start by looking at the men who carried out the killings — that’s Leon Czolgosz, Charles J. Guiteau, and John Wilkes Booth. That’s where I’d look if I was some kinda chump who’d never seen anything produced by Dick Wolf.
But ho, what’s this? Midshow turn! There’s one man who was present at all three deaths? I don’t need Richard Belzer to spell it out for me — that’s suspicious.
Who is this mysterious grassy knoller that shows up at three presidential assassinations? If you guessed Robert Todd Lincoln, the only adult son of the nation’s 16th president, you have a future writing procedural dramas.
It’s also absolutely true. I haven’t even gotten to the fictional part yet.
Working backwards in time, it goes like this:
President William McKinley, our nation’s most Bela Lugosi-ish president, was killed in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz. Robert Todd was present, invited by McKinley himself.
Twenty years earlier, R.T. Lincoln was the secretary of war to President James Garfield. Garfield had brought RTL along in his entourage when he was gunned down by Charles Guiteau.
I only gets eerier when we go back to 1865. Robert Todd had just returned to Washington from the Civil War’s front lines, where he’d witnessed Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. That very night, the exact night he got back in town, his father was shot by John Wilkes Booth.
How do Sam Waterston and Angie Harmon tie this all together? Isn’t this just a case of bad luck?
Probably. But hear me out:
BECAUSE, in 1863, when the Young Log was traveling from New York to Washington, he fell off of a train platform and was nearly made into Lincoln Soup by a moving locomotive. But he was pulled up to safety by… and this is some History Channel shit here… Edwin Booth. Famous stage actor and brother of duh-dun-duuuuh John Wilkes Booth.
Is a (loco)motive emerging here? The son of a powerful, isolated, father, the only surviving sibling of four, an insulated child of privilege owing his life to an actor he’s star struck by? A young man who serves on General Grant’s detail and intermingles with southern officers at the end of the Civil War, possibly meeting and feeling accepted for the first time by the same characters designated in Grahame-Smith’s novel as vampires?
Motive not enough? You want means and opportunity, Lieutenant? Check it: all three presidential assassins used pistols, one derringer and two revolvers. And the assassins by and large were untrained with firearms — two of them only got their guns a few days before doing the deed. The opportunity — well, the kid is JFK Jr. of his day; getting invited to presidential events is like calling up NBC and requesting an hour-long police drama in 1999. It’s gonna happen. Motive, Means, Opportunity.
So, did Robert Todd Lincoln arrange and oversee the assassination of three presidents in order to avenge and support a secret cabal of American vampires? The answer, of course, is “What are you, fucking crazy?” But for the purposes of Law & Order: Washington, it’s a slam dunk.
And for the purposes of this little blog, let me reiterate the hardly-believable but true facts —
-Robert Todd Lincoln was saved by Edwin Booth.
-He was later present at three-quarters of this nation’s presidential murders.
-Seth Grahame-Smith has an awesome resume but needs to get back to novels.
-Dick Wolf once collaborated with Oliver Stone.
-This entire list is true.
And a conspiratorial epilogue — after McKinley’s assassination, RTL pledged to never attend another presidential function. And there was not another presidential assassination in his lifetime. His bloodlust must have finally been sated… or maybe he knew that the Jerry Orbachs of his day were starting to see his murderous pattern.
And to return to where this began, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; recall Robert Todd’s key role in that book. Convincing the 16th president and foremost protector against vampirism to stop hunting vampires? I wonder who he was trying to benefit with that move? And when his father Abe resumed his vampire-killing ways, was it a difficult decision for Robert Todd to have the 16th president knocked off?
So where is Seth Grahame-Smith in all of this? Why hasn’t he picked up this thread of the tale, the most explosive conspiracy in American historical fiction this side of a Nic Cage movie? Is it possible that, even to this day, he’s protecting RTL and his coven of undead handlers?
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Image credits: The Famous People, Alonzo Chappel, NBC
