A Zombie's History of the United States

by Worm Miller

  Unable to properly defend themselves, nor even see who was friend or foe, Cadwalader and his men were forced to retreat from their position. Things were not going well for Gen. Ewing either. Foul weather and ice jams on the river prevented him from even attempting a crossing below Trenton, but at least there were no zombies.

  Zombies soon found their way to Knox and his men. The huge chunks of ice floating in the river made it all the easier for the zombies to reach the men in the boats. Many of the men were unable to swim, which made the icy water just as treacherous as the encroaching undead. Forbade to discharge their firearms as well, the soldiers were forced to chop at the zombies with their knives, swords, and bayonets to prevent them from climbing into the boats.

  Miraculously, Knox got the men across the river—and with only a single casualty. Washington’s surprise attack at Trenton was a glorious success. Along with desperately needed muskets, powder, and artillery, 1,000 prisoners were captured. This was exactly what Washington and his men needed. The Delaware crossing rose to mythic proportions after the war. The number of zombies attacking the soldiers inflated with each telling, becoming several hundreds, when really it was probably closer to twenty. In 1851, artist Emanuel Leutze painted his famous Washington Crossing the Delaware, which depicted Washington nobly reserved, standing in the boat while his men battled zombies. Leutze used artistic license, of course—the zombies didn’t attack until well after Washington had crossed. The zombies were eventually painted out somewhere in the late 1800s.

  The Siege at Valley Forge

  Never do I hope to see such a sight again.

  —Henry Knox, April 3, 1778

  Washington and his troops had just fought what would prove to be the last major engagement of 1777 at the Battle of White Marsh in Pennsylvania. With winter quickly setting in, Gen. Washington, seeking quarters for his men, decided to pull the army from its present encampment in the White Marsh area and move to a more secure location. On December 19, over 10,000 weary troops marched into Valley Forge. Named for an iron forge on Valley Creek, the area was selected for its ideal positioning: close enough to keep British raiding parties out of Pennsylvania’s interior, yet distant enough to discourage surprise attacks, like Washington’s from the previous winter. To this end it would prove a success; the British caused no problems, but the winter was a long, hard, and dangerous one for other reasons.

  On top of the irregular shipments of food, the alternating freezing and melting of the snow made it nearly impossible for the men to keep dry. While the lodgings they built provided them with sufficient protection from the cold, the close-quarters brought disease, illness, and worst of all, zombies, lured in by the smell of a thousand injured men.

  The first attack came on January 26, 1778, when Sean Hall, a young soldier from Virginia, was found almost completely devoured just outside of camp, his torso chewed clean down to the spine. Similar solitary assaults continued to occur here and there for the next two weeks. One of the camp’s physicians recorded having to “put down” a soldier after he returned to camp with a zombie bite wound and “was soon seezed by the dreded Disorder.” It wasn’t until February 25 that things really heated up. Henry Knox recounted to his wife Lucy:February the 25th

  God in His good Grace only knows where from they all arrived, but arrive they have. While lunching with the General we heard resound of gunfire and much yelling, to which we attended with haste. When I emerged from the General’s cabin the Men were in complete maihem, here and there in frensy, calling to arms. I did immediately reason the Red Coats had made a gambit for us, but when I stood edge of the camp I saw a much worse site— The animated Dead. Host upon host of them! Perhaps the rank stench of sickness that has pervaded the camp has summoned them by their foul senses. I do not know. Dear Lucy, never have I seen such a terifying sight. Surely a thousand strong, the Dead fell upon us like a great raw wave.

  February the 27th

  How I wish the Red coats were assaulting us. One can rely on a mortal foe to behave accordingly. To use caution. To pause or to retreat. To be woonded. Relentless are the Dead.

  These attacks were to last for four and a half weeks before the last of the zombies was finally de-animated. Accounts of exactly how many zombies made up the Siege at Valley Forge vary. Soldiers’ accounts years later put the number extremely high, as tremendous as 10,000. The truth is likely much lower, possibly 1,000, and this is not taking into account the number of new zombies spawned from bites.

  All told, roughly 2,000 men died that winter. Two thirds of those deaths were disease and hypothermia related, but that still leaves a staggering 660 estimated deaths by zombie attack. For all the terror and tragedy, the siege proved a positive and pivotal turning point for the Continental Army and the future of America. Were it not for the constant zombie attacks, the colonials would have in all likelihood lost the war. Though 20 percent of the army had perished, those that survived had endured a hellish boot camp against an army far more ruthless than the British.

  As Washington said in a letter to his brother:

  RUMOR MILL

  Long before the classic cherry tree legend, a popular story about George Washington during the time of the Revolution was that he would bite zombies to demonstrate his lack of fear, his famous wooden dentures allowing him this show of machismo without becoming zombinated. When asked by a journalist if these stories were true, Washington admitted that they were nothing more than tall tales, quipping, “I would not want to endure the taste.”

  Popular gossip amongst the British Army was that Washington employed zombies among his troops, using the creatures to achieve his victories. This was purely British propaganda. Attempts had been made long before the Revolutionary War to use zombies in combat but they were impossible to control; they were in fact, more likely to attack their own side. Washington knew this. He also hated zombies, refusing to even use them as slave labor at Mt. Vernon. American naval hero John Paul Jones was known to keep a zombie or two onboard his ship for the purposes of tossing onto enemy ships during close-quarter battles. Washington frowned on this practice, but was not one to question Jones’s success.

  Political cartoon appearing in the Pennsylvania Gazette, July 20, 1777.

  After the war, it became a popular rumor that notorious traitor Benedict Arnold was in fact a zombie, but evidence to the contrary is extremely strong.

  Tragic for life lost, but I dare say the constant undead bombardments were a boon. The men have been reborn, strong, steely and unfraid of the British… Quite truly we would not have weathered this storm were it not for Franklin’s godsend.

  The godsend Washington refers to was Baron Fried-rich Wilhelm von Steuben, a one-time member of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia’s general staff. Von Steuben had been forced to seek employment elsewhere when that career ended in a rumored homosexual scandal. As fortune would have it, he happened to be traveling through Paris in the summer of 1777, where he was introduced to the colonial ambassador, Benjamin Franklin. Von Steuben immediately offered his military skills to the patriot cause. As fortune would continue to have it, von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge on February 23, 1778, with a letter of introduction from Franklin, mere days before the zombie siege broke out.

  Washington immediately assigned von Steuben the duties of acting inspector general, with the task of devising and carrying out an effective training program. Numerous obstacles threatened success, as no standard American training manuals existed, but the zombie siege proved the perfect scenario for von Steuben to work his magic. “From dawn to dusk his familiar voice is heard in camp above the chaos, shouting commands to the men,” Knox wrote his wife. With his deft skills and experience, von Steuben soon smartly moved companies, regiments, and then brigades from column to line, loaded muskets with precision, and exterminated the undead in throngs. When the Continental Army paraded on May 6, 1778, to celebrate the new French-American alliance that Franklin and John Adams had worked to establish, people saw a completely diff
erent army—precise, capable, and imposing. With added confidence, Washington and his troops waged war afresh and with glorious success.

  An American Zombie in Paris

  That I have no friendship for Franklin I avow. That I

  am incapable of having any with a man of his moral

  sentiments I avow. As far as fate has compelled me,

  I would not wish to face the Undead with another,

  this too I avow.

  —John Adams, letter to his wife, November 1782

  By October 1781, Cornwallis had become trapped at Yorktown, Virginia. The French Navy had defeated the British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which prevented Cornwallis from making an escape by sea, and Washington sat outside the city with nearly 19,000 men blocking the way by land. After several days of bombardment from the French and American forces, on October 19, Cornwallis, knowing he had no alternatives, surrendered. It was a decisive victory for America. While scattered fighting would continue at sea, the Siege of Yorktown was to prove the last major battle in North America of the war. When word reached London, King George III finally lost control of Parliament to the peace party, and in April 1782, the Commons voted to the end the war. The American Revolution had been won. Now it was time to talk resolution. Though, ironically enough, the peace talks were ultimately to prove a bloody affair.

  The treaty negotiations convened in Paris in fall 1782, with American interests represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, Federalist Papers co-author and soon to be first chief justice of the United States. Franklin and Adams were personally at odds following a letter Franklin had written to the Continental Congress in 1780 impugning Adams’s capabilities. Despite this, Adams and Franklin temporarily put aside their differences for the greater good—American independence. Diplomatically, the negotiations went well for the American side. As Adams noted in his diary:Our situation is not unlike the fable of the Undead and the Farmer. The dead man has terrorized the farmer for weeks, until finally apprehending the farmer and beginning to devour him. The farmer responds by beginning to devour the dead man in turn. Soon the dead man finds himself being eaten by the farmer faster than he can do his own eating. The dead man tells the farmer that the farmer must stop, and then the dead man will let him go. “No,” says the farmer, “it is you who must stop, and then I will let you go.” Our situation is that of the farmer. We now firmly have the British in hand. The peace is ours to dictate.

  The negotiators would meet every day for lengthy discussion of treaty terms (such as prewar debts and the new boundaries of American territory), often convening over meals attended by a variety of guests. On the night of November 12, negotiations commenced over dinner at the Hotel de Valentinois. One of the guests in attendance was the Marquis de Lafayette, who had proved his valor and military prowess during the war at the Battle of Rhode Island and again at Yorktown. Lafayette had just recently returned from America, bringing with him a zombie he had captured in Virginia, which he planned to present to King Louis XVI. Thinking it would make a grand impression at the dinner, Lafayette brought the zombie to the hotel, bound by a collar and chain.

  At first the Parisian guests were quite taken with the spectacle, but as Adams later described to his wife, Abigail, things went wrong very quickly:The Americans, myself quite included, tried to encourage the removal of the beast, but Mademoiselle de Bourbon’s niece was giddy over it and before we could even fully plead our case the girl was bit. When we sent for a gun and said the girl needed to be bound, M de B went into a rage. It was truly ridiculous. These Parisians know so little of our accursed Dead. Guards were called for—to restrain us! A physician was sent for as well. We tried to explain that there was nothing that could be done for the pitiable girl.

  Lafayette personally de-animated his zombie, and eventually the injured girl was brought up to a room to lie down, despite Adams’s and the rest of the Americans’ protestations. When Adams, Franklin, and Jay tried to enter the girl’s room to at least convince Mlle. de Bourbon and her retinue to lock the girl alone in the room, lest they be present once her zombination was complete, Mlle. de Bourbon had them seized by her attendants. The scene quickly turned into a minor disaster, with Adams, Franklin, Jay, along with Franklin’s grandson, William Temple Franklin, and another American, Matthew Ridley, confined to Franklin’s room (Franklin was a guest of the hotel). None of the Americans were surprised when, several minutes later, screams and the sounds of fighting could be heard from the hallway.

  Adams would recount:We were of disagreement amongst us as to our best course. Franklin wished to stay in the room and let the situation sort itself out. I now acknowledge my folly, but at the time felt we were better served to try and escape or help in the destruction of the undead girl before the whole hotel became crawling with the Things. Using the room’s firepoker I broke off our door’s latch so we might exit. The scene was already grim. One corpse lay in the hall devoured, and another man had himself become undead. This undead we were able to trap in a room. As none of us were with firearm, we decided that escape was the legitimate move and we made directly for the stairs. Never have I been so frightened as moving through that much too quiet hallway. Where everyone else had gotten to so quickly, we could not say. In my worried haste I stepped to the stairwell without looking and came directly to M de B’s niece! She was upon me and knocked me to the ground before my senses alerted me. Had I not already had the firepoker at my chest, I would not be writing this letter to you. Without much effort on my part, for I assure you I had not the wits nor the time to plan such a thing, I was able to hold the poker sidewise before me, caught between her teeth like a horse’s bit. I struggled with her for a moment, when suddenly Franklin was at her back. He took his pen and placed it in the girl’s ear, then using his grandson’s shoe as a hammer, he drove the pen well into the dead girl’s brain until she went limp. I owe the old conjurer my life.

  The remaining zombies at the hotel were eventually de-animated by the arrival of French soldiers, and none of the American party suffered any serious injuries. Franklin and Adams had also struck up a better relationship, burying the hatchet (or pen), so to speak. Peace negotiations began again the following day like clockwork. The completed and vetted Treaty of Paris was finally signed on September 3, 1783. Once it was announced, the last vestiges of British occupation, the troops remaining in New York City, left American shores on November 25, 1783. When Congress ratified the treaty on January 14, 1784, the American Revolution was officially over. On the day of the ratification, Samuel Adams (second cousin to John) famously said, “We are at last free of the monsters.”

  Of course, there were still plenty of monsters of a different kind left for our fledgling nation to deal with.

  THREE

  The Corpse of Discovery THE LEWIS & CLARK EXPEDITION

  The river Missouri, and the Undead, Indians, and other

  dark Creatures inhabiting it, are not as well known

  as rendered desirable by their connection with the

  Mississippi, and consequently with us.... An intelligent

  officer, with ten or twelve chosen men might explore the

  whole line, even to the Western Ocean...

  —Thomas Jefferson, message to Congress, January 18, 1803

  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition through the Pacific Northwest remains one of the single greatest missions of exploration ever undertaken by the United States. More than just a geographical survey, it was also a rich study in vegetation and wildlife, in Indian populations and their cultures, and a brazen announcement of America’s designs for the future.

  Our best record of the expedition comes from the words of Meriwether Lewis himself, who wrote diligently in his journal, going into almost exhaustive detail on flora and fauna, weather, the difficulties of the river, and the people he encountered. The best-known collection of these journals, The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, compiled by Gary Moulton, fills a whopping eight volumes
. Yet there are sections—weeks, months, an entire year toward the end—for which there are few or no entries.

  Curiously there is no explanation for these gaps. Writer’s block? Unlikely, considering Lewis knew the importance of his journal. Were the entries simply lost along the journey? Also unlikely, given that there exists no documentation from Lewis lamenting their loss. Nor are there any letters from President Jefferson discussing the omitted entries, even after Lewis’s untimely death.

  The truth is these entries were purposefully excised from the published journals by President Jefferson. The Lewis and Clark mission was in large part a public relations move, and there were certain details Jefferson did not want getting out. Namely, these two details:1. Lewis was undead for over half of the expedition.

  2. Clark killed Lewis.

  Destiny

  If the United States wish such a demon plagued

  Hades, they are most welcome to it. Good riddance.

  —Napoleon Bonaparte, stated upon the finalization of the Louisiana Purchase, 1803

  In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson cemented America’s—and his own—legacy when he acquired 828,800 square miles (2.147 million km) of France’s claim to the vast Louisiana Territory (which Napoleon had recently won from Spain). This purchase would prove to be one of the most important real-estate transactions in recorded history. The United States paid $11.25 million, plus cancellation of debts worth $3.75 million for a total cost of $15 million. That is $217 billion when adjusted for today’s inflation, and considering that, for example, $551 billion was spent on the most recent invasion of Iraq, any way you look at it, Jefferson got a pretty fantastic deal for doubling the size of the country.