by Worm Miller
Who knows how long things could have carried on like this, but when John’s father offered him a partnership in the family law firm, passing over John’s older brother George, an embittered George anonymously reported John to the authorities. John Blackburn was promptly arrested and sent to trial. Had Blackburn not been a lawyer, and a clever lawyer at that, he would surely have been sent to the courthouse’s pyre and been lost to history like countless hybrids before and after him. Fortunately for Blackburn, and for history, he was a lawyer, and he was clever.
Blackburn chose to represent himself, not wanting his father to have to tarnish his image by defending a hybrid. The prosecution of hybrids had never been particularly airtight in a legal sense. Blackburn knew this, and he argued that there was nothing in the American law books that stated being a hybrid was illegal. The trial ended with a hung jury and major headlines. Did Maryland not have the right to prosecute hybrids for being monsters? This was something that had many citizens concerned. When Blackburn’s case was retried, the state brought in Andrew Holton, a prosecutor with an impressive track record of successful wins.
Daguerreotype of John Blackburn, 1853.
Holton had Blackburn sent to a medical examiner, who testified in court that Blackburn did not have a heartbeat. Holton concluded before the jury that this was evidence that Blackburn was legally dead, and thus had no rights; he, in fact, did not even have the right to the trial they were all party to. Blackburn then countered:If, as you say, good prosecutor, I am dead, then I am a corpse, speaking before you all. We could argue the relative and observable logic of this, but as the prosecutor wishes to wade in the technics of our law, I am eager to oblige him. It may interest the good prosecutor to know—as it would appear he is not fully current in his quotable knowledge of our laws—that in the fine state of Maryland it is illegal—I repeat—illegal to desecrate a corpse, for any purpose. And just four years ago this very court determined that the corpse of a local cooper was property of his widow. So, on top of the for-mentioned legality, it would appear that burning me up would be destroying the property of my surviving family, which I assure you, would upset them immensely.
When this trial too ended with a hung jury, the case was not retried. As a major victory for a hybrid, Blackburn was also now a minor celebrity. Despite unchanged views toward hybrids, Blackburn became a popular lecturer and guest at society functions. He was paid handsomely to tell his story in A Narrative of the Life of John Blackburn, an UnDead American, which shot his star even higher. He was the first openly revealed hybrid invited to the White House. Blackburn even married a human, Michelle Lagerholm, a wealthy German shipping heiress.
Blackburn championed hybrid awareness and rights and became a figurehead in the zombie slavery abolitionist movement, particularly as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper, The Morning Star. Though Blackburn always took pains to separate hybrids from zombies—“I would not confuse a human with an ape, though I have seen both chew a banana; I would think my people deserve similar respect.”—he was staunchly against zombie slavery. Blackburn was savvy of the fact that people’s fear of zombies fed directly into their fear of hybrids. Blackburn’s many detractors accused him of wanting the zombie slaves freed so he could use them to enslave humanity, but in reality he was a very vocal proponent of Marron Ross’s de-animation plan.
In 1861 Blackburn was invited to speak at a 4th of July celebration in New York. Here he shocked the audience when he delivered his famous July 4th speech:What, to the American dead man, is your 4th of July? To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere fraud—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. Other nations respect, even honor their dead. In America we force them to drag plows and carts, like a mere beast. There is not a nation on the Earth guilty of practices more shocking and sacrilegious than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
This speech got Blackburn invited to the White House by newly elected President Abraham Lincoln, to discuss what might be done about the “problem of the dead,” as Lincoln had referred to it. Blackburn and Lincoln formed a friendship during this meeting, which ultimately would prove disastrous for the president. Through Blackburn’s persistence, Marron Ross’s de-animation plan found its way into the Emancipation Proclamation.
During the Reconstruction era following the end of the Civil War, Blackburn moved to Washington, D.C., where he supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant. He succeeded in getting President Grant to appoint a Termination Commission to ensure that planta tion owners were “releasing” (i.e., de-animating) their zombie slaves and not just literally releasing them, which many did as a shameful act of sour grapes. In 1869, he published Carrie Me Home, Brother, Brother (“Carrie” is defined in the next section), a work of fiction about a Confederate general who becomes a hybrid, full of satirical social commentary, which became a best seller. In 1872, Blackburn became the first revealed hybrid to run for president of the United States, when he received the nomination for the Being Rights Party (he lost).
THE FIRST ZOMBIE PRESIDENT?
A popular rumor in both the North and the South was that President Abraham Lincoln was a hybrid. Twisted facts, urban legends, and flat-out lies of Lincoln devouring enemies back in Illinois circulated in newspapers.
Many took his friendship with John Blackburn and support for the zombie abolitionist cause as clear evidence. Lincoln, maybe unwisely, chose not to dignify such gossip with a direct denial. Though when accused of “dead loving for sake of itself” by the journalistic powerhouse, Horace Greeley, Lincoln responded in a letter:If I could save the Union without freeing any undead I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the undead I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others to lurch about in servitude I would also do that. What I do about undead slavery, and the undead race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.
Most of Lincoln’s enemies who propagated the hybrid rumor were doing so purely for political reasons (anyone who had ever seen Lincoln eat human food knew he was not a hybrid), but many fervently believed it to be true.
John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor of the time, was just such a fervent believer. He believed that Lincoln, in league with John Blackburn, planned to free all the zombie slaves and then, using his hybrid “powers” (some believed hybrids possessed the power to mentally control zombies), would overthrow human civilization, turning humans into little more than cattle. Knowing that this monster needed to be stopped, on April 14, 1865, while Lincoln was attending a performance of Our American Cousin, Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Then, jumping from Lincoln’s balcony, Booth shouted in Latin, “Sic semper victus mortuus” to the shocked audience—roughly, “Thus always to the living dead.”
Unfortunately, Blackburn’s story was to have a tragic ending. On April 19, 1874, for reasons unknown, Blackburn—who had been subsisting on donated human blood for decades—experienced a lapse and devoured his second wife, Eva. Though he again defended himself in court, this jury was not hung and Blackburn ended his life burnt to a crisp on the courthouse’s execution pyre. Blackburn’s tragic turn effectively destroyed all the good will he had engendered for the hybrid cause over his years of animation. More and more hybrids had been revealing themselves after the end of the Civil War. Now those who were not seized and terminated by mobs went into hiding again.
The Dead Regiments
If undead will make good soldiers our whole theory of their slavery is wrong.
—Howell Cobb, founding member of the Confederate States of America, 1861
The American Civil War officially kicked off on April 12, 1861, when Confederate
President Jefferson Davis sent troops to seize control of Fort Sumter, a Union base located in the now-seceded Confederate territory of South Carolina. Northerners rallied behind Lincoln’s call to arms to preserve the Union. African Americans were allowed to take up arms and fight for their freedom. Many hybrids, supported by John Blackburn, felt they should be given the same right.
On July 17, 1862, Congress passed two acts allowing the enlistment of hybrids, but official enrollment occurred only after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September. The number of hybrids outing themselves increased drastically as hybrid men sought to enlist. Approximately 50,000 hybrids, comprising forty-five units, ended up serving in the Union Army.
Political cartoon from the Georgia Morning Daily, July 2, 1861. During Lincoln’s presidency, many Southerners embraced the popular rumor that he was a zombie hybrid.
In general, human soldiers and officers believed that hybrids lacked the courage to fight well, and feared they might turn on their fellow human soldiers at any moment, so the hybrids were segregated into their own division. By April 1863, thirteen “Dead Regiments” were in the field and ready for service. On May 27, 1863, at the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana, the hybrid soldiers bravely advanced over open ground in the face of heavy artillery fire. Although the attack failed, the hybrid soldiers proved their courage and impressive ability to withstand damage. Unfortunately the hybrids’ durability kept them at the front lines to serve as fodder for Confederate fire, the Union commanders quite unconcerned with whether or not they survived. Most commanders felt that the hybrids could serve a useful purpose during battles, and if they all ceased to be animated by the end of the conflict, good riddance.
The human soldiers, both Union and Confederate, began referring to the Dead Regiments as Carrion soldiers (as in the decaying flesh of dead animals), or just Carries, for short. The nickname caught on for hybrids in general, regardless if they served in an army or not. Some hybrids found it offensive, while others, like John Blackburn, embraced the term happily. “I suspect many of my brethren do not have much in the way of humor,” Blackburn said.
Hybrid soldiers participated in every major campaign from 1864 to 1865 except Sherman’s invasion of Georgia. On April 12, 1864, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led 2,500 men against the Union-held Fort Pillow, in Tennessee, which was occupied by 25 hybrid and 552 human soldiers. After putting up a brief and unsuccessful defense, the Union forces surrendered. Forrest’s men took the humans captive, but terminated all the hybrids. When word of the event spread throughout the Union Army, the Dead Regiments adopted the battle cry of, “Remember Fort Pillow!”
It was very uncommon for the Confederates to take hybrids prisoner. As hybrids need human flesh or blood to sustain themselves, their commanding officers looked the other way and allowed the hybrids to devour gravely injured Confederate soldiers on the battlefields. This was a necessary action to prevent the hybrids from accidentally turning on fellow Union soldiers, especially out on the battlefields, where the smell of human carnage would whip the hybrids into a frenzied flesh-lust.
In January 1864, Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne proposed using hybrid slaves as soldiers, since the Union was having such success with the Carries. Cleburne recommended offering enslaved hybrids their freedom if they fought and survived, and even proposed that the army try and find a way to utilize all their zombies as well, but Jefferson Davis refused to even consider Cleburne’s proposal. The concept did not die, however. By the end of 1864, the South was clearly losing the war, and some believed that only by releasing their zombies onto the battlefield could defeat be averted. On March 13, the Confederate Congress passed General Order 13b, and President Davis signed the order into law. Only a handful of hybrid regiments could be established before the war ended shortly thereafter. None ever saw combat.
A Nation Re-Animated
That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing.
We can use that to keep the Carries in their place… the ground.
—Ex-Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, upon learning of the Ku Klux Klan, 1867
Following the end of the Civil War, there was a steep rise in violence and hatred directed toward revealed hybrids in the South. Embittered veterans of the Confederate Army founded the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee. The organization’s name came from the Greek word for circle, kyklos, denoting their aim to return to the way things had been. The Klan worked tirelessly to curb the education, economic advancement, voting rights, and right to keep and bear arms of hybrids. Their use of terror tactics and violence toward hybrids, as well as blacks and Republican leaders (both black, white, and hybrid), made them a polarizing force. In 1870, a federal grand jury proclaimed that the Klan was a “terrorist organization,” and the following year, President Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allowed Klan members to be tried in federal courts.
The Klan dwindled and died (until its resurgence in the 20th century), but things got worse for the hybrids in the 1870s. The backlash toward Carries that followed John Blackburn’s disgrace saw the enactment of Jim Crow laws. The origin of the term Jim Crow came from stage comedy. Jim Crow was a popular character created and performed by the comedic human actor Roman L. Hardy in the 1840s and ’50s. Crow was a caricature of a hybrid, playing on Carrie stereotypes. Jim was dimwitted, slow, and constantly complaining about his hunger to eat people, always giving in and attacking someone by the end of the sketch. He was called Jim Crow because there were always crows (usually puppets) trying to pick at him, thinking him a corpse.
African Americans became tangled up in Jim Crow laws because of the popular misconception at the time that blacks more easily contracted zombism and the hybrid contagion. This stereotype likely traces its root to the awful practice of slave owners intentionally zombinating their African slaves. Many whites believed that almost all blacks were in fact Carries. Public facilities quickly became segregated. Even when the hybrids were pushed back into hiding, the segregation and misconceptions toward blacks stayed in place.
The 1880s were a major turning point for human Americans relationship with zombies and hybrids. Several localized initiatives, along with President Chester A. Arthur’s Zombie Removal Act of 1883, built into a nationwide effort that became known as the Second Cleanse, or the Great Cleanse II. The First Cleanse, or Harron’s War, sought to push zombies off of American land, but America now stretched from “sea to shining sea.” The thick hordes of zombies out West had been a deadly nuisance to the brave humans attempting to populate the areas. For humans, it had become clear that they would never be completely safe until zombies were gone. Like rats, they bred, and the only way to stop them from returning was to completely wipe them out.
The might of the U.S. Army, aided by local militias, and in some places, Indians, cut a pitiless swath across the country, de-animating zombies wherever they were found. Hybrids it would seem were doomed to be lumped in with the zombies. Now even the boldest of hybrids did not reveal themselves, not even as a political statement. And so it would remain—for almost a hundred years.
SIX
Manifestering Destiny WESTWARD EXPANSION AND THE AMERICAN OLD WEST
Washington is not a place to live in.
The rents are high, the food is bad, the Carries
are everywhere, and the morals are deplorable.
Go West, young man, go West and
grow up with the country.
—Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, July 13, 1865
The period between the end of the War of 1812 and the beginning of the American Civil War has been called the Age of Manifest Destiny, when America systematically went about consuming land and redefining the contiguous borders of the country to those dimensions we still boast today. The Texas Revolution had freed up Texas and parts of present-day New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming; the Oregon Treaty of 1846 acquired Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and further parts o
f Wyoming; and the Mexican-American War (1846-48) gave us California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and the remaining portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
“Manifest Destiny” was a term coined by New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan in his editorials supporting the annexation of Texas in 1845, which, though broken from Mexico at the time, was not yet officially a part of the United States. O’Sullivan and many others believed that America was destined to expand across the continent by divine right, to tame the wild and spread American values. Whether it was predestined to or not, expand America did. At the end of the Civil War, a great number of Americans found their former lives shattered. For them, spreading American democracy mattered little. The West offered fresh starts and new opportunities, and that was reason enough to pack up and try their luck.
Over the decades, the United States had ruthlessly driven the Indians westward through war and broken promises. The First Cleanse had done the same with a massive section of the zombie population. With so many Indian tribes relocated to areas with which they were unfamiliar, many found themselves out of sync with their previous zombie defense systems. It was disastrous. Entire tribes and nations who had thrived in North America for centuries were suddenly wiped out through devourment or zombination. Many areas became wastelands—where the zombies ruled.