It seems as if every nineteenth-century president now has a vampire connection. The National Constitution Center noted the origin of a vampire story involving President Andrew Johnson in a blog post last summer.
The [1892 Brooklyn Daily Eagle] report says that a convicted murder, a Portuguese sailor named James Brown, was just sent to the national asylum in Washington from a federal prison in Ohio.
“Twenty-five years ago he was charged with being a vampire and living on human blood,” the article said, adding the Brown was seen drinking blood from two men he killed on a whaling vessel. It also claimed President Johnson commuted Brown’s death penalty to life in prison.
The news gets even worse for those of us tired of presidential vampires:
Author Christopher Farnsworth has written three novels for Penguin Group about a fictional vampire pardoned by President Johnson who has served presidents for the past 140 years. The first book in the series has been optioned as a movie by one of the producers of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Having seen the first ten minutes of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I can only hope the books and movie suck less.
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics 