[1] The journal-style book is written as a partial "secret" diary of Abraham Lincoln, kept by the 16th President of the United States and given to the author by a vampire named Henry Sturges.

Abraham's mother, Nancy, also succumbed not to milk sickness but rather to being given a "fool's dose" of vampire blood, the result of Thomas's failure to repay a debt.

Lincoln returns to his home in New Salem and begins his business and political careers by day, continuing to track down the vampires in Henry's letters at night.

His life is once again tinged by tragedy when his fiancée Ann Rutledge is attacked and murdered by her ex-fiancé John McNamar, now a vampire living in New York City.

Lincoln marries Mary Todd, begins to raise a family, starts a law firm and is elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Poe says that the vampires are being chased out of their ancestral homes in Europe (in part because of a public outcry over the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth Báthory) and are flocking to America because of the slave trade.

Lincoln leaves Washington in 1849 and declines to seek re-election; Poe is found murdered that year in Baltimore, the victim of a vampire attack.

Lincoln loses, but gains a great deal of publicity and respect, which allows him to capture the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States and then the office itself.

Booth expects the vampires to rally around Lincoln's death but instead finds himself shunned and hiding in a Virginia barn as Union troops arrive to arrest him.

[2] Time magazine gave the novel a mixed review, calling author Grahame-Smith "a lively, fluent writer with a sharp sense of tone and pace", but finding the novel "a little too neat" and noting that "once the connection is made, it feels obvious, and neither slavery nor vampirism reveals anything in particular about the other.