FIRST, A RATHER OVERLENGTHY FORWARD For this Veteran’s Day I thought I would cover the short career
of a veteran that is known to every American although his military career was
short and obscure. I would also like to
mention another, more recent veteran, who was also an artillerist. West Point
attendee, and connected to writing, specifically about Poe, but I’d like mention that portion at the end of the article. Let me say am no
Poe scholar by any means, but I have cobbled together as many facts as possible
from reliable sources about this forgotten period of Edgar Allan Poe. I am not going to recap Poe’s whole life as
there are plenty of sources available.
Frankly, if you are unfamiliar with the basics of Poe’s biography, you
are probably reading the wrong blog.
AND NOW ON WITH THE SHOW In addition to being a writer, well-known poet, literary critic, editor,
and early SF writer as well as the creator of the modern detective story, Edgar
Allan Poe also had a military career.
His influence on Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Baudelaire as well as
detective writers and poetry in this century and in the previous ones. His contribution to the literary world is
well known, but his military career outside of his dismissal from West Point is
obscure and seldom mentioned. In fact,
few people know that he had a promising military career. The scope of this article is very narrow,
following just his military career and its impact on him personally and his
subsequent writing career. There are
plenty of Poe biographies good, bad, and fantastically incorrect and I have
found the later the biography of Poe, the more scholarship and less folklore
was involved. 
Many Victorian biographies completely leave out Poe’s
military service outside of references to his abortive West Point career of
1830-1831, but the two years he was an artillerist in the regular Army was an
important period of his life and proved to be a turning point. Had things gone differently, he might have
remained in the army become an officer of distinction fighting in the Seminole
Wars, the Mexican War and through the American Civil War, probably as a
Confederate. Destiny had a different
path for Edgar Allan Poe.
Anyone familiar with the typical Poe biography knows that
Poe’s parents were actors and died when he was a child. But Poe’s grandfather had a profound
influence on him even after his grandfather’s death. David Poe Sr. was a renowned Revolutionary War hero who was a
Major involved with logistics and procurement. For his efforts was made a Brigadier General and very highly
regarded. Edgar Poe seemed destined for
a career in the military himself. As a
youth, Poe was the Lieutenant in charge of the honor guard of the Richmond
Junior Volunteers for the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette when he visited
Richmond in October of 1824. Young Poe
would have been 15 at the time.
Lafayette visited David Poe Senior’s grave on grave in Baltimore and
exclaimed, “Ici repose coeur noble!”
After a disagreement with his foster father, John Allan in
March of 1827 about gambling debts incurred while at the University of
Virginia, Poe left for Baltimore and enlisted in the regular army there on 26
May 1827 under an assumed name: Edgar Perry. An image of his original enlistment document is at the end of this post. Poe was just 18 although he showed his age as 22 on the enlistment. Along with being strapped for cash, he may
have also been disappointed in the publication of his first book Tamerlane and
Other Poems in 1827 as well. The
booklet had been published by an obscure printer with no real distribution and
no literary reviews, selling for only 12 and ½ cents per copy. Needless to say, the book did not sell well
and only 50 copies were printed. He
would not be able to use writing to pay his debts nor would his foster father
help. The irony is that now this
obscure edition sells now for a small fortune with only a handful known.
So then he was enlisted in the 1st ArtilleryRegiment, Battery H and his first duty station was at Fort Independence in
Boston Harbor. He would be there only
eight months, but clearly his superiors noted something different in Private
Perry and soon appointed a clerk in July 1827, filling out paperwork and
tending to the typical day to day paper chores of a military unit.
The practice of the time was to rotate individual batteries
of artillery regiments to different posts around the nation and Battery H was
ordered to Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina part of the
important coastal fortifications of historic Charlestown harbor on 31 October
1827.
It took time to arrange transportation so the unit did not
leave Boston until the 8th of November on the brig Waltham, arriving on 18 November 1827 at
Charlestown harbor. Little did
artillery private Perry (Poe) know but that his time on Sullivan’s Island would
reap benefits for his writing career later.
His experiences there provided the settings and mood for later writings
such as The Gold Bug, The Balloon-Hoax, and The Oblong Box. Many people don’t realize that Poe might be considered an Antebellum southern writer, at the time America was just beginning to
create its own literature distinctive from English literature. By the way, Baltimore is south of the Mason Dixon Line, along with Washington DC.
The fortifications on Sullivan’s Island included Fort
Moultrie, which had a long career as a battleground during the Revolutionary
War, the War of 1812, and would again be the focus of combat in the Civil War
much later. In fact the opening shots
of the Civil War would be fired from Charlestown harbor defenses on a ship
attempting to relieve the consolidated Union garrison on another fort in the
harbor, Fort Sumter some of which had been evacuated from Fort Moultrie, but
that’s over thirty years in the future.
By the way, the town library on Sullivan’s Island is part of a
post-Civil War fortification, Battery Gadsden, a Spanish American War
construct, which has Poe section and several streets on Sullivan’s Island are
named in honor of Poe.
Poe prospered at Fort Moultrie and rose to the rank of
Artificer on 1 May 1828, which doubled his pay from $5 to $10 a month. Lieutenant Howard who commanded Battery H,
wrote that Perry (Poe) was good in habit, “good, and entirely free of
drinking,” and the adjutant of Ft Moultrie indicated Perry (Poe) was “highly
worthy of confidence.” No doubt Poe
visited Charlestown when on leave and met a number of people. Being a polished and gentlemanly young man
he didn’t find doors closed to him despite being a lowly army sergeant. No doubt his grandfather’s name opened a few
doors as well.
He became friends with a prominent Charlestown resident, War of 1812
veteran, and member of the House of Representatives for South Carolina from 1825
to 1833, Colonel William Drayton and continued the friendship when Drayton
moved to Philadelphia in 1833, later president of the 2nd Bank of
the United States. Poe dedicated Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque to Col Drayton in 1840
Poe may have also met young Caroline Howard Gilman, who was
later a very famous southern writer and poet who lived in Charlestown from 1819
to 1858, along with her husband who was the minister of the Archdale Street Unitarian
Church. Poe certainly would have known
here name years later when he was an editor and literary critic.
But all good things come to an end and Battery H received
orders to move and they left for Fort Monroe on Old Point Comfort in Virginia
overlooking Chesapeake Bay, on the Harriet on 11 December 1828 and landing 15
December. Poe did well as a regular
soldier, he eventually achieved sergeant major effective 1 January 1829, the
highest NCO rank possible in only 19 months of service.
On the home front, Fanny Allan, wife of David Allan Poe’s
estranged foster father was very ill and Allan wrote Poe telling him to come to
her sickbed, but by the time Poe got leave Mrs. Allan had already died. Poe arrived the day after her burial and was
overcome with grief that he had to be assisted from the grave site.
Reconciliation with David Allan came soon after and on 15
April of 1829, Poe secured his discharge from the five-year regular army
enlistment by paying for a substitute for $75 to finish out his
enlistment. In order to get an
appointment, Poe procured letters of recommendation from important citizens,
including former governor of Virginia, James Preston who was also familiar with
Poe’s poetry. Poe also got the Speaker
of the House of Representatives to write recommendation letters for him. Poe presented the letters to Secretary of
War James H. Eaton in person.
In March of 1830 he received his formal acceptance to attend
West Point Military Academy and began attending in June of the same year. Poe may have thought having some practical years
as a soldier would help him as a cadet but the Academy proved to be far
different than he had expected. Many
previously enlisted members attending the Academy can attest to this, even at
this late date. Discouraged, Poe
regretted his decision to make the military a career and began to look for a way out.
Poe was discharged from West Point, 6 March 1831, but
despite his failure, he continued to have visits from his old West Point
comrades years later. A good deal has
been written as to why Poe was discharged from West Point, but that is not the
focus of this article. Although I would
mention that Poe left with some good feelings from his brother West
Pointers. 131 of his brethren paid
$1.25 each to subscribe to his newest book of poems and a number remained in
contact with him over the years and sometimes visited.
A number of things have come to light about Poe that is not
often mentioned in his biographies. He
was athletic and an excellent swimmer and was good in mathematics, which stood
him in good stead as an artilleryman. He was clearly mechanical and resourceful as he became Battery H’s
artificer and has been company clerk.
This is quite a different Poe depicted later by biographers just after
his death.
He was well liked by children, a joker, prankster, and
humorist. He also had visits from his
West Point comrades from his military days.
Due to being cut out of David Allen’s will, Poe was left with little
resource later in life outside of this ability to write. Who knows as a military officer with a large
inherited fortune, he might have later gone into politics after the
military. But it was not to be.
Let me point out that the terms Romantic and Sentimentality
had very different nuance and connotations in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s than they have
today. Remember it was the period of
the Gothic story so Poe’s works would not have been considered morbid or the
product of a depressed mind by the standards of the day. Most importantly, Poe's body of work helped to
make the short story a distinct literary form.
Remember that Poe was born before the start Victorian era and died well before its
peak. His belief in unity of idea,
specific word use, objective technique in poetry writing and pulled it out of
the Georgian era of fancy embellishments and witticisms.
Personally, Poe could be charismatic and persuasive. He was certainly perceived as a joker and
possibly even a hoaxer, but that is another story. He developed life-long friendships along with the inevitable
enemies endemic of a career of literary criticism. There is a lot of nonsense written about Poe, some of it just
lazy copy work and others are calculated spite. There is plenty written for an against these views and I leave it
to the academics to hash it out, but your best one-stop-shop source of largely
unbiased, good quality Poe scholarship is The Poe Society.
Again, there are a number of Victorian biographies filled
with spurious and unsupported allegations
words take out of context purposely.
Some of those are mentioned here:
http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poealchl.htm and http://www.egs.edu/library/edgar-allan-poe/biography/ .
AND NOW A LITTLE BACKGROUND AND RAMBLING, I became interested in running down Poe’s military career decades before the internet, when information had to be dug out of distant and obscure libraries and repositories. Most specifically I had heard Poe had been in some sort of Richmond artillery militia group in the 1820s but had little to go on with traditional biographies. A little while back while doing some research on early 19th century militias, I tuned up (for me) the holy grail – Poe’s original enlistment that some good person had put on the internet. From there it became a chase thorough sources and internet sites finding a bread crumb trail of information (and misinformation) about Poe’s elusive military career before West Point. I’m sorry that I didn’t start looking much sooner as many of my questions were answered and gaps filled in of Poe’s forgotten life.
This article is a sort of Frankenstein of a number of
sources that I have tried to cross check for accuracy by using original
documents whenever possible. I have
found the best scholarship seems to be set as remotely far as possible from
period articles or those written in the first decades after Poe’s death. A spate of fresh and new scholarship has
been yielding up a lot of information in the past several decades.
One important source I have used was Major William F Hecker’s, Mister
Poe: The West Point Poems. As part of this Veteran’s Day post, I would
like to mention Maj Hecker for his service and accomplishments as a Poe
fan. Sadly just a year after editing
and publishing this work he was killed in Iraq on 5 Jan 2006 while serving his
country. He probably has more in common
with Poe/Perry than a good number of other Poe researchers. He, like Poe, was an artillerist, attended West Point, a man of
letters, and had his career ended early.
I’d like to dedicate this memorial in electrons and photons to both Poe
and Maj Hecker who are two American veterans
here on this Memorial Day of 2013.
CoastConFan
LINKS ABOUT MAJ HECKER
LINKS ABOUT POE
A site about Poe bios
Common Poe Myths – Busted!
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SOQQ_KTymeIJ:www.poemuseum.org/pdfs/poe-myths.pdf+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Of interest: The Poe family bible on line: http://www.poemuseum.org/blog/a-poe-family-bible-and-other-genealogical-information-from-the-poe-museums-collection/
Poe Biography http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/18430729.htm
Poe timeline: http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poechron.htm
The Defense of Charlestown Harbor (Civil War) book: https://archive.org/details/defensecharlest01johngoog
In conclusion I would like to point out that a good many of Edgar
Allan Poe’s works are available on line for free download, in a number of
electronic formats from Project Gutenberg, this making Poe’s works accessible
to everybody: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/481
.
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Update Aug 2014: I recently turned up a couple of articles about
Poe’s artillery career posted on the web:
Author, Poet Edgar Allan Poe Had Little-Known Career as
Artillerist, The Artilleryman Magazine, Winter 2003, Vol 25, No 1 http://artillerymanmagazine.com/Archives/2003/poe_w03.html
Seeds of a Soldier, Army Space Journal, Fall 2003, PDF www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA525759
Other literary CoastConFan posts that might be of interest:
