This Ungainly Fowl [audio 4 minutes 36 seconds]
Edgar Allen Poe was supposed to go be on his way to New York City, but instead found his way to Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore will be the place of Poe’s death, but what really killed the man? Poe was in rough shape when he arrived in Baltimore, whether if it was cholera or rabies we don’t know for certain, but something killed him while he was in that city: local politics.
His first wife, Virginia, passed away two years before his death. Virginia was the love of his life, his first wife, his first cousin and thirteen years old. Her death from consumption was brutal and quick. Two weeks after the last day Edgar Allen Poe spent outside, before dying in a hospital, he was scheduled to remarry. Why then was he found wearing another man’s clothes, delirious, stretched out on a wooden plank in front of a saloon?
It was probably local politics that made Poe in that position. The saloon that was a polling place and this occurred on election day. The 4th ward of Baltimore was under a high contested local race and the whigs needed a big turnout. The Whigs utilized brutal forms of voter fraud to increase their turnout to win elections. The first American writer that relied on his writing for his livelihood was drugged, beaten and dragged all over Baltimore to vote by thugs of the Whig party resulting in his death.
Read entire article at The Memory Place
His first wife, Virginia, passed away two years before his death. Virginia was the love of his life, his first wife, his first cousin and thirteen years old. Her death from consumption was brutal and quick. Two weeks after the last day Edgar Allen Poe spent outside, before dying in a hospital, he was scheduled to remarry. Why then was he found wearing another man’s clothes, delirious, stretched out on a wooden plank in front of a saloon?
It was probably local politics that made Poe in that position. The saloon that was a polling place and this occurred on election day. The 4th ward of Baltimore was under a high contested local race and the whigs needed a big turnout. The Whigs utilized brutal forms of voter fraud to increase their turnout to win elections. The first American writer that relied on his writing for his livelihood was drugged, beaten and dragged all over Baltimore to vote by thugs of the Whig party resulting in his death.