Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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This was surprising to me...
How Edgar Allan Poe Got Kicked Out of the U.S. Army
We don't think of Poe as a veteran writer, but his brief stint in the U.S. Army was gloriously successful—until the court martial.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-edgar-allen-poe-got-kicked-out-of-the-us-army
Excerpts:
To be an artificer was to occupy a position of life-and-death responsibility. More than valorous acts of heroism, one’s success or failure on the battlefield would depend on mechanical know-how and attention to detail. As a side benefit, the position came with twice the pay and a daily ration of liquor, best applied conservatively. A miniscule error in a shell’s construction could result in premature detonation and the death of a gun crew. Poe’s promotion to artificer after only a year or so in service was a recognition of his competence, hard work, precision craftsmanship, and keenly applied scientific intellect, all qualities that would later manifest in his writing, and especially his theorizing about poetry, which often reads more like a technical manual than a cry from the heart.
After serving for a while as sergeant major and artificer, he managed to climb the ladder further, securing a spot at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he trained to become a commissioned officer. His military and writing careers overlapped the most here: his early book, Poems, was dedicated, “To the U.S. Corps of Cadets,” with its printing costs funded by pre-sales to his West Point classmates, who may have been led to believe (mistakenly) that the book would contain more of the ridiculous doggerel lampooning the academy’s officers that had made Poe popular among his peers.
The evidence indicates he toed the line as an enlisted man. The same cannot be said of his time at the service academy. He entered West Point in 1830 and was court-martialed and discharged the next year. Numerous tall tales have circulated about his misdeeds as a cadet: that he often passed out drunk on campus after visits to a local tavern; that he was known to start food fights with baked potatoes lobbed in the mess hall; that he showed up to drill naked except for a hat and a cartridge belt; and most outrageously, that he murdered his tactical officer by throwing him into the Hudson River.
In reality, the truth of Poe’s departure from the army was more mundane. Records indicate he cut classes, drill, and chapel too often to make the grade. His drinking has been mythically exaggerated in its frequency and volume, but alcohol did not agree with him and may have contributed to his delinquency—or maybe not. Amazingly, his two initial roommates at West Point were also court-martialed and discharged, in their cases, for drunkenness and other violations. In interviews given long after the fact, one of these former roommates recalled Poe was often drunk, while the other claimed he had never seen Poe drink. Accounts suggest the former roommate was a liar, and the latter, a pyromaniac. Anyway, there’s no mention of alcohol in any of the numerous and detailed charges laid against Poe by the army, which was aggressively prosecuting drunkenness at the time.
The issue of drinking aside, another factor in Poe’s disgraceful exit from West Point was likely the death of his beloved foster mother in 1829, which could only have reopened old psychic wounds related to the death of his biological mother in early childhood.
The idea of Cadet Poe, however, is fairly well known among West Point students and faculty. Peter Molin, both a UVA graduate and a former English professor at West Point, described Poe to me as “one of the original bad boys” in the academy’s lore. “There is a tradition of cadets who either were bad boys in the ranks or who turned out to be infamous more than famous, a counter-narrative to the legacy of heroes,” Molin said.
I was never at West Point, and while I spent time at UVA and in the enlisted ranks, and picked up a couple English degrees after that, my knowledge of Poe as a veteran comes entirely by way of Molin, especially through his championing of William F. Hecker, author of "Private Perry and Mister Poe." Most of the biographical facts and big ideas in this piece derive from that book. Hecker is one of the few scholars to have rigorously considered Poe’s military career as it relates to his poetic sensibility. This approach is novel in the wider field of Poe studies but not surprising given Hecker’s similarities with his subject. Both he and Poe were artillerymen with a literary bent. Sadly, Major Hecker was killed in action in Najaf, Iraq, in 2006. This essay is dedicated to his memory and to the hope that, in his words, more of us would begin to “publicly discourse about the critical and symbiotic relationship between the American nation, its literature, and its military.”
How Edgar Allan Poe Got Kicked Out of the U.S. Army
We don't think of Poe as a veteran writer, but his brief stint in the U.S. Army was gloriously successful—until the court martial.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-edgar-allen-poe-got-kicked-out-of-the-us-army
Excerpts:
To be an artificer was to occupy a position of life-and-death responsibility. More than valorous acts of heroism, one’s success or failure on the battlefield would depend on mechanical know-how and attention to detail. As a side benefit, the position came with twice the pay and a daily ration of liquor, best applied conservatively. A miniscule error in a shell’s construction could result in premature detonation and the death of a gun crew. Poe’s promotion to artificer after only a year or so in service was a recognition of his competence, hard work, precision craftsmanship, and keenly applied scientific intellect, all qualities that would later manifest in his writing, and especially his theorizing about poetry, which often reads more like a technical manual than a cry from the heart.
After serving for a while as sergeant major and artificer, he managed to climb the ladder further, securing a spot at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he trained to become a commissioned officer. His military and writing careers overlapped the most here: his early book, Poems, was dedicated, “To the U.S. Corps of Cadets,” with its printing costs funded by pre-sales to his West Point classmates, who may have been led to believe (mistakenly) that the book would contain more of the ridiculous doggerel lampooning the academy’s officers that had made Poe popular among his peers.
The evidence indicates he toed the line as an enlisted man. The same cannot be said of his time at the service academy. He entered West Point in 1830 and was court-martialed and discharged the next year. Numerous tall tales have circulated about his misdeeds as a cadet: that he often passed out drunk on campus after visits to a local tavern; that he was known to start food fights with baked potatoes lobbed in the mess hall; that he showed up to drill naked except for a hat and a cartridge belt; and most outrageously, that he murdered his tactical officer by throwing him into the Hudson River.
In reality, the truth of Poe’s departure from the army was more mundane. Records indicate he cut classes, drill, and chapel too often to make the grade. His drinking has been mythically exaggerated in its frequency and volume, but alcohol did not agree with him and may have contributed to his delinquency—or maybe not. Amazingly, his two initial roommates at West Point were also court-martialed and discharged, in their cases, for drunkenness and other violations. In interviews given long after the fact, one of these former roommates recalled Poe was often drunk, while the other claimed he had never seen Poe drink. Accounts suggest the former roommate was a liar, and the latter, a pyromaniac. Anyway, there’s no mention of alcohol in any of the numerous and detailed charges laid against Poe by the army, which was aggressively prosecuting drunkenness at the time.
The issue of drinking aside, another factor in Poe’s disgraceful exit from West Point was likely the death of his beloved foster mother in 1829, which could only have reopened old psychic wounds related to the death of his biological mother in early childhood.
The idea of Cadet Poe, however, is fairly well known among West Point students and faculty. Peter Molin, both a UVA graduate and a former English professor at West Point, described Poe to me as “one of the original bad boys” in the academy’s lore. “There is a tradition of cadets who either were bad boys in the ranks or who turned out to be infamous more than famous, a counter-narrative to the legacy of heroes,” Molin said.
I was never at West Point, and while I spent time at UVA and in the enlisted ranks, and picked up a couple English degrees after that, my knowledge of Poe as a veteran comes entirely by way of Molin, especially through his championing of William F. Hecker, author of "Private Perry and Mister Poe." Most of the biographical facts and big ideas in this piece derive from that book. Hecker is one of the few scholars to have rigorously considered Poe’s military career as it relates to his poetic sensibility. This approach is novel in the wider field of Poe studies but not surprising given Hecker’s similarities with his subject. Both he and Poe were artillerymen with a literary bent. Sadly, Major Hecker was killed in action in Najaf, Iraq, in 2006. This essay is dedicated to his memory and to the hope that, in his words, more of us would begin to “publicly discourse about the critical and symbiotic relationship between the American nation, its literature, and its military.”
