Text: William Whipple, “Chapter II,” A Study of Edgar Allan Poe's Satiric Patterns Story, dissertation, 1951, pp. 150-180 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 150:]

Edgar Allan Poe thus summarized his claim for political preferment when, on June 26, 1841, he replied to F. W,. Thomas's letter suggesting he try for a clerkship under President Tyler. For the next two years Poe lived in expectation that he would get such an appointment. But it was not to be.

Professor Quinn has adequately covered this phase of Poe's struggle to find some position which would offer him financial security.(2) Nevertheless, we are curious as to what Poe felt he had done which could be construed as a “battle” for Harrison. Was this one of Poe's myths in which he stated for fact what he wished to be fact? Certainly we have no evidence that Poe engaged in stump-speaking, originated campaign songs, or wrote political [page 151:] essays.(1) In what, then, did his service for Harrison consist? I wish to suggest that Poe, in all likelihood, had specific reference to two satires which he wrote in 1839 satirizing the democratic incumbents, President Martin Van Buren and Vice President Richard M. Johnson.

In August, 1839, Edgar Allan Poe published a burlesque entitled, “The Man That Was Used Up.”(2) The narrator, in this tale, attempts to find the explanation for a subtle peculiarity in the otherwise perfect person of General John A. B. C. Smith, a man reputed to have performed prodigious deeds of valor in a swamp fight against the Indians. The narrator, after a series of polite, but futile, interrogations of the guests, discovers the answer is that, as a consequence of his great daring, the General was literally shot to pieces and is now a completely artificial man — a ‘used up’ man.(3) The story is of little consequence aside from its satiric reference; yet Poe accorded the tale a value which readers have failed to understand.(4) However, once we recognize the object of the satire we can understand [page 152:] why Poe valued it higher than its intrinsic worth would justify, since the subject of the satire was Richard M. Johnson, Vice President of the United States.

Colonel R. M. Johnson, then a congressman from Kentucky, gained his reputation for great valor in the Battle of the Thames in October, 1813, The battle occurred when General Harrison's forces overtook the retreating British Army, commanded by General Proctore The British set their battle lines so that their left flank was secured by the Thames River and their right flank was protected by the swamp and by the Indian forces under Tecumseh, who had taken defensive positions behind the swamp.(1)

General Harrison ordered Johnson to charge the British columns with his mounted regiment. However, Johnson divided his regiment into two battalions, sending one battallion,under the command of his brother James, against the British while he led the other battalion through the swamp and against the Indians, Before crossing the swamp Colonel Johnson organized a spearhead of twenty volunteers, called The Forlorn Hope, which he led in the attack. After they had crossed the swamp, Johnson's troops found the Indians ensconced behind logs and trees so they dismounted. Colonel Johnson alone, seated on a [page 153:] white horse, remained mounted during the battle.(1) Eyewitness accounts of the battle vary in detail, but substantially the report of Mr. Samuel R. Brown is typical:

The fierceness of the battle is accentuated when we learn that, of the twenty who made up The Forlorn Hope, fifteen were killed, four wounded, and only one escaped unhurt.(3) By March, 1814, Richard M. Johnson was back in Washington attending leglslative sessions. The Niles Weekly Register reported,

And Richard Rush, who saw Johnson at some of Mrs. Madison's parties, later described him as,

Although he gradually regained his health, Johnson was frequently bothered by the reinflamation of his wounds.(3)

Naturally, Colonel Johnson's military record was made use of in his candidacy for the Vice Presidency in 1836 and for his re-election in 1840. Edgar Allan Poe was in Baltimore in May, 1835, when the Democratic convention split over the nomination of Richard M. Johnson for the second place on the party ticket and when the Virginia delegation walked out.(4) Before the Virginia delegates left the convention Mr. Holt, the Kentucky delegate, ad dressed to them a long speech eulogizing Mr. Johnson's [page 155:] humble birth, humanitarian acts, and liberal legislation, continuing,

When we compare the military career of Vice President Johnson with Poe's satire we are struck, even at this distance in time, with the obvious similarities: the swamp fight, the prodigles of valor, the shattered body. Any one of these clues was probably sufficient to insure a correct interpretation of the satire by people already beginning to warm to the personalities which made the 1840 campaign such a bonfire of political emotionalism.

A glance at the 1840 campaign which followed close on the heels of the publication of Poe's story will show us how fully Poe was aware of the political tension. Whig papers accused Johnson, in his campalgn speeches, of laying undue importance and emphasis on his own contribution to the Thames battle.(2) In his Ohio [page 156:] speeches he was accused of opening his shirt to show his scars of war.(1) But even though the Whigs objected to Johnson's use of his war record they could not belittle it. In most of their political bickering they shied away from Johnson, preferring to compare their war hero, Harrison, with Martin Van Buren, the political boss.

The Log-Cabin-Hard-Cider campaign of the Whigs with its singling, shouting, demonstrative mobs, and jingolstic slogans, caught the Democrats off balance. They were hard put to find even such weak catchphrases as

to counteract the telling effect of the Whig songs and rallying cries. The most popular of the Whig songs, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” was written by a Pennsylvanian, Alexander Ross, in the fall of 1840, The chorus of this song runs,

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too — Tippecanoe and Tyler too

And with them we’ll beat little Van, Van, Van is a used up man

And with them we’ll beat little Van.(3) [page 157:]

It is impossible to say that Ross has directly echoed Edgar Allan Poe's phrase, a “used up” man, for the expression was a familiar one in America during the eighteen thirties and forties.(1) On the other hand, the two men's use of the term to ridicule a democratic candidate suggests either a consciousness of Poe's satire on the part of Ross or a common source of political reference of which we are no longer cognizant.

In any case, the allusions Poe makes to Colonel Richard M, Johnson's military career and the closeness with which this tale parallels the attacks of the campaign bear out the thesis that Poe has written, here, a satire of a political figure in terms understandable to his contemporaries.

“The Devil in the Belfry”(2) was first published in May, 1839, and, although it is an earlier satire than “The Man That Was Used Up,” it has more political references, greater obscurlty, and less broad burlesque. “The Devil in the Belfry” is a story of a little, sleepy Dutch village whose primary interests are in cabbages, pigs, and the time. All has gone well until a stranger comes into the [page 158:] village, upsets the Town Council clock and thus turns the whole village into a state of uncertainty and confusion.(1)

Unlike the preceding story, “The Devil in the Belfry” makes an interesting Irvingesque tele, quite aside from its political implications; but unless one recognizes the object of its satire, one is uncomfortable with the intrusion of the grotesque in the story. The humor of the conception is not enough to explain the exaggerated conformity of the villagers, the identification of the stranger with the devil, and the stress on cabbages, pigs, and repeaters. One feels that there must be something lurking behind all this. In this satiric tale, as in the preceding one, we rust be conversant with the political idiom and thinking of the period to understand the allusions that Poe was making.

President Martin Van Buren was just under five feet six inches tall, trim, slender, a dandy in dress, and fastidious in his habits. His nose was prominent and slightly hooked; he wore sideburns which came down to the points of his jaw, and “he retained always the same disarming smile, the guileless blue eyes, the courtly mannerisms and stylish tastes.”(2) It was always a puzzle to Washingtonians where Van Buren had learned his bows, his [page 159:] elaborate manners, and his old-world ways. Gossip spread the rumor that Van Buren wore a bedroom rug bare while standing before a mirror rehearsing these bows and steps.(1) In keeping with the age Van Buren was addicted to snuff, but unlike his contemporaries Van Buren could make a pinch of snuff serve a political purpose.(2)

Van Buren's political rise was accomplished in a manner strangely unlike that which elevated his predecessors. Van Buren was politically sagacious. But his sagacity was supported by a powerful political machine which was perfectly disciplined and brilliantly managed. The Regency, as Van Buren's machine was called, attained almost complete control of New York politics.(3) And it was Van Buren, more than Jackson, who gave America its basic lesson in the use of political patronage.(4) Trading votes, importing people at election time, keeping party [page 160:] workers happy, and getting out the vote were all skills of which Van Buren was master. David Crockett's amusing, if not disinterested, account of his visit to “Fivepoints,” near the center of New York City, is illustrative of a Whig's view of the New York Democratic machine.

Poe lived in New York in 1837 and 1838, and may have been struck, like Crockett, by this rapacious political monster — the Regency.(2)

Like any president, Van Buren was an easy target for political writers and cartoonists. His stature, back ground, and political williness earned himthe nicknames: Little Van, The Fox, The Magician, The Flying Dutchman, [page 161:] and many others.(1) Crockett likened him to a pig feeding from the public trough.(2) A cartoon in 1836 pictured Van Buren as a farmer feeding his ‘Regency’ pigs.(3) There was scarcely a Whig song in the 1840 campaign which did not make some reference to sending Van Buren back to Kinderhook to raise cabbages.(4) Illustrative of these nicknemes is the stanza from the campaign song, “Harrison and Liberty.”

No more we’ll trust to cabbage-heads,

Or Kinderhook Physicians,

No more we’ll bow to Cabinets

Or Fox-like sly Magicians.(5)

If we steep ourselves in this political atmosphere of the late 1830's; we no longer find the allusions in “The Devil in the Belfry” obscure. We see in the little devil who bows and pirouettes, whose hair is tied in curl-papers, who is constantly smiling and seems so self-satisfied, a delightful parody of Van Buren's dandyism and his acquired courtly mannerisms. We are reminded of the nickname, Flying Dutchman, when this stranger pigeon-wings up to the belfry. When the devil claps the chapeau de bras (hat [page 162:] of power) on the belfry keeper we think instantly of the Regency's control of New York politics and the nation's, The pigs with the repeaters tied to their tails are a clear allusion to a practise of New York machine politics that Poe could easily have observed.(1) But even if these escape us we are caught again by the stranger's sitting on the belfry keeper and fiddling a double jig, “Paddy O’Rafferty,” for the delight of the Irish riff-raff which Crockett has described.(2) The hooked nose of the devil, the gold smuffbox, and the people's deference to the steeple clock all give us corroborative evidence that Poe was satirizing a particular individual, President Martin Van Buren.

To what extent Poe was fusing Kinderhook, New York, and Washington in delineating the village of Vondervotteimittiss would be difficult to determine, for we know that at the time Poe published the story President Van Buren was making preparations for his triumphant June, 1839, visit to both Kinderhook and New York.(3) Under the circumstances it seems unreasonable to go back to his childhood in Iroine, Ayrshire, Scotland, to find the source of this [page 163:] Dutch village.(1)

And finally, in the light of the gpproaching elections, we cannot mistake the political significance of Poe's appeal,

That Van Buren was ejected from the presidency in 1840 would argue that some voters may have wished to “restore the ancient order of things” in the national government; although Poe's satire could hardly have been effective enough to have influenced this outcome.

Now that we have observed how Edgar Allan Poe made artistic use of the political interests and events current in 1839, we are naturally led to question whether Poe had not attempted political satire earlier. His claim that he battled for Harrison “when opportunity offered” is indefinite enough to include the possibility that he found opportunity to strike out for Harrison earlier than the 1840 campaign. The two stories, “Four Beasts in One” and “King Pest, are analogous enough to events occurring at the time they were written to encourage us to speculate, in lieu of final proof, as to whether Poe was [page 164:] attempting political satire as early as 1833.(1) However, before we proceed, it is advisable to review Jackson's two terms of office in order to recall the political activity and turmoil which surrounded Poe.

Actually the Relgn of King Andrew I(2) did not begin until Andrew Jackson took the oath of office, March 4, 1829, The mildly demonstrative inaugurations which had preceded the election of Jackson had not prepared the quiet people of Washington for the noisy excltement, raucous laughter, exultation, and enthusiastic drinking of the hoards: of people who swarmed the White House lawn on this inaugural day.(3) Among these happy people were some who saw this inauguration as the first blinding flash heralding a democratic millenlum. One such observer rejoiced, “it was the people's day, the people's president, and the people would rule.”(4) Still others saw not light but darkness in the crude, illiterate mob who seemed to expect to take a personal pert in running the government. Justice Story wrote in despair that [page 165:]

Many conservatives whose natural party, the Federalist, was no longer potent, and who regarded with trepidation the rise of the common man, gravitated to the Whig party, which required only that its members be Anti-Jackson.(2)

President Jackson's term of office, however, was not to be the happy one of cheering mobs and triumphant marches that this first day augured. Even before he moved into the White House troubles had begun to settle upon him.. On December 22, 1828, his wife, Rachel, died hastened to her death, Jackson believed, by the vicious attacks on her character during the election campaign.(3) The naming of the Cablnet brought on the strange battle between Jackson and the socially prominent Washington wives which became known as the Eaton affair.(4) Jackson, always loyal to his friends, demanded that Washington soclety accept Mrs. Peggy Timberlake Eaton; but he was to learn that while a general may hang a recalcitrant Indian to restore discipline, a president is powerless [page 166:] against a woman who has taken the warpath against immorality. Secretary of State Van Buren, a bachelor, earned President Jackson's affection by his sponsoring invitations for Mrs. Eaton.(1) Nevertheless, as the months passed, the impasse which the stubborn Jackson had reached with the equally obdurate wives could be relieved only by the resignation xe of the cabinet.(2) But while tension was still mounting over the status of Peggy Eaton, Andrew Jackson learned, for the first time, that Vice President Calhoun had sug gested, during a meeting of President Monroe's Cabinet in 1813, that General Jackson be brought to military trial for his misconduct of the Florida campaign.(3) William H. Crawford, the paralyzed and disappointed presidential candidate and enemy of Calhoun, revealed this information to Jackson — causing an immediate split between: Jackson and Calhoun and securing the nomination for Vice President, in 1832, for the waiting Martin Van Buren.(4)

President Jackson's second term was largely in volved with such questions as the recharter of the Bank, hard money, and nullification.(5) Colonel Thomas Hart [page 167:] Benton, Senator from Missouri, led the attack on the Bank and supported the coinage of gold, From this faith in hard money Benton was nicknamed ‘Old Bullion,’ and gold coins were referred to as ‘Benton mint drops.’(1) Jackson's famous Kitchen Cabinet was made up of such men as Francis Preston Blair, Amos Kendall, William B. Lewis, and Isaac Hill.(2) Francis Blair was the editor of the aggressive administration paper, The Globe.(3) Amos Kendall was considered the moving spirit behind Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet, and Jackson, in course of time, appointed him Postmaster General.(4)

In the popular mind, however, even the Kitchen Cabinet had to leave room next to the president for the lanky rustic, Major Jack Downing of Downingville. Created by Seba Smith, Jack had many foster parents who claimed him.(5) Cartoonists varied in their conception of him but in the main he was represented as an uncouth, tall, some times hawk-nosed, soldier~-citizen who stood by to encourage [page 168:] or advise the President.(1) Now, after this brief review of politics during Jackson's two terms as president, we will turn to a consideration of the two satires.

“King Pest” was published in. September, 1835.(2) As Ruth Leigh Hudson has pointed out, the main plot of the story seems to have been borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli's “Palace of the Wines,” a digression in the novel Vivian Grey.(3) Miss Hudson suggests that perhaps Poe was satirizing Disraeli's use of the grotesque or, even, satirizing the theory underlying the grotesque as an artistic [page 169:] form.(1) I should like to make an alternate suggestion that perhaps Poe was not satirizing Disraeli but, instead, found his plot an excellent vehicle for a satire on a political situation.

In “King Pest” two sailors called Legs and Tarpaulin, not having paid their bill, make their escape from the tavern by running down St. Andrew's stairs into the plague-ridden part of the city. As they flee, Tarpaulin, in order to keep up, must grab hold of Legs's doublet. Eventually they stop in front of an undertaker's parlor in which they hear sounds of revelry. They immediately break in to find a party of six people engaging in a drinking bout. The leader is called King Pest the First. He is as tall as Legs, but more emaciated, yellow-complexioned, and has a high forehead. The Serene Consort is an extremely fat, dropsical woman with a red face and a large mouth. The Arch-Duchess Anapest is a slender, graceful woman with a hectic glow on her cheeks and an air of haut ton in her manner. Her nose is grotesquely long. The man sitting next to her has cheeks which rest on his shoulders, he is proud, and his leg is bandaged. In contrast to him there is a thin men with “the horrors” whose large ears prick up at the sound of the cork. And s finally, there is a man, paralyzed and dressed in a coffin, [page 170:] whose huge eyes gaze on the ceiling. Legs and Tarpaulin sit among this company, but in an argument over drinking “Black Strap,” a fight ensues and Legs and Tarpaulin make their escape, taking with them, respectively, the Serene Consort and Arch-Duchess Anapest.(1)

Poe has entitled this story, “A Tale Containing an Allegory,” and given it the motto:

The Gods do bear and will allow In kings

The things which they abhor in rascal routes.(2)

“King Pest” contains many of the Gothic elements of Poe's arabesque stories: the devastation of the plague (cholera), the foreboding atmosphere of death, and the gloomy, oppressive surroundings. Unlike in his earlier satiric tale — “Bon Bon” and “Duc de Omlette [[Omelette]]” — Poe did not burlesque these Gothic elements; instead, he used the atmosphere which they created to add to the effectiveness of his grotesque.

If Poe meant King Pest for a political satire, and for speculative purposes let us suppose he did, what initial political spark kindled Poe's imagination? It is possible that he was struck by the linking of cholera and politics which was current in the election campaign of 1832, when Washington D. Co, like Baltimore, was being swept by the cholera. He may even have read such remarks [page 171:] as that by the Whig editor who wrote, “the only effectual cure, under existing circumstances, for genuine Jacksonianism is equally genuine Asiatic Spasmodic Cholera.”(1) Or, Poe may have been prompted by his Whig sympathies to see the banquet held for President Jackson on January 8, 1835, to celebrate the anniversary of his victory at New Orleans and the occasion of the abolishment of the national debt as the debacle of the wine cellar.(2) The banquet was highly publicized and was attended by two hundred and fifty party leaders, men like Van Buren, Benton, Blair, Kendall, and Johnson. It was a bibulous affair with an unusually large number of toasts being drunk. The toast by Colonel Richard M. Johnson is representative: “He prevented booty, and he protected beauty.”(3) It may even be that the attempted assassination of President Jackson three weeks later, January 30, 1835, contributed something toward Poe's choosing an undertaker's establishment for the setting.(4)

In examining “King Pest” we find that the revelers are strongly suggestive of political figures close to [page 172:] Jacksons King Pest the First seems to point to Jackson since Jackson was caricatured as King Andrew the First. King Pest is tall, gaunt, emaciated, with a high forehead. One needs only to look at the cartoons of Jackson to realize how closely the description fits.(1)

Queen Pest, the Serene Consort, is a fat, dropsical, red-faced woman much like Rachel Jackson whose face was reddened by farm work and who was said to be soc fat she showed how far the skin could stretch.(2) The slender Arche Duchess Anapest, with her air of high society, her long nose, the hectic flush on her cheeks and the leaden complexion, could easily be a satire of the social climber, Peggy Eaton, who was famous for her Greek profile and lovely complexion.(3) The heavy-jowled, proud, wheezing man with the bandaged leg compares closely with the egotistical Colonel Benton who possessed a massive head and who was known for his opposition to paper money or ‘shin plasters.’(4) He was noted, too, for wearing the same cut [page 173:] of double-breasted frock-coat all during his thirty years in Congress.(1) The thin, skeletonized man with the large ears which pricked up at the sound of a popping cork may well be The Globe editor, Francis Blair. Blair's duties made him attend a great many social affairs and, in addition to the drinking he did at these affairs, his wife prescribed for his health a shot of whiskey to be taken after each meal.(2) Although almost six feet tall, he weighed only one hundred and seven pounds.(3) The paralyzed man dressed in the new coffin is more difficult to identify with certainty. It would seem, to make this Kitchen Cabinet complete, he should be Amos Kendall. Yet, the reference to his paralyzed condition, the fact he is wearing a new coffin, and that he has trouble with his eyes, all point to William He Crawford who died in September, 1834, hardly a year before Poe's story was published.(4)

Tarpaulin, the sailor, seems to have been intended as Martin Van Buren. This is suggested by his stature, [page 174:] his placement at the head of the table, and by his courtesy toward the Arch-Duchess Anapest.(1) Legs seems to reflect certain characteristics associated with the redoubtable Major Jack Downing. He has Jack's coarse, impulsive — sometimes violent~personality. He has Jack's physical characteristics tall, thin, with a hawk-nose and he has the Major's respect for the President. And, finally, it is through Legs's eyes that we are shown the Pest family just as Jack Downing was the observer of the Jackson administration. One is led to speculate, too, whether the symbolical character of Jack Downing might not illuminate Poe's reason for the subtitle, “A Tale Containing an Allegory,” i.e., the American people and the probable-next-president journey down into the pestilential depths of Jackson's reign.

The other allusions — the men's escape from the ship Free and Easy, their presence in St. Andrew's parish, and their descent down St. Andrew's stairs into the plague-ridden part of the city — seem all to strengthen the impression that Poe has borrowed Disraeli's incident, “The Palace of the Wines,” and used it for a satire with political implications: implications which may depend upon a political viewpoint contemporaneous with Poe's own for their full [page 175:] understanding.(1) This satiric tale might easily retain the reader's interest without an awareness of its allusions, at least for those readers who enjoy Poe's Gothic tales. Nevertheless, certain questions remain to puzzle us. For instance, if this is simply a Gothic tale, what is its allegorical meaning? If this tale is merely a readaptation of Disraeli's “Palace of Wines” incident, what is the significance of the motto? why do the grotesque characters differ from their originals? If we consider the story only as another arabesque tale, we find no satisfactory answer to these questions. On the other hand, if Poe did intend the tale for a political satire, then the Gothic and grotesque elements become focused toward a unity of purpose that is otherwise absent. Also, there are possibilities, as we have shown, of an allegorical interpretation. The motto, too, has significance if it alludes to the latitude that might be allowed to a Jackson as contrasted to that which might be allowed a Van Buren. And of course, an identification of the revelers with political figures would explain Poe's altering Disraeli's grotesque characters while still clinging to the general plot. The evidence in favor of a political interpretation of this tale is suggestive if not conclusive; its plausibility is made stronger when we realize that Poe was to return to political satire in 1839. [page 176:]

The second story, “Four Beasts in One,” although published after “King Pest,” was written in 1833.(1) The reader is returned to the year of the world 3830, to the city Antioch, to watch the triumphant procession of the King of Syria. The King, whose courtiers fawn upon him and kiss his heels, is a cameleopard. A brief uprising occurs and the King is forced to run for his life. He gains the sanctuary of the amphitheater and the celebration resumes. Obviously, such a slight story has its only significance in the portrayal of the relations between the King and his subjects. A close reading of the story will show that this relationship is being satirized. Insofar as I have been able to discover, Poe had no definite political event in mind when he wrote this tale. Nevertheless, Jacksonianism is certainly under attack in this story. The King of Syria becomes a tall, lanky individual like Jackson. He is followed by two concubines, harking back again to the rumors about Mrs. Jackson and Peggy Eaton. The idea of the race may have come to Poe from political cartoons; for it was a favorite device in depicting an elections The courtiers! desertion of the cameleopards when danger threatened recalls to us E. W. Clay's cartoon of Jackson's cabinet, published in 1831, entitled, “Rats Leaving a [page 177:] Falling House.”(1) The courtier's practise of giving the King extra titles, such as “prince of Poets,” may be a covert thrust at Jackson who was referred to as the “Hero of New Orleans,” “The General,” “King Andrew, “ and “Old Hickory.” By the beasts which turn on their masters we can be reasonably sure that Poe meant the “mob” for it is in line with his later, more caustic, comments on the baseness of mobs.(2) However, with all these bits of satire, there seems to be no sustained satirical pattern that can be traced.

For ease of handling we have discussed these stories in inverse order from that in which they were written. When we look at them chronologically we see that Poe's first satire, “Four Beasts in One,” is general in its satiric outlines and obscure in many of its references. in “King Pest” he is still obscure but may have tried to satirize a particular event and a specific group of people. “The Devil in the Belfry” shows that Poe has at last found a way to fit his political satire within the framework of his tale without destroying the elements of the grotesque or obscuring the object being satirized. “The Man That was Used Up” was probably his most successful political satire because of its simplicity, [page 178:] singleness of alm, and the conspicuousness of its political reference.

The foregoing attempts at political satire with which we dealt so fully were not isolated evidences of political interest on Poe's part. Occasional political preferences, in satiric asides, in his other stories bear out, in a minor degree, what we have discovered about his party sympathies and political leanings.

For instance, in “Loss of Breath,” printed in 1832, Poe ridicules the party controversies in which a Whig paper makes a statement and a Democratic paper immediately prints a reply, rejoinder, confutation, and justification.(1) In “The Adventures of Hans Phall” he ascribes the inability of Hans to get work to the interest people were taking in long speeches, radicalism, and keeping up with the “march of intellect.”(2) Poe gives us a hint of his attitude toward Van Buren when he has Zenobia, in an attempt at erudition, misquote a Spanish Poem. Her version, besides burlesquing the original quotation, inserts the nonsense wards, “Vanny Buren . . . Pork and pleasure,” an allusion to what Van Buren's term meant to people who had just experienced the depression of 1837.(3) [page 179:]

In “The Colloquy of Monos and Una,” Poe: foreshadows his final summing up of the ills of Democracy by making it one of the evidences of the dissolution of the world. Also, he advances the “law of gradation” as the reason democracy is not feasible.(1) Poe returns to using a lighter satiric touch in “Some Words With a Mummy.” He caricatures political stump speakers and even whisks his satiric brush at the Whigs.(2) This allusion has added significance when we aroi Poe had tried to get government employment during Tyler's term but had failed.(3) Poe mocks the whole history of the development of the American Republic and, like Justice Story, decries the rule of the mob.

Poe likes to present his general remarks on democratic thought either in the imaginative future or in the past. In “The Sphinx” he tells us that no one who saw Democracy from a perspective would consider it a fit government.(4) Tt is from the perspective of the future that Poe discusses democracy in “Mellonta Tauta.” This is his most complete and bitter diatribe. He rests his case as prosecutor on these arguments: the laws of gradation [page 180:] disprove democracy's suitability; universal suffrage is ‘meddling’ and results only in fraudulent vote-getting schemes; rascality always rises to the top in a democracy; and democracy inevitably succumbs to the despotism of the mob. All of which makes it a good government for dogs! Poe also ridicules Thomas Hart Benton's tautology and ascribes this story to a translation by Martin Van Buren Mavis, The Toughkeepsie seer.(1)

In concluding, it seems possible to say that Poe showed a definite development in his attempts at satirizing political foibles and ills. In 1833, 1835, and 1839 he made attempts at direct satire culminating in the burlesque, “The Man That Was Used Up.” Yet Poe seemed to be gradually withdrawing into a greater conservatism than that represented by the Whig party; until, by 1849, he was attacking democracy instead of Democrats. Had he lived, Poe would probably not again have turned to direct satire of a current figure. But the direction of his development does seem to indicate that he would have become more Swiftian in his attack against the political philosophy of Jacksonianism.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 150:]

1 John H. Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe, His Life, Letters, and Opinions (New York: Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co., 1891), p. 182.

2 Quinn, Poe, pp. 321-81.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 151:]

1 Killis Campbell has credited Poe with a stanza entitled, “Fragment of a Campaign Song.” Since it was written in. the winter of 1843-44, and was not printed until after Poe's death, it could not have been the contribution to which Poe refers in his letter. See Killis Campbell, op. cit., p. 207.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 1076.

3 Ibid., I, 255.

4 Quinn, Poe, p. 283.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 152:]

1 Leland W. Meyer, The Life and Times of Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 122-24.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 153:]

1 Ibid., pp. 124-35.

2 Niles Weekly Register, VI (April 16, 1814), 111-12. See also, Meyer, op. cit., pp. 130-33, for other accounts of the battle.

3 Meyer, op. cit., p. 128.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 154:]

1 Ibid., p. 37.

2 Ibid., p. 307.

3 Ibid., p. 309.

4 Quinn, Poe, pp. 217-18. Mr. Quinn writes that Poe was in Baltimore from 1831 until after July 20, 1835. Edward Stanwood, A History of the Presidential Elections (Boston: James R. Osgood and Coe, 16884), ppe 11lo16. The convention was held on the 20th of May. Niles Weekly Register, XLVIII (May 30, 1835), 226-27. A list of the Virginia delegation shows a Mr. Josiah Ellis to have been a member. This Josiah Ellis may have been the uncle to Mr. Allan's partner, Charles Ellis.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 155:]

1 Niles Weekly Register, XLVIII (June 6, 1835), 246-417.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 155, running to the bottom of page 156:]

2 National Intelligencer, XLI (November 21, 1840), 1. See also: By a Workingmen, More Than 100 Reasons Harrison Should Be Elected, a Whig political pamphlet (Boston: [page 156:] Tuttle, Demett and Chisholm, 1840), p. 15. In one of the Whig's popular propaganda documents, a Mr. A. J. S. Smith admits that Colonel Johnson led the van and performed gallantly but refuted the often-expressed opinion that the plan of the Thames campaign, too, was Johnson's.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 156:]

1 Meyer, op. cit., p. 433.

2 Marquis James, Andrew Jackson, Portrait of a President (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967), p. 451.

3 Niles Weekly Register, LIX (November 7, 1840), 156-57.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 157:]

1 Richard H. Thornton, An American Glosssry (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1912), II, 921; or, A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, (ed) Sir Wm. Craigle and James E. Hurlbert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), IV, 2401.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 1076.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 158:]

1 Ibid., pp. 248-54.

2 Holmes Alexander, The American Talleyrand (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), pp. 47, 10.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 159:]

1 Ibid., pp. 122-73.

2 Ibid., pp. 513-15. D. T. Lynch, An Epoch and A Man, (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929), pp. 373-74. Clay made an eloquent appeal to Van Buren, as he was preslding over the Senate, on the bank issue. It was worded so that any answer would have had political repercussions. Ven Buren listened attentively, arose from his seat and beckoned a senator to preside (as was customary when the Vice President addressed the floor,) walked to where Clay had resumed his seat and asked for a pinch of his “excellent snuff,” then turned and walked out of the Senate without a word in reply to Clay's plea.

3 Ibid., pp. 122-73.

4 Ibid., pp. 251-53.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 160:]

1 David Crockett, The Autobiography of David Crockett (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925), pp. 158-59. Dickens's description of Fivepolnts tallies closely with Crockett's. See Charles Dickens, American Notes (Boston: Thompson Publishing Co., n.d.), pp. 78 ff.

2 Quinn, Poe, pp. 263-68.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 161:]

1 Samuel P. Orth, Five American Politicians (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers’ Company, 1906), pe 160. Alexander, op. cit., p. 377

2 Crockett, op. cit., p. 260.

3 A Nevins and F. Weitenkampf, A Century of Political Cartoons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), p. 42.

4 The Log Cabin SongBook (New York: published at Log Cabin Office, 1840).

5 Ibid., p. 31.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 162:]

1 Lynch, op. cit., p. 459. Mr. Lynch gives evidence that the use of ‘repeaters’ was practised by both parties.

2 Francis O'Neill (ed.), O'Neill's Music of Ireland, arr. by James O'Neill (Chicago: Lyon and Healy, 1903), p. 177.:

1 [[3]] Alexander, op. cit., pp. 357-61.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 163:]

1 Mary E. Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe the Man (Chicago: John C. Winston Company, 1936), I, 571-72.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 254.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 164:]

1 Quinn, Poe, pp. 199-202.

2 Roger Butterfield, The American Past (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), p 92.

3 James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1860), III, 169-71.

4 John B. McMasters, History of the People of the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Cos; 1926), V, 525.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 165:]

1 Parton, op. cit., p. 170.

2 Charles. A. Beard, The American Party Battle (New York: Macmillan Co., 1928), pp. 66-72.

3 George M. Stephenson, American History to 1865 (New York: Harper Bros., 1940), p. 290.

4 Ibid., p. 294.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 166:]

1 Ibid., pp. 294-95.

2 Frederick Jackson Turner, The United States: 1830-1850. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1935), p. 392.

3 William M. Meigs, The Life of John Caldwell Calhoun (New York: Neal Publishing Co., 1917), II, 399-412.

4 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), pp. 54-55.

5 Stephenson, op. cit., pp. 304 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 167:]

1 William M. Meigs, Life of Thomas Hart Benton (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1904), pp. 2628-63.

2 Stephenson, op. cit., p. 292.

3 Ibid., p. 293.

4 Ibid., pp. 292 ff.

5 Mary Alice Wyman, Two American Pioneers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), pp. 92-93. For Poe's attitude see also, Harrison, op. cit., XV, 200.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 168:]

1 For illustrations of the cartoonists conception of Jack Downing, see: William Murrell, A History of American Graphic Humor (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), illustrations 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 14l. See also the illustrations in: Seba Smith, The Life and Writings of Major Jack Downing (Boston: Lilly, Wait, Cole man, and Holden, 1833), and Select Letters of Major Jack Downing of Downingville Militia (Philadelphia: Whithington and Davis, 1834). The Major became so popular that for a time it seemed that he would supersede both Brother Jonathan and Uncle Sam as the symbol for the American people. Ibid., p. 132. The Major's rank was conferred upon him, he wrote, for his work in putting down the nullifiers., In 1832 he made himself available as a candidate for the presidency and in 1834 he published his own life of Andrew Jackson. Wyman, op. cit., pp. 76, 84-85, By 1837 so many writers made free use of Jack's personality that he became sick and died. But it was what Poe would have called a premature burial, for Jack Downing letters continued to circulate and, finally, Seba Smith capitulated and allowed Jack's body to rejoin a spirit which could not be interred. Ibid., pp. 85-88.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, p. 1075.

3 Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1870), I, 284 ff. Poe's characters differ from Disraeli's even though Poe has borrowed Disraeli's technique of exaggerating a single feature of each character.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 169:]

1 Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Poe and Disraeli,” American Literature, VIII (January, 1937), 402-16.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 170:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 195.

2 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 171:]

1 Claude G. Bowers, The Party Battles of the Jackson Period (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933), pp. 247, 242, 249.

2 Ben Perley Poore, “Perley's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1886), I, 170.

3 The Globe, IV (January 14, 1835), 1.

4 Parton, op. cit., pp. 582 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 172:]

1 Murrell, op. cit., pp. 102, 109-110, 122. Butterfield, op. cit., p. 92. Nevins and Weltenkampf, op. cit., p. 42.

2 Marquis James, Andrew Jackson the Border Captain (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1933), p. 279.

3 Bowers, op. cit., p. 117.

4 William M. Meigs, Life of Thomas Hart Benton (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1904), pp. 146, 262, 436, 451 ff. Schlesinger, ope. cit., pp. 126-27, Benton refused to accept anything but coin in change. On one occasion he is reported to have said, “What! Do you want a coroner's jury to sit and say, ‘Old Bullion died of shinplasters’?”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 173:]

1 Perley, op. cit., I, 66.

2 Schlesinger, op. cit., p. 71.

3 William E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933), I, 62.

4 Philip Jackson Green, The Public Life of William Harris Crawford (Chicago: University of Chicago Libraries, 1938), p. 29. J. D. E. Shipp, Giant Days (Americus, Georgia: Southern Printers, 1909), p. 213.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 174:]

1 The gossip of the period linked both Jackson and Van Buren with Mrs. Eaton. See: Lynch, op. cit., p. 357, and A. B. Norton, The Great Revolution of 1840 (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1888), p. 26.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 175:]

1 Campbell, op. cit., p. 137.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 176:]

1 Quinn, Poe, pp. 199-202. “Four Beasts in One” was published in the Southern Literary Messenger under the title, “Epimanes.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 177:]

1 Murrell, op. cit., pp. 102, 128, 109-10.

[[2]] Harrison, op. cit., XVI, 16061, Quinn, Poe, pp. 94-95.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 178:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 115. The story was published November 10, 1832.

2 Ibid., p. 164. Printed June, 1835.

[[3]] Ibid., p. 246. Printed November, 1838. As late as 1849, in his “Marginalia,” Poe was making satiric reference to the “little magician.” Harrison, op. cit., XVI, 163.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 179:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 360. Printed August, 1841.

2 Ibid., pp. 626, 633. Printed April, 1845.

3 Quinn, Poe, pp. 360, 362, 379-80.

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 665. Printed January, 1846.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 180:]

1 Ibid., pp. 689 ff. Printed February, 1849.