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30 Jul 10 - 10:49 PM (#2955507) Subject: BS: Poe's views or race and slavery From: GUEST,josep
I'm researching the life of Poe and I keep coming across references from people who say Poe was "pro-slavery" and "racist." One source even said, "Virulently racist." But none of these references are supplied with a single link to anything that proves it. It seems the strongest evidence against him is the Paulding-Drayton Review in an 1836 issue of The Southern Literary Messenger of which he was editor. For example, the following is attributed to him: "Our assailants are numerous, and it is indispensable that we should meet the assault with vigor and activity. Nothing is wanting but manly discussion to convince our own people at least, that in continuing to command the services of slaves, they violate no law divine or human, and that in the faithful discharge of their reciprocal obligations lies their duty." The problem is here that if Poe really wrote this, he's delivering a message of the magazine's owners and not necessarily his. We can't be certain that the writer is pro-slavery or merely trying to appear so without really committing. It's an ambiguous statement--no the bible does not forbid slavery and in a land where it is permitted it certainly cannot be against the law as well as the fact that the human race has used slaves for longer than anyone can be certain. So what is the writer really saying? The other problem is that neither rhetoric nor the subject matter is like Poe. He has left no personal statements behind that I am aware in which he comes out for against slavery nor has he left anything behind concerning his feelings or observations of race. Some biographers have made mention of a 1940 article by May Garrettson Evans in the Baltimore Evening Sun concerning a chance discovery in an underground room at the Baltimore Court House of a bill of sale dated December 10, 1829 wherein Edgar Allen Poe is listed as selling a 21-year-old male slave named Edwin to one Henry Ridgway and was acting as an agent for his aunt, Maria Clemm. I have checked and Poe was in Baltimore in 1829 trying to get a series of poems published. The problem is that Poe was very busy shopping his material around and talking with potential publishers. He had only met Maria Clemm that year when he visited the Clemm residence but he did not stay there. The Clemms were poor and it is unknown how Maria Clemm could have come by a slave. Online sources say the slave was inherited but don't say from whom. Evans herself said she did not know how Clemm had come by this slave. Poe's deal with Carey, Lea & Carey fell through and he had to find another publisher. Finally, Hatch & Dunning published the book of poems in December, the same time the slave sale supposedly took place. It is very unlikely Poe could have had the time to sell this slave with all the work he was doing finding a publisher. When a request for a notarized copy of the bill of sale was sent to the Baltimore City Archives, a letter dated April 7, 1976 was received from Ronald Schaefer, Senior Administrative Assistant in the Baltimore City Archives, stating that such a document was not and, to his knowledge, had never been in the City Archives. A Mr. Strickland in Room 610 at the Superior Court had also informed Mr. Schaefer that any such documents over 25 years old had been purged some years earlier and so there was no way of verifying if the bill of sale ever existed. So with these two dead ends, people have analyzed Poe's fiction for clues. If ever there were a truly useless endeavor, it would be scouring a writer's fiction to determine what his personal beliefs were on a subject. So they point out that the slave Jupiter in the story The Gold-Bug is stereotypical. First, Jupiter is not a slave but was manumitted some years earlier. His vernacular would be considered racist today but had he been real it is a certainty that he would have talked in some such manner. Do we know better than Poe about the times in which he lived?? Yes, the language used by characters in the story is politically incorrect today but it's the intention behind the words that matter and I saw nothing there that told me much of anything. Then there is The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym which is full of forces of light vs. forces of dark symbology that attempting to glean Poe's racial views from this is a slippery slope. That didn't stop Toni Morrison. She went on the attack. To then justify calling Poe's story racist she stated, "no early American writer is more important to the concept of American Africanism than Poe." Apparently because she says so. A statement I find to be bewilderingly nonsensical unless she can prove that Americans since Poe's time developed their views of race based on his writings and I doubt this in the extreme. Poe's character, whatever it may have been, has been assassinated by the likes of Toni Morrison as racist, the same woman who absurdly called Bill Clinton "our first black president" which I found so completely incomprehensible that she must have felt pretty stupid for saying that after Obama was elected. He's our 2nd black president if you put any stock in Toni Morrison. Thankfully I don't. What were Poe's political views? As far as I can tell, he was a Whig. I may be wrong about that but that's what it appears. His grandfather, General David Poe, belonged to the Whig Club and The Raven was published first by the American Review which is subtitled on the very issue that contained the poem as "A WHIG JOURNAL." The Whigs were essentially antislavery. They ran the gamut from extreme antislavery to mildly antislavery but you couldn't be a hard line pro-slaver and be a Whig. The Cotton Whigs got Zachary Taylor elected and he was a slave-owner but they were trying to advance a candidate that had broad appeal and didn't spook the salve states out of their boots but many Whigs deserted the party when Taylor won the nomination. Who else was a Whig when Poe lived? There was an Illinois congressman by the name of Abraham Lincoln. So, again, we have nothing to go on concerning Poe's views here either. If he was a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Democrat that might be a different story but I see no evidence that he was. Yet I found this online, written by a erudite young lady: "Sadly I can't find a tutorial that really dissects the novel [Pym apparently] as a whole, so I'm stuck figuring out how to read it in a way that allows me to write a real paper on it. Moreover, the paper topics don't give any room to discuss my preferred topic: Why Edgar Allen Poe is a Racist Bastard." My requests for her source material on this matter have been unanswered for several weeks now. Does anybody have anything written by Poe--preferably personal correspondence or diary entries--that tell us unequivocally what Poe's views of slavery and race were and is he deserving of the treatment he has received from history on this matter? |
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06 Aug 10 - 07:27 PM (#2959781) Subject: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep [I posted this on Mudcat last week and it vanished off the board--not scrolled off but vanished in about 5 minutes. Not sure why. It's not offensive in any way. So I'll try again.] I have heard this a lot, that Poe was both pro-slavery and very racist. I have scoured the internet for sources and yet have found none. This is not an attempt to whitewash Poe's sentiments nor an attempt at apologetics where I twist his very words around to make them say what they obviously do not mean in order to make Poe acceptable to my own agenda. I state only the truth—there is very little in the way of evidence that Poe was pro-slavery or racist. What abounds on the internet are unsupported statements that Poe was "pro-slavery" and even one that claimed he was "virulently racist." But what is this based on? Most scholars refer to the Paulding-Drayton Review of an 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger to glean Poe's attitude towards race and say it proves the man was a racist. For example: "Our assailants are numerous, and it is indispensable that we should meet the assault with vigor and activity. Nothing is wanting but manly discussion to convince our own people at least, that in continuing to command the services of slaves, they violate no law divine or human, and that in the faithful discharge of their reciprocal obligations lies their duty." The truth is that no one is even certain that Poe wrote it (neither the rhetoric nor subject matter were typical of Poe). If he did, he was not necessarily expounding his own beliefs but those of his employer at the "Messenger" since Thomas White had final say on all the content that went into each issue so the Paulding-Drayton Review is of little use to us. What we need are private writings--letters, diary entries, etc. And what we have of those don't have anything about slavery or race in them that I am aware of. But actions speak louder than words. How did Poe deal with people of color when he encountered them? We also have little to go on here except for one instance: The Baltimore Evening Sun printed an article in the April 6, 1940 edition by May Garrettson Evans concerning a chance discovery in an underground room at the Baltimore Court House of a bill of sale dated December 10, 1829 wherein Edgar A. Poe is listed as selling a 21-year-old male slave named Edwin to one Henry Ridgway and was acting as an agent for his aunt, Maria Clemm. This article has been cited by a number of biographers of Poe since then and used as proof that Poe supported slavery. However, Evans herself could not account for how Maria Clemm came by this slave as she was too poor to afford one if we assume she even desired one. An application was made for a notarized copy of the bill of sale from the archives and, in reply, a letter dated April 7, 1976 was received from Ronald Schaefer, Senior Administrative Assistant in the Baltimore City Archives, stating that such a document was not and, to his knowledge, had never been in the City Archives. A Mr. Strickland in Room 610 at the Superior Court had also informed Mr. Schaefer that any such documents over 25 years old had been purged some years earlier and so there was no way of verifying if the bill of sale ever existed. Poe was also a Whig which was an essentially antislavery party. One other famous Whig was a congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Toni Morrison wrote that "no early American writer is more important to the concept of American Africanism than Poe." Apparently because she says so. I can't think of why her statement should be taken anymore seriously anymore than the one in which she called Bill Clinton our first African-American president. People attack his stories such as "The Gold-Bug" and "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" but I saw nothing there to cause me to conclude Poe was either pro-slavery or a racist for writing either of those. I rather enjoyed both tales. Maybe somebody here has data I am not privy to that justify the conclusions about Poe. If so, please share them. |
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06 Aug 10 - 07:51 PM (#2959799) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,999 Poe was pro-booze. I have never thought of him as racist or pro-slavery. |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:08 PM (#2959808) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep Yes, he was a classic alcoholic. He didn't drink heavily but every time he did, it got him into trouble. He was not a drug addict though. Some guy named Griswold started that rumor because he and Poe didn't like each other much. Just type "Poe pro-slavery" or something along those lines in your browser, you'll get quite a surprise. I just want to know what these people base this on. |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:08 PM (#2959809) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John on the Sunset Coast The address below will take you to to a blog by Matthew Pearl. Pearl is the author of several historical novels which feature 18th century authors as either protagonist or a major character. As one novel is about Poe, I would consider Mr. Pearl to be authoritative. /www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-pearl/top-five-myths-about-edga_b_334742.html |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:27 PM (#2959812) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Joe Offer
Our Posting Policy does not allow Guests to start non-music threads. Since this is a cultural subject which may be closely related to folk music, I'll allow it. But in the future, please be aware that you should be a registered member if you wish to start threads. You can register here (click). -Joe Offer, Forum Moderator- P.S. I undeleted your message from last week and moved it here. |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:27 PM (#2959813) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep Yes, I've read that. I'm not fully in agreement with it. The source I found concerning the slave sale makes it pretty clear the episode was likely bogus. It had the full verbatim text of the bill of sale that May Evans included but there simply is no such bill. It's hard to believe in Baltimore, something like that would be discovered but nobody bothers to preserve it. Baltimore is Poe-crazy, historians and literature professors would have descended on the archives like vultures but nobody did and the guy who runs the archive does not believe any such document had ever been in the archives. That's pretty damning. I also disagree that Jupiter in "The Gold-Bug" was clownish. He isn't clownish at all. He seems to have only a minimal education but that was often the case. He talks with a slave vernacular but that's how slaves talked. Are we to assume we know more than Poe about the times in which he lived? Jupiter was not a slave either. The story makes clear that he was manumitted some years before meaning he was a freedman. He was dependable, loyal and trustworthy and Poe obviously wants the reader to like him. And I know people today who don't know their right from their left and I admit to getting it wrong myself occasionally. |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:40 PM (#2959817) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Bobert Well, I'll be the first to admit that I know very little of Poe... With that said, however, Poe must have ahd some ties to Richmond, Va., which BTW was the Capitol of the Confederacy and there is "The Poe Museum" right there less than a half a mile from the Capitol building... Maybe you could get some insights from the folks there on his views... It is located around the 1800 block of East Main Street... Good luck... B~ |
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06 Aug 10 - 08:56 PM (#2959825) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Rapparee Because he wrote about slaves in the slave vernacular (and whites in the vernacular "Pike County" accent) of the place and time, Clemens has been considered pro-slavery and racist. Indeed, I find that unless a writer of the 19th Century was explicit in writing down, in non-fiction, their opposition to racism and slavery they are too often today considered to be both racist and pro-slavery. This quote, for example: I do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask a benevolence of a stranger, but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, & the shame is ours, not theirs, & we should pay for it. which is from a letter from Clemens to Francis Wayland, December 24, 1885. I suggest that this article, while about Clemens, might also contain some light on the beliefs of Poe. You might contrast Poe and Clemens to the Sut Lovingood tales of George Washington Harris. |
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06 Aug 10 - 09:07 PM (#2959835) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John on the Sunset Coast I admit to know almost nothing about Poe other than a couple of the short stories and poems that were in the AmLit canon for English classes of 60 years ago--and the Vincent Price movies. I generally do not like to judge literature of long gone eras by today's standards unless it far out of mainstream thinking--on either side--of the period. This includes Clemens and Joel ChandlerC Harris, and Stephen Foster, all of whom have been criticized or banned at one time or another since the mid-1960s. So unless somebody was really influential anti-Slavery (Stowe), or an out and out racist in their works, I take their writings as a sign of the times that are thankfully past. |
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06 Aug 10 - 09:20 PM (#2959837) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Rapparee Such as Asa Earl Carter? Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American political speechwriter and author. He was most notable for publishing novels and a best-selling, award-winning memoir under the name Forrest Carter, an identity as a Native American Cherokee. In 1976, following the publication success of his western The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, The New York Times revealed Forrest Carter to be Southerner Asa Earl Carter. His background became national news again in 1991 after his purported memoir, [The Education of] Little Tree, was re-issued in paperback and topped the Times paperback best-seller lists (both non-fiction and fiction). It also won the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award. Prior to his literary career as "Forrest", Carter was politically active for years in Alabama as an opponent to the civil rights movement: he worked as a speechwriter for segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama; founded the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC) and an independent Ku Klux Klan group; and started the pro-segregation monthly titled The Southerner. --from Wikipedia |
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06 Aug 10 - 10:47 PM (#2959862) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John on the Sunset Coast Well, I didn't have him in mind as I've never heard of him until 7:30 PDT, nor had I ever read or seen the cited works. But based on your description, I would consider him a personally less worthy author based on the mores of mid-20th century to today. I really had in mind folks a bit further back in history, 18th through 19th centuries. |
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06 Aug 10 - 11:55 PM (#2959891) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Jack the Sailor This http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=008QCg is a discussion of the topic. The people on that forum seem to know more than we, on this one, do. |
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07 Aug 10 - 01:41 AM (#2959915) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep I've already been to that link but it's the very problem I'm talking about. They say things without any real proof. Read "The Gold-Bug" and tell me if you think that Jupiter is a racial stereotype. He would be by today's standards but the character in the story is an ex-slave. Sure he's going to talk funny to us. But there's a part in the story where Jupiter threatens Legrand with a thrashing and the narrator urges Jupiter not to thrash Legrand. In another part, Legrand orders Jupiter to go get the gold-bug and Jupiter flat out tells him to go get it himself which he does. Since these people think they can analyze Poe's stories to read his character, why don't they ever bring up that stuff? They're going to take some language that is politically incorrect in our day and age and apply it to the 19th century where virtually anybody is now considered a racist. Then there's the Paulding-Drayton Review stuff that I've already gone over. I think Thomas White wrote it and gave it to Poe to rework since his name was going on it. It seems on the face to be pro-slavery and yet it never actually fully justifies slavery and the writer never comes out and says he's pro-slavery but sort of dances around it. The Southern Literary Messenger was based in Richmond and the magazine had to take into account the beliefs and morals of its readership and be careful how it stated things. It's no good for telling us what Poe's true feelings were. We need Poe's personal writings, private writings and correspondences and when you find them, they are bereft of anything about slavery or race. Poe lived a good deal of his adult life in poverty--a hand-to-mouth existence--he didn't really have the time to worry about slavery. He was worried about where his next meal was coming from. He lost his brother and his wife/cousin to tuberculosis. He had a drinking problem. He was constantly begging his foster father, John Allan, for money and constantly bitterly feuding with the man. Poe had enough stuff to worry about. Later in his life when he made more money and had leisure time to contemplate the universe, he wrote about astronomy and metaphysical philosophy rather than race. Then the site talks about Poe selling a slave but we've gone over that too and that appears to be bogus. No true document has ever been produced and there is no explanation of how Maria Clemm had a slave to begin with or how Poe found the time to auction him off while trying desperately to get his poems published in book form before heading back to Richmond at the end of 1829. Poe wrote John Allan about meeting the Clemms and mentioned how poor they were. He never mentioned selling any slave for his aunt. That's what I'm talking about. All these websites bring up the same crap over and over again but don't appear to have done any real research. They are just incestuously borrowing the same information from each other. It's kind of like the Bush administration and the Iraqi National Congress--both spent so much time making up propaganda and spreading it into every nook and cranny of the govt that when they went checking for facts they found their own propaganda and believed it. The Pearl blog even states that had Poe lived to see the Civil War, he'd probably have supported the Confederacy. I won't even go that far. I don't know that he would have. It's just as likely that he'd be neutral. Yes he grew up in Richmond and loved Virginia but his real family--the Clemms and Poes--lived in Baltimore and Maryland, although a slave state, did not secede from the Union. I doubt Poe would have fought against his own flesh and blood. I think he probably would have declared neutrality. In fact, Poe seems pretty neutral about everything. If he was pro-slavery he wasn't very passionate about it. He could not have been "virulently racist" or he certainly would have left behind writings to that effect like Lovecraft did. Poe left nothing of the sort behind that I have ever heard of. |
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07 Aug 10 - 02:03 AM (#2959917) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep Harris, Twain and Foster were called racists because of the slave vernacular. Harris didn't even write the Uncle Remus stories, they were told to him by an old slave when he was a boy and he simply wanted to preserve them. He was embarrassed when people praised his Remus works because he merely took dictation. If Huck Finn is a racist work, you got me hanging. The part where Huck plays a mean trick on Jim and Jim tells him about the time he slapped a little slave girl for not doing what he told her only to discover later that she was deaf and he walks away leaving Huck standing there realizing he owed Jim an apology and says, "It was fifteen minutes before I could humble myself before a nigger." I thought it was one of the most touching passages in all of Western literature. Instead of portraying Jim as a happy-go-lucky shuffling darkey, Twain portrayed him as a man that even though he was a slave, he too was haunted by guilty memories. You saw past the old slave vernacular to the man himself. That he was just like you and me. And Foster was antislavery. His use of the slave vernacular and words like "darkey" were simply common in his day. When you look past the un-PC language to the intent behind the words, there's nothing racist to see. |
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07 Aug 10 - 06:21 AM (#2959984) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Liz the Squeak You have to understand and accept that these people were writing for their time - a very different one to our own. There are still people in the world today who believe that a person from another country - hell, even another town - than their own is inferior, stupid, prone to breeding with its cousins out of wedlock, a target for insults and a butt for all jokes, but the majority of us know that this is not the case. However, in the time of Poe, Clemens et al, it was the norm. Take them from that time and drop them into ours, and they would be as horrified of our acceptance of all peoples, as we are of their inherent racism and behaviours. The only way we could determine the truth without speculation, is to have a conversation with the man himself. As this is blatantly not possible without a ouija board, divine intervention or a TARDIS, then we can never know for certain. LTS |
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07 Aug 10 - 07:08 AM (#2959999) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: McGrath of Harlow The idea that attempting to accurately write down the language someone uses is somehow racist is both absurd and offensive. I'm thinking especially of the Uncle Remus stories. In a way it's analogous to adjusting the words and the notes that a traditional singer uses, because they do not deserve to be recorded and made available to superior people. |
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07 Aug 10 - 09:44 AM (#2960029) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John on the Sunset Coast Thank you to Liz and McGrath for amplifying my point. I don't read a lot of fiction, but a couple of years ago I read a murder mystery novel set at West Point during Poe's year there as a Cadet. He spends more time in assisting the police detective than minding his studies. I'm sorry, but I remember neither the title nor the author. It was filled with a lot of forced allusion to what Poe would later write, if memory serves. |
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07 Aug 10 - 02:19 PM (#2960157) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Q (Frank Staplin) I suppose the next thread could be: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Racist. |
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07 Aug 10 - 02:53 PM (#2960181) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John MacKenzie Revisionist crap. Next thing you know they'll be demanding that Nigeria changes its name, because it sounds too much like the 'N' word. Learn from history by all means, but learn to accept that it was in a different time, and values were different. |
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07 Aug 10 - 03:13 PM (#2960198) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Another country- "Niger." Heavens! Alert all missionaries! |
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07 Aug 10 - 03:22 PM (#2960205) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John on the Sunset Coast "Next thing you know they'll be demanding that Nigeria changes its name, because it sounds too much like the 'N' word." You think you're kidding? You're closer to the truth than you think, John. For example, the word "Niggardly": On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., used the word [niggardly]in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues, who interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. In late January or early February 2002, a white fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina was formally reprimanded for teaching the word and told to attend sensitivity training.[7] The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur. In 1995 The Economist magazine used the word "niggardly" in an article about the impact of computers and productivity. The Economist later pointed out with amusement that it received a letter from a reader in Boston who thought the word "niggardly" was inappropriate. "Why do we get such letters only from America?" the British magazine commented.[9] [!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????] "Niggardly" (noun: "niggard") is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla = "to fuss about small matters". It is cognate with "niggling", meaning "petty" or "unimportant", as in "the niggling details". The definition and examples are all excerpted from Wikipedia, and I remember hearing of a couple of them contemporaneously. |
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07 Aug 10 - 04:04 PM (#2960227) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Paul Burke Now I'll leave the details of what it was like in the USA in the 19th century to you Americans. I read Poe's horror stories as a yungun with glee, and didn't think the portrayal of Jupiter as exceptional for the time- indeed it was sympathetic, sort of. Twain similarly- "Huckleberry Finn" is a brilliant satire, and Jim is the only character who thinks at all rationally. But I gave up on "Roughing It" because of his nasty attitude to Red Indians. No one's perfect, particularly if he lived 150 years ago and you live now. As for Nigeria, it was a common "joke" among my parents' generation to call it "Niggerarea", and having heard it said like that so often, I was told off for reading it aloud that way from a geography book in class when I was seven or so. |
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07 Aug 10 - 04:56 PM (#2960253) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: McGrath of Harlow it was a common "joke" I suspect it was actually a pretty uncommon joke. |
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07 Aug 10 - 05:24 PM (#2960269) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: John MacKenzie Well you say that Kevin, but I think you'll find iot wasn't a rarity either. I remember it from my childhood too, and I'm nearly as old as you :) |
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07 Aug 10 - 08:13 PM (#2960331) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Q (Frank Staplin) We called it Niggeria. |
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08 Aug 10 - 12:13 AM (#2960402) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: katlaughing josep, interesting thread. I hope you find some good research and that this thread gets back on track. I have always loved Poe's writings and, in fact, as a young girl I once read he was so poor, writing in a garret one winter, the only way he could put pen to paper was to warm his fingers in a small bowl of heated water (don't remember what the claim was as to how he heated it but not his room.) Anyway, from then on, I pretended, once in awhile, to be a poor, cold writer and dipped my fingers in a bowl of hot water I had from the kitchen of my parents' house.:-) |
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08 Aug 10 - 02:47 AM (#2960445) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Liz the Squeak Heated bowl of water - probably a small bowl over a candle flame or oil lamp. The flame would provide illumination but not enough heat, but if a bowl were placed on a trivet over it, then the flame would heat the water in the bowl. LTS |
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08 Aug 10 - 02:36 PM (#2960685) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Poe never descended into abject poverty, although his last few years were troubled by alcohol. A false biography by Rufus Wilmot Griswold claimed Poe was a drunk (only in the last few years was alcohol a problem), drug-addict (untrue) and a madman. Some of his distortions persist. Found with a seizure on a Baltimore street, he died in hospital, but the medical records have been lost, so cause of death unknown. |
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08 Aug 10 - 03:20 PM (#2960705) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep There is some speculation that Poe had a brain tumor that had gone untreated for many years. Wasn't much they could do in the 1830s. He bled from the ear on occasion and went temporarily mad at least twice so there was a problem. Alcohol became a major problem after the death of Virginia Clemm in 1847. It did cost him his job at the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835 but Thomas White hired him back on the promise that he would never show up for or miss work for being drunk. Poe kept his word and resigned from the Messenger a couple of years later on good terms with White whose magazine published some of Poe's material in the 1840s. Several years passed with Poe touching no alcohol. Poe did try to commit suicide with laudanum--tincture of opium--but was so unfamiliar with its use that the dose wasn't nearly enough. That was over the death of Virginia as well. Griswold used this incident to make Poe into an opium addict which he was not. The most famous photograph of Poe was taken shortly after that incident where he looks pale, tired, bags under the eyes, etc. It's not how he normally looked but it seemed to fit so many of the narrators of his horror stories that it became his most famous portrait. The mustache, by the way, was only something Poe wore the last year of his life. He was clean-shaven most of his life. Poe married Sarah Elmira Royster whom he was once engaged to in his university days but they drifted apart. When they met again, they realized they were still in love. Poe saw her on September 26, 1849 and departed for Baltimore by steamer the following day. She said he had a high fever and said he didn't feel well but said he was still going to Baltimore over her objections. He stopped at a Dr. Carter's office but took the doctor's cane with him by accident. That worried Elmira a great deal as Poe was very attentive about stuff like that. So we know he wasn't well when he left for Baltimore. He arrived on a Sunday the 29th and was not seen or heard from until Thursday, I believe, on October 3. His old friend Dr. Snodgrass got a letter from someone claiming he found Poe at the polls nearly unconscious and spoke with him and Poe mentioned Dr. Snodgrass. The letter said to come quickly as Poe was in great distress and need. Snodgrass hurried and found Poe unconscious and had him hospitalized. Poe could not speak and nothing could be gotten from him about how he ended up in his condition. Oddly, Poe was wearing shabby clothes not his own. He arrived in Baltimore with $300 from a successful lecture but that too was gone. The doctor at the hospital, John Moran, examined Poe and said he had not been drinking but otherwise did not know what was wrong with him. On Saturday, Poe began hallucinating and called out for "Reynolds." No one knows who this was but some think it was writer Jeremiah Reynolds whose lobbying Congress to finance Antarctic expeditions to find the South Polar opening inspired Poe to write "Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". Others think it was G.W.M. Reynolds who was literary editor of Snowden's Ladies Companion when the magazine published Poe's "Murder of Marie Roget" in three installments. About 3 o'clock in the morning, Poe awoke from his delirium and muttered his final words: "Lord help my poor soul" and was pronounced dead at age 40 of "brain congestion" whatever that is. His final words were a line from a prayer taught to him by the Sons of Intemperance--a forerunner of Alcoholics Anonymous. Poe had joined them to do something about his drinking because he kept relapsing. As for his change of clothes, I think he ran into a coop gang. Political parties often sent out gangs to abduct people and force them to vote for the same candidate at various polling places--stuffing the ballot box, basically. Often, they would dress the person in various changes of clothing and send them back through the same places to vote again. They did this usually by drugging the person or getting him drunk. Sometimes a beating was necessary but Poe's already delirious state they probably didn't need to do anything to him. But evidently, he collapsed on them and no further use could be gotten from them so they took his money and clothes and left him. The fact that Poe was found at a polling place would substantiate this. That's about all we know concerning his death. |
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08 Aug 10 - 03:37 PM (#2960714) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: katlaughing josep, please cite your sources for the last posting's specifics? I am interested because we have such a diversity of conclusions here. Thanks. kat |
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08 Aug 10 - 03:56 PM (#2960726) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: GUEST,josep "Edgar Allan Poe--An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories" by Harry Lee Poe who teaches at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee and was a past president of the Poe Museum in Richmond. By his name, you might have guessed a familial relation and indeed he is a cousin. The book is full of pictures and historical matter including replicas of Poe's letters, his marriage certificate to Virginia Clemm, a copy of the American Review's issue that carried "The Raven" and also the front page of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter that carried "Ms. Found in a Bottle" which had won the paper's fiction prize and other memorabilia. Very much worth having for any Poe enthusiast. I also looked at some web biographies, Wiki and stuff like but I can't be certain of what I looked at. |
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08 Aug 10 - 08:35 PM (#2960845) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Still guesswork in some of what H.L. Poe wrote. Uncertain as to whether he said Reynolds or something else. Neilson Poe, writing to Mrs Clemm in 1849, just after Poe's death, says that hospital staff told him that Poe was too excitable to be seen, but then was notified in a day or two that Poe was much better; but on Sunday he was told that Poe was dead. [This may fit with a brain tumor or brain injury, but this is just speculation on my part]. Neilson Poe wrote that Poe's trunk and clothes could not be found, and suggests a possible robbery. Poe's body was followed to the grave by Neilson Poe, the Clemms, Dr. Snodgrass, etc. so tales of a hasty burial in an unmarked grave are wrong. His body was moved a couple of times to what is now his resting place. There is much detail in the following biography- Part is online, google books. See Edgar Allen Poe, A Critical Biography, by Arthur Hobson uinn, 1941 and reprints, 809 pp., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. |
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09 Aug 10 - 09:55 AM (#2961088) Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist? From: Greg F. Ya know, there were so many actual ranting racist, Pro-Slavery, foaming-at-the-mouth, slavery-is-a-positive-good individuals, on the National Stage ca. the first half of the 19th Century in the U.S. that nobody today ever hears about, or whose histories & records have been white-washed ( Nathan Befdord Forrest, "The Wizard Of The Saddle" as one example of many) that its a continuing source of wonderment to me that some folks feel constrained to go out of their way to make these sorts of dubious, unsubstantiated claims. Nothing better to occupy their time, I suppose |