EDGAR ALLAN POE’S ODE TO POLK (1844)
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The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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A more improbable story you may have never heard – but Edgar Allan Poe may have been partially responsible for electing James Polk president.
A TEA STORE, A FRIENDSHIP, AND THE WHITE EAGLE CLUB…
Remembered from the campaign year of 1844, erstwhile actor and artist Gabriel Harrison recounted for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle his encounter with Edgar Allan Poe. Harrison had met him one evening as the latter was peering through the plate-glass window of his tea store.
“It was in the Fall of 1843 or ’44 that I first became acquainted with Poe,” Harrison mused. “At that time I was the President of the White Eagle Club, New York, and kept a tea store on the southeast corner of Broadway and Prince street, then Mr. William Niblo’s property.
“One evening I observed a person looking intently through my windows at a display of some Virginia leaf tobacco. After some minutes he entered the store, spoke of the beauty of the leaf and its quality. He took a very small bit of it in his mouth, and further remarked that he might be considered a small user of the Solace. In a few days after he called again.
“On this occasion I was endeavoring to compose a campaign song for my club. I acquainted him with the fact, and while I was waiting upon a customer, he had composed a song to the measure and time of the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”
The first few lines of the song were later recalled by Harrison for the New York Times in an interview shortly before his death.
FRAGMENTS OF A CAMPAIGN SONG…
Wakening the broad welkin with his loud battle cry;
Then here’s the White Eagle, full daring is he,
As he sails on his pinions o’er valley and sea.
The song would be used by the club successfully, according to Harrison, through the campaign of 1844, thereby contributing to the election of James Polk, the 11th president of the United States.
But back to the store, where Poe had presented the verse to Harrison. It was only as the poet was departing that the actor-turned-proprietor realized he had not yet gotten his name. So, standing in the doorway as Poe stepped down to the sidewalk, Harrison handed the bard a package of his finest coffee as a gift, and he requested the name of “my stranger friend.”
Poe’s response?
“Certainly. Thaddeus K. Peasly, at your service.”
“Peasly,” Gabriel explained, was a nom de plume used by Edgar Allan Poe.
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore…”
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