Edgar Allan Poe
A persistent, though mostly apocryphal story involving Fort Independence was allegedly the inspiration behind one of Edgar Allan Poe's well known works. A monument outside the west battery of the fort marks the grave of Lieutenant Robert F. Massie who was killed in a duel there on December 25, 1817. According to folklorist Edward Rowe Snow, Massie was so popular with the soldiers stationed at Fort Independence that they took out their frustration on his killer, Lieutenant Gustavus Drane, by walling him up within a vault in the fort. Edgar Allan Poe, while serving with the 1st United States Artillery Regiment at Fort Independence purportedly heard the tale and was inspired, according to Snow, to write The Cask of Amontillado.
The legend that purportedly inspired Poe is not entirely accurate. The duel did in fact take place, but the victor, Lieutenant Drane, was not murdered by the fort's soldiers but continued in his military career and was later promoted to the rank of captain. After the Second World War Lietenant Massie's remains were moved to the cemetery at Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Fort Independence (Massachusetts)
Famous quotes by edgar allan poe:
“the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“He made no resistance whatever, and was stabbed in the back.... I must not dwell upon the fearful repast.... Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)