Do we like Edgar Allan Poe?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Gifted and smeared after death, but his pro-slavery reviews and his own record leave the ledger complicated.
Poe grew up in Richmond in the Allan household, which profited from slavery. Enslaved people lived and worked there, and he visited the plantation John Allan inherited, where over a hundred people were enslaved. That backdrop is the key to the harder questions about him.
His brush with the army says plenty about his temper. He was admitted to West Point in July 1830, and by January 1831 a court-martial found him guilty of gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders. The court ordered him dismissed, which ended the military career before it started.
The nastiest story is what happened after he died. Rufus Griswold, a rival he had reviewed, published an obituary in the New York Tribune the next day and later, as literary executor, a memoir that falsely claimed the University of Virginia expelled him. Poe's friends were outraged and fought back in print, but the smear stuck for decades.
Nothing new on him lately, and the good stuff is thin on what I could verify. I found no charity record, and the best evidence of decency is how fiercely his friends defended his name against Griswold. That's honestly the whole list from what I read.
So where does that leave us? The harm test gets an asterisk for the pro-slavery reviews and the racial caricatures, and the good-person test is mixed. He was no monster, but he was no saint either. Enjoy The Raven, just don't pretend the man was spotless.