Lindsey Graham

The next day, he stopped in Baltimore to drink.

No one knows how he spent the next five days.

On October 3rd, a young printer discovered him outside a tavern, drunk and delirious.

Poe gave the printer the name of a Baltimore acquaintance named Joseph Snodgrass, who was summoned to the scene.

Snodgrass later wrote, Poe's face was haggard, not to say bloated and unwashed, his hair unkempt and his whole physique repulsive.

He also noticed that Poe seemed to be wearing someone else's clothes.

He assumed that Poe had either been robbed or sold his clothes to pay for alcohol.

He took Poe to a local hospital, where Poe drifted in and out of consciousness over the next few days.

Once again, he suffered from hallucinations.

His doctor wrote that he engaged in a vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.

His face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration.

Early in the morning of October 7, 1849, Poe died at the age of 40.

His last words were, "'Lord, help my poor soul.'"

He was buried in Baltimore in a cheap coffin, and his precise cause of death would remain a mystery.

Many assumed he drank himself to death.

Others believed that Poe was the victim of a type of voter fraud known as cooping.

In the 19th century, gangs would kidnap unsuspecting victims, force them to drink, and change their clothes multiple times so that they could cast multiple votes.

Other popular theories of his death include hypoglycemia, cholera, syphilis, and even rabies.

Poe's personal reputation shaped his legacy.

Two days after his death, the editor Rufus Griswold published an anonymous obituary in the widely read New York Daily Tribune.