However, "The Gold Bug", which appeared before The Murders in the Rue Morgue, involves a cipher and a mystery, so I've started with that.
"His chief amusements" (the character the narrator is describing) "were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens - his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm.
In these excursions he was usally accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reversals of the family but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will."
SWAMMERDAMM: Dutch naturalist known for his pioneering microscopic research. He was the first to describe red blood cells (1658).
MANUMITTED: to release from slavery or servitude.
Origin:
1375–1425; late ME < L manūmittere, earlier manū ēmittere to send away from (one's) hand, i.e., to set free.
(Note that "The Gold Bug" was published in 1843, before the Civil War. Indeed, Poe died several years before the Civil War, in 1849.
HUGUENOT FAMILY: The Huguenots (French pronunciation: [yɡno]; English: /ˈhjuːɡənɒt/, /huːɡəˈnoʊ/) were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France (or French Calvinists) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Since the eighteenth century, Huguenots have been commonly designated "French Protestants", the title being suggested by their German co-religionists or "Calvinists". Protestants in France were inspired by the writings of John Calvin in the 1530s and the name Huguenots was already in use by the 1560s. By the end of the 17th century, roughly 200,000 Huguenots had been driven from France during a series of religious persecutions. They relocated primarily in England, Switzerland, Holland, the German Palatinate, and elsewhere in Northern Europe, as well as what is now South Africa. A few thousand went further and settled in British overseas colonies, primarily in New York and South Carolina. The last active Huguenot congregation in North America worships in Charleston, South Carolina, at a church that dates from 1844.
According to Wikipedia, "The Gold Bug" was the most popular of Poe's stories during his lifetime, and instigated a fascination for secret codes and cryptograms (not to mention the treasure of Captain Kidd).
The black character of Jupiter has a large role in the story. He speaks as an uneducated black person spoke in those days (or, possibly, just how Poe believed that they would speak)... however, that was just the way it was back in 1843. Most blacks in the southern states were prevented from getting good educations, and their uneducated speech patterns are the result.
This island [Sullivan's Island] is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breath at no point exceeds exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some misrable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto, but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white sand on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The scrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.
The story takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, and regards the buried treasure of Captain Kidd.
Fort Moultrie will become famous, twenty-odd years later, as the place where the American Civil War started.
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