In tales rarely considered together, “Epimanes (Four Beasts in One),” “The Man That Was Used Up,” and “‘Thou Art the Man,’” Poe took aim at populist demagoguery then being weaponized in Jacksonian America. Poe’s skepticism arose from his recognition of tactics by which common folk were being manipulated politically, incited to outrage and even violent attacks on bankers, reformers, immigrants, and educated citizens. Living in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844, he saw tangible evidence of the mob’s fury in the razing of Pennsylvania Hall and the torching of Catholic churches. As historian David Grimsted has shown, mobbing and rioting erupted in the United States at the beginning of Andrew Jackson’s first term and persisted through the so-called Jacksonian Era. This rise of democratic populism hinged on a radical transformation of American masculinity, in which the well-bred “heroic generation” of Founding Fathers was replaced by the backwoodsman, a model of Anglo-Saxon manhood capable of brutality and deception. As Poe perceived, this devious figure posed a grave national danger. “Epimanes” captures the raw spectacle of mob excitement, while “The Man That Was Used Up” focuses on the appeal of cultivated manliness, and “‘Thou Art the Man’” hinges on trickery that lets a murderer mislead an entire community by creating an illusion of virtue. In Poe’s view, the populist is the ultimate diddler, and insights by Ulf Hedetoft and other modern political theorists help us to recognize the relevance of Poe’s critique to our own recent experience with populism and mob violence in political and cultural spaces.