Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson and uh, Tracy,
Speaker 1: are you watching or did you watch True Detective? I
Speaker 1: did not, which you still can. But thanks to its popularity,
Speaker 1: as you may have earned, it actually crashed HBO go
Speaker 1: on its finale night. I did hear that because so
Speaker 1: many people were trying to watch it. Uh. Many people
Speaker 1: have found are renewed or perhaps a new interest in
Speaker 1: the writing of Robert W. Chambers because of a book
Speaker 1: of short stories that he wrote in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds which is called The King and Yellow And this
Speaker 1: book is referenced throughout the season one story arc of
Speaker 1: True Detective with references to the Yellow King and the
Speaker 1: wearing of masks in the city of Carcosa. And in turn,
Speaker 1: Chambers influenced, uh a whole subgenre of writers of so
Speaker 1: called weird fiction, including people like HP Lovecraft. Definitely weird.
Speaker 1: Well it's actually called weird fiction. Just me going that's weird.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, and I love weird fiction. So, but
Speaker 1: influencing Chambers. So going back before the work of Chambers
Speaker 1: was actually a man who has been on my list
Speaker 1: for a long time. Uh. So now seems like the
Speaker 1: perfect point to focus on him, since True Detective pointed
Speaker 1: at all of this work so much recently, and all
Speaker 1: of those mentions of Carcosa and True Detective that come up. Uh,
Speaker 1: that name actually shows up in chambers work, but it
Speaker 1: was borrowed from the man we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: who is Ambros Beers, who first mentioned it in a
Speaker 1: short story which was called an Inhabitant of Carcosa and
Speaker 1: that was first published in and Ambrow's. Beers is a
Speaker 1: really fascinating character. He was a soldier, he was a journalist,
Speaker 1: he was an editor, He was something of a philosopher,
Speaker 1: He was a cynic. Uh. He was a very complicated
Speaker 1: man with an unwavering moral code. And his life experiences
Speaker 1: he such so many things that are historically significant in
Speaker 1: his time. Uh And much of it was fantastic, much
Speaker 1: of it was horrific, and it all sort of informed
Speaker 1: his writing. Ambrose was born Ambrose Gwinnette Beers on Dune
Speaker 1: forty two in Ohio. It was in a settlement called
Speaker 1: Horse Cave. His parents, Marcus Aurelius and Laura Sherwood Beers
Speaker 1: had thirteen children, and Ambrose was the tenth. And here's
Speaker 1: a fun fact that you can pull out at a
Speaker 1: cocktail party if you have a conversation law. Marcus and
Speaker 1: Laura only named their children names that started with the
Speaker 1: letter A. So, in addition to Ambrose, they were Andrew, Aurelius, Arthur, Abigail, Augustus,
Speaker 1: and Aurelia, so the female version of Aurelius, Addison, Albert, Amelia, Adelia,
Speaker 1: and al Maida. I feel like at the end they
Speaker 1: were just swapping around some consonants to try to make
Speaker 1: new names. It seems that way. But thirteen kids in yeah,
Speaker 1: creativity might fall away. There's no there's no Amanda. Did
Speaker 1: we have that name yet? When Ambrose was still a
Speaker 1: young child, the family moved to Indiana and eventually settled
Speaker 1: in Elkhart, and Marcus had a really pretty impressive library,
Speaker 1: which served as a major source of education and inspiration
Speaker 1: to Ambrose in his early years. He enrolled in the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Military Institute at seventeen, and while he excelled, he
Speaker 1: wound up leaving the school early to take odd jobs.
Speaker 1: Uh so this is right on the cusp of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and Beers ended up having a really impressive
Speaker 1: military record during the course of the American Civil War.
Speaker 1: At the start of the war, Beers's uncle, General Lucius
Speaker 1: Varius Beers, established two companies of Union marines. This was
Speaker 1: in April of eighteen sixty one. His nephew Ambrose was
Speaker 1: among the men, and it was mere days after Lincoln's
Speaker 1: call for volunteers when the younger Beers enlisted. Lucius had
Speaker 1: instilled in Ambrose a strong opposition to the concept of slavery,
Speaker 1: so he had been really eager to join the war effort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just as many other UH figures we've talked about, and
Speaker 1: some even recently, UH. The Beers family was very much
Speaker 1: part of the abolitionist mindset. When Major General George McClellan
Speaker 1: led an invasion on West Virginia, Ambrose was part of
Speaker 1: that campaign. The following year, eighteen sixty two, he was
Speaker 1: at Shiloh in Hardin County, Tennessee when it was attacked
Speaker 1: by the Confederate army. That battle was devastating for the
Speaker 1: Union forces, who were taken by surprise, but Beers was
Speaker 1: one of the survivors who rallied under General Don Carlos
Speaker 1: Buell and catalyzed a Confederate retreat, and the Shiloh Battle
Speaker 1: was one of the bloodiest of the war, with more
Speaker 1: than twenty three thousand casualties, and it's something that came
Speaker 1: up a lot in his work. Two months later, the
Speaker 1: newly promoted second lieutenant Beers saved his commanding officers life
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Stone River, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: start that totally over. Two months later, the newly promoted
Speaker 1: second lieutenant Beers saved his commanding officer's life at the
Speaker 1: Battle of Stones River in Murphysboro, Rutherford County, Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, in February of eighteen sixty three, he was
Speaker 1: promoted to first lieutenant, and in his role as first lieutenant,
Speaker 1: Beers served with the ninth Indiana Regiment and he fought
Speaker 1: at Chickamauga in September of eighteen sixty three. Beers was
Speaker 1: also part of the Atlanta Campaign under General Sherman, and
Speaker 1: this campaign was pretty rough for him personally. He lost
Speaker 1: his closest friend during the fighting and he was also
Speaker 1: struck in the head by a musket shot on June
Speaker 1: twenty three, eighteen sixty four, during fighting at Kennesaw Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is close to us. That kind of brings this
Speaker 1: particular story very close to home. But yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: we're in Atlanta. We're in Atlanta right now. Uh. Beers
Speaker 1: was treated for his injury and he returned to the
Speaker 1: front lines in September, so just a few months later,
Speaker 1: and he served for several months before being discharged the
Speaker 1: following January. Uh chronic dizziness and fainting spells that were
Speaker 1: kind of brought on by this head injury had ended
Speaker 1: his time in the war, but just a few months
Speaker 1: before the conflict officially ended. It's not really surprising to
Speaker 1: say that the Civil War changed him, because how could
Speaker 1: it not. He was only eighteen when he enlisted, and
Speaker 1: the horrors of battle affected him pretty deeply. The idealism
Speaker 1: with which he had entered the service was replaced with
Speaker 1: this cynicism that would become one of his most fundamental traits.
Speaker 1: And his time in the war also, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: informed a lot of his writing. There have been other
Speaker 1: authors that wrote about the Civil War, and some of
Speaker 1: them even served, like Mark Twain I think, had a
Speaker 1: brief service, But Ambrose Beer served more than any of
Speaker 1: those other writers. He was in the thick of it
Speaker 1: for almost the entirety. I mean he enlisted days after
Speaker 1: things began and was only a couple of months before
Speaker 1: it ended when he was discharged. So those years he
Speaker 1: was just constantly involved in the war. And a sad
Speaker 1: commentary on how deeply his time and the war had
Speaker 1: changed him. Beers wrote later in his life, when I
Speaker 1: asked myself what has become of Ambrose Beers, the youth
Speaker 1: who fought at Chickamauga, I am bound to answer that
Speaker 1: he is dead. Yeah. He was uh, pretty open about
Speaker 1: how much it had changed him and how sort of
Speaker 1: bluntly it had ended his idealism. After leaving the war,
Speaker 1: Ambrose worked in Alabama for a while as a treasury agent,
Speaker 1: and then in eighteen sixty six he was employed by
Speaker 1: General W. B. Hazen for an expedition into Indian territory.
Speaker 1: And Beers had worked as a topographical engineer under Hazen
Speaker 1: for a period during the war, and the general wanted
Speaker 1: his map making skills again as his team made their
Speaker 1: way west. Let's travel with Hazen took Beers all the
Speaker 1: way to California. They arrived in San Francisco in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven and Beers decided to stay on the West
Speaker 1: Coast and he found employment with the U. S. Mint.
Speaker 1: But he had begun to work on writing in earnest
Speaker 1: at the same time, and he started submitting essays and
Speaker 1: short satire pieces to local papers. He was eventually published
Speaker 1: in the San Francisco Newsletter, and when the managing editor
Speaker 1: of the newsletter resigned in eighteen sixty eight, Beer spilled
Speaker 1: the vacancy. Yeah, even though he really didn't have any
Speaker 1: formal journalism training, he kind of decided he was going
Speaker 1: to become a journalist and studied on his own and
Speaker 1: came managing editor of a paper, uh. And as managing editor,
Speaker 1: he made a name for himself by taking over the
Speaker 1: weekly column called The Town Crier, and he really used
Speaker 1: this as his soapbox to lampoon government officials. We mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier his sort of uh rigid moral code, and he
Speaker 1: basically if he thought anybody was doing anything wrong, he
Speaker 1: would call them out publicly in his column and right
Speaker 1: really derisive things about them. Just pretty aggressive. Yeah. While
Speaker 1: he was still working as a managing editor, he was
Speaker 1: also developing another talent outside of journalism by working on
Speaker 1: short fiction and so much. In the same way as
Speaker 1: he started HISALSM career by submitting essays while working for
Speaker 1: the Mint, he started submitting his short stories to literary journals.
Speaker 1: He eventually published his first fictional story, The Haunted Valley,
Speaker 1: in the Overland Monthly. And before we get to his
Speaker 1: life sort of blossoming in terms of becoming a family man.
Speaker 1: Is it cool if we pause for just a second
Speaker 1: for a word from our sponsor? Let's do it. So
Speaker 1: back to Ambrose. On December eighteen seventy one, Beers married
Speaker 1: a woman named Mary Ellen Day, and just a few
Speaker 1: months later, in March of eighteen seventy two, he quit
Speaker 1: his job at the paper so that the couple could
Speaker 1: take an extended honeymoon in London, although they ended up
Speaker 1: moving to Bristol not long into their stay abroad because
Speaker 1: the weather there was more hospitable to Ambrose's asthma. While
Speaker 1: he was in England, he also works submitting his writing
Speaker 1: to British journals. He eventually published work in the journal's Figaro,
Speaker 1: London Sketchbook and Fun and he ended up with a
Speaker 1: regular column and Figaro. Yeah he was writing comedy even
Speaker 1: though I will talk a lot, and that's about how
Speaker 1: sort of dark some of his writing is. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of what he was writing was really, uh, you know, funny,
Speaker 1: little satirical sketches. And this time while he was in
Speaker 1: England was productive for both his career and his family.
Speaker 1: The couple's first child, named Day, was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, and their second son, named Lee, was born
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, so they really were having an
Speaker 1: extended stay in England. And in between these babies, Beers's
Speaker 1: first three books were born, The Fiend's Delight, Nuggets and
Speaker 1: Dust and Cobwebs from an Empty Skull uh. And after
Speaker 1: baby number two, the Beers's returned to California in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, and not long after they returned to California,
Speaker 1: they had a third child, who was a daughter named Helen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ambrose returned to his writing career. Once they were stateside again,
Speaker 1: he got a job as an editor of the journal Argonaut.
Speaker 1: In another case of kind of repeating patterns in his life,
Speaker 1: he wrote a weekly column. It often called out public
Speaker 1: officials for their moral failings. However, this column, which was
Speaker 1: called Prattle, also had the leeway to give him an
Speaker 1: outlook for publishing fiction on a regular basis. He wrote
Speaker 1: Prattle as editor of Argonaut for three years before setting
Speaker 1: out on a surprising enterprise, you know, surprising and short lived.
Speaker 1: In eighty Ambrose took a position as a general manager
Speaker 1: of a mining company in South Dakota. And while the
Speaker 1: allure of the job was probably the promise of you know,
Speaker 1: significant income, the gold rush had really peaked several years earlier,
Speaker 1: and the corruption in the general depravity that he encountered
Speaker 1: uh soured him on this position almost immediately. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned how he liked to really call out people
Speaker 1: that he thought were morally corrupt, So you can imagine
Speaker 1: an entire business that he felt was just filled with
Speaker 1: those people. Was really distasteful. And so by the end
Speaker 1: of that year he was back in San Francisco. Pierce
Speaker 1: was about to start writing Prattle in but not with
Speaker 1: Argonaut this time around. His column was featured in WASP.
Speaker 1: In addition to using it as a soap box to
Speaker 1: call people out for their behavior and for using it
Speaker 1: for short stories, he also used the column to share
Speaker 1: pieces about the Civil War, as well as short satirical
Speaker 1: blurbs that would become the foundation of the Cynic's Word
Speaker 1: Book and that would eventually be retitled The Devil's Dictionary.
Speaker 1: Is the first thing I ever read by him, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I fell in love with Ambrose Beers.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more about that in a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And after leaving the Wasp in eighteen eighty six, and
Speaker 1: that's one of those things where, uh, when you see
Speaker 1: it written about, there's always there were lots of reasons
Speaker 1: he left like he was, as you might imagine, not
Speaker 1: always the easiest man to be around, because he did
Speaker 1: have this sort of very strict code in his head
Speaker 1: about how people should be and behave, and he was
Speaker 1: very opinionated and very outspoken about it. So that there
Speaker 1: are many factors to that exit from the Wasp, and
Speaker 1: they're not always clear, uh. But having burned many bridges
Speaker 1: with his critical column, he had a lot of difficulty
Speaker 1: finding work after that, so for about a year he
Speaker 1: went without a job. However, a man with a huge
Speaker 1: reputation for being difficult in his own right came into
Speaker 1: the picture and changed everything. So Prattle was revived by
Speaker 1: none other than William Randolph Hurst, who offered Beers a
Speaker 1: position at the San Francisco Examiner. This was before Hurst
Speaker 1: was the media giant that he would later become. The
Speaker 1: Examiner was his first paper, and Beerst took the job
Speaker 1: on the condition that he could write whatever he wanted, uh,
Speaker 1: like no editorial shut down of anything. And those were
Speaker 1: terms that Hurst actually agreed to. You know, he had
Speaker 1: sought out Beers, so presumably he was willing to be
Speaker 1: pretty generous with his deal. And so Prattle once again
Speaker 1: became a combination of Ambrose Beers's fiction and his social commentary.
Speaker 1: And this time he built on the work that he
Speaker 1: did at the WASP, and he published a much arger
Speaker 1: volume of his Civil War writings, including an occurrence at
Speaker 1: Owl Creek Bridge, which is probably his most famous work.
Speaker 1: In this tale, which was published initially in serial form,
Speaker 1: a southern gentleman contemplates his life and reminiscence about his
Speaker 1: home and his family. Is he's about to be hung
Speaker 1: by Yankee soldiers. And it's much more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Beers is sort of a master of sort of shifting
Speaker 1: what you think is real and what is actually happening. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the tone of the piece is cold, and in
Speaker 1: it a steady diet of violence has kind of jaded
Speaker 1: all of the players. Uh, which is something that comes
Speaker 1: up again and again in his work. This one's my
Speaker 1: first exposure to Ambrose Bears. Did you like it when
Speaker 1: you initially read it? It might have been in school,
Speaker 1: So it was in school, and uh, I don't remember
Speaker 1: liking or disliking it. It's also been made into a
Speaker 1: film several times. Yes, I also remember watching a film
Speaker 1: of it in school, so uh, yeah, there's it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I feel like having come in from the Devil's Dictionary,
Speaker 1: which is much funnier and kind of absurdist in some ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a much different sort of relationship with him
Speaker 1: than people that were assigned Civil war stories by him
Speaker 1: when they were kids. Well, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that I feel like I read it at the same
Speaker 1: approximate time as reading Romeo and Juliet, which there's It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where, in hindsight I kind of go,
Speaker 1: is that really the best thing for middle schoolers to
Speaker 1: get there? You know, first taste of this thing with Anyway,
Speaker 1: while Bears had achieved a certain level of success as
Speaker 1: a writer at this time, his home life was kind
Speaker 1: of unraveling. He and Mary had grown apart, and he
Speaker 1: had started to suspect that she was being unfaithful, although
Speaker 1: there was really no evidence of infidelity. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that, similar to when he left the WASP,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fuzzy nous around it. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot of hard details. He thinks that she received
Speaker 1: two letters from an admirer, and it kind of seems
Speaker 1: like his pride may have caused him to draw conclusions
Speaker 1: and be dug in about something that really there was
Speaker 1: no substance to. Uh. Which is a pity because then
Speaker 1: after almost seventeen years of being married, they separated in
Speaker 1: Then just a year later, their oldest son, Day was
Speaker 1: killed in a gunfight over Day's fiancee, who had run
Speaker 1: off with another man. Both of the young men wound
Speaker 1: up dying as a result of their wounds. And despite
Speaker 1: all of this turmoil that was going on in his
Speaker 1: private life in the late eighteen eighties, UH the early
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties were some of Beers's most successful years as
Speaker 1: a writer. He published several books, all very quickly, tales
Speaker 1: of soldiers and civilians, aggregated his Civil War stories, and
Speaker 1: got a lot of critical acclaim. The Monk and The
Speaker 1: Hangman's Daughter is written as a diary of a man
Speaker 1: struggling with morality, and that was promoted as a translation
Speaker 1: of a lost German text. Then there's Can Such Things Be,
Speaker 1: which is a collection of supernatural short stories, and that
Speaker 1: one includes an inhabitant of Carcosa. And he also started
Speaker 1: at this time to mentor younger writers. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: something he would do for years, although apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: he remained a rather critical human being, Like he was
Speaker 1: very judgmental and critical of others, and he would distance
Speaker 1: himself from his students and writers he was supposed to
Speaker 1: be mentoring that he thought weren't very talented or didn't
Speaker 1: have very original ideas, Like he wouldn't it sounds like
Speaker 1: he wouldn't really address it and be like, I don't
Speaker 1: really think you have what it takes. He would just
Speaker 1: sort of quietly shut them out. He's a complicated and
Speaker 1: difficult man, I think so. Right as Beerce's career was that,
Speaker 1: it's apex Hurst sent him to Washington, d C. What
Speaker 1: Hurst wanted to do was kind of enlist Ambrose Bierce's
Speaker 1: vitriol and sense of justice uh into his fight with
Speaker 1: against the dealings of Collis Huntington's. So Huntington's had been
Speaker 1: accused of being politically corrupt before, and he was trying
Speaker 1: to slide a bill through Congress, which, if it passed,
Speaker 1: was going to forgive all the outstanding loans that the
Speaker 1: government held. Some of these had paid for the construction
Speaker 1: of the Transcontinental Railroad. And the reason this is important
Speaker 1: to Huntington's is that he was basically the last man
Speaker 1: standing of the group that was responsible for building the project,
Speaker 1: so he was not super interested in bearing the financial
Speaker 1: burden and paying back all these loans that he now
Speaker 1: was responsible for. Hurst had gotten wind of Huntington's scheme
Speaker 1: to shirk all these loans, and he basically sent his
Speaker 1: journalist attack dog after him. Beers was not a blind
Speaker 1: pawn in all of this. He thought that the railroad
Speaker 1: was correct and that Congress shouldn't be helping, and so
Speaker 1: his skilled rhetoric drew attention to the bill, which was
Speaker 1: ultimately defeated. And that's the whole episode that I mean.
Speaker 1: There have been book just about that event, about the
Speaker 1: fight of the railroad and Congress being involved in the
Speaker 1: legalities of the corruption, and UH, if anybody wanted to
Speaker 1: explore that just know it's out there. Uh. Beers returned
Speaker 1: to California after all of this for a while, but
Speaker 1: soon he has to be transferred to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Permanently and he and Hurst, as you can imagine, two
Speaker 1: very opinionated, very outspoken men, were known to butt heads
Speaker 1: uh and argue over things like this. But the request
Speaker 1: was approved and Beerst moved to d C and started
Speaker 1: writing his pieces for the Examiner as well as The
Speaker 1: Cosmopolitan from his new home on the East coast. And
Speaker 1: that was in eight so the nine hundreds did not
Speaker 1: start off especially kindly for him. His remaining son, who
Speaker 1: had followed in his father's footsteps as a journalist, died
Speaker 1: in nineteen o one from pneumonia, which might have been
Speaker 1: complicated by a drinking problem. And in nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: his wife, Mary, from whom he'd been separated since, died
Speaker 1: of a heart attack. And she had actually only filed
Speaker 1: for divorce a few months prior to her death, citing abandonment.
Speaker 1: And there is a whole other um theory that she
Speaker 1: thought that Ambrose wanted to get remarried, so she was
Speaker 1: sort of freeing him from their legal marriage, but he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't ever marry again. From nineteen o nine to
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, Beers worked exclusively on a twelve volume collection
Speaker 1: of his work that was published by Neil Publishing Company,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't working for Hers anymore. During this time,
Speaker 1: he seemed to be kind of done with new writing
Speaker 1: in general, and once the publication project of that twelve
Speaker 1: volume collection was complete, Beers began a tour of Civil
Speaker 1: War battlefields while he was en route to Mexico to
Speaker 1: witness ponto Villa's Revolution, which, as you can imagine, was
Speaker 1: a rather dangerous place for a foreigner to be wandering.
Speaker 1: He also squared away all of his personal business in
Speaker 1: this time, although whether that was just the cautionary preparedness
Speaker 1: of somebody getting ready to travel to a foreign country
Speaker 1: that was potentially dangerous, or a man who pretty much
Speaker 1: recognizes that he's at the end of his life tying
Speaker 1: up loose ends is a little bit unclear. You know,
Speaker 1: it would have played out pretty much the same way
Speaker 1: either way. He wrote a letter to his niece just
Speaker 1: before he left, and one of the things that said was,
Speaker 1: if you hear of my being stood up against a
Speaker 1: Mexican stonewall and shot to rags. Please note that I
Speaker 1: think that a pretty good way to depart this life.
Speaker 1: It beats old age disease, are falling down the cellar
Speaker 1: stairs to be a gringo in Mexico. Ah, that is euthanasia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of jovial, but also a little ominous. Uh.
Speaker 1: Many people have wondered if he really was just going
Speaker 1: to Mexico sort of with the intent that he would
Speaker 1: not ever come back. Uh. There continue to be rumors
Speaker 1: and theories about that. Uh. And we don't know what
Speaker 1: precisely happened to him on his travels while he was there.
Speaker 1: His death date is generally listed as nineteen common nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen question mark. Uh. Sometimes it's just listed as nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen question mark. We have no way of knowing how
Speaker 1: long he lived after his last correspondence, which was a
Speaker 1: letter that he sent from Chihuahua in late December. In
Speaker 1: that letter, he wrote as to me, I leave here
Speaker 1: tomorrow for an unknown destination. And some people have read
Speaker 1: into that that that was like a suicide note, and
Speaker 1: others whore like, no, he he was just wandering. He
Speaker 1: didn't have a plan, and we don't know. But after
Speaker 1: it became apparent that he had disappeared and no one
Speaker 1: had heard from him. His daughter Helen, petition the US
Speaker 1: government to investigate what had happened to him, and they did,
Speaker 1: but nothing was ever found. He really kind of did
Speaker 1: a thin air move. And of course there've been sightings
Speaker 1: and theories about what happened, but Ambrose Bears disappeared pretty thoroughly.
Speaker 1: There was really not any kind of trace to turn
Speaker 1: over or obsess about. You don't know if he was
Speaker 1: killed by Federal two troops, rebels Pontoville himself. Nobody really knows.
Speaker 1: Some scholars have pointed to the siege of Ohinaga Chillawa
Speaker 1: in January nine, fourteen as a likely place of his death,
Speaker 1: but there's really no substantial evidence that's ever been found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, a big violent event that happened
Speaker 1: near where he was last known to be. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: theoretically that could have easily been a place where he
Speaker 1: could have died and been lost kind of in the
Speaker 1: carnage of the battle. Uh And when you read Beers's work,
Speaker 1: as I've said, there's definitely this sense of darkness and
Speaker 1: futility and reality juxtaposed with surreality and his war stories
Speaker 1: in particular, I find extremely affecting. Chickamauga, for example, tells
Speaker 1: the story of this young deaf boy who is on
Speaker 1: a battlefield, but he believes it's all a game. Like
Speaker 1: he thinks he's in either a dream situation or his imagination,
Speaker 1: and he's so lost in this this imaginary play that
Speaker 1: he fails to recognize the horrible reality around him, even
Speaker 1: though beerst describes the carnage of war with extremely graphic detail. Uh.
Speaker 1: And similarly, in Coude Gross, the story centers around a
Speaker 1: man who kills a friend of his in a mercy killing.
Speaker 1: The man was wounded and really suffering, and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: the man that did the mercy killing is executed as
Speaker 1: a killer himself. And this sort of darkness and cruelty
Speaker 1: of war is always present in his works, as well
Speaker 1: as a certain detachment even in this, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: intense description of truly grizzly scenes. And that's that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why uh spoiler alert if you have
Speaker 1: never watched Jacob's Ladder. A lot of people look at
Speaker 1: Jacob's Ladder as a like a reworking of occurrence at
Speaker 1: Owl Creek Bridge for the Vietnam war. Yes, that comparison
Speaker 1: is often made, but his work is not without humor,
Speaker 1: even though the tone of the humor is usually black.
Speaker 1: The Devil's Dictionary, like I said, I find hilarious. It's
Speaker 1: really snarky. And so to end on a humorous note,
Speaker 1: I thought we could read a couple of definitions from
Speaker 1: that work, because it is laid out like a dictionary,
Speaker 1: with words and then their meanings. As written by Ambrose Beers,
Speaker 1: Sarah would love nown a temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Speaker 1: Quotation noun the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Speaker 1: I love that one. I know the Internet needs to
Speaker 1: see that one. There's prey verb to ask that the
Speaker 1: laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
Speaker 1: single petitioner. Confessedly unworthy politeness nown the most acceptable hypocrisy. Well,
Speaker 1: and this, this next one is funny to me because
Speaker 1: my brother calls the lottery a stupidity tax, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I call it a daydreaming license. Lottery noun attacks on
Speaker 1: people who are bad at math. And finally, if I
Speaker 1: just love this one, it's so absurd and wonderful hash
Speaker 1: It's categorized as X. It gets no part of speech assignment.
Speaker 1: There is no definition for this word. No one knows
Speaker 1: what hash is corn beef and deliciousness a commentary on
Speaker 1: sort of the mash together of things that hash often is.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's Ambrose Beer. I highly encourage people to
Speaker 1: read his work. It is easy to get a hold
Speaker 1: of because almost all of it is on Project Gutenberg, uh,
Speaker 1: and also many other places online. I mean you need
Speaker 1: to do a quick search and find just about the
Speaker 1: entirety of the body of his work. His letters are
Speaker 1: a little bit harder to get a hold of. Speaking
Speaker 1: of letters, Yeah, do you have some listener mais? I do.
Speaker 1: I have two pieces of listener mail, both of which
Speaker 1: UH clear up some information and add uh an insight
Speaker 1: that we would not have otherwise hand. The first one
Speaker 1: is from our listener Alex, and it is about the
Speaker 1: Judge Crater podcast. She says, I wanted to clear up
Speaker 1: something on the Judge Creator podcast, which is a fun
Speaker 1: bit of trivia. While Judge Crater was an Associate justice
Speaker 1: on the New York Supreme Court, that job is not
Speaker 1: as impressive as it sounds. All of New York's lower
Speaker 1: courts are called Supreme courts. The highest court in New
Speaker 1: York is the New York Court of Appeals. I think
Speaker 1: the professor's told us that about ten times during the
Speaker 1: month of law school. And then, uh, she makes this
Speaker 1: suggestion for a podcast topic, and she gets all the
Speaker 1: points for mentioning the clash. This is my personal point
Speaker 1: assignment system. Uh. The second letter is actually one of
Speaker 1: the message that we received through Facebook from our listener NEMA,
Speaker 1: and this is in response to part one of our
Speaker 1: Everest podcast, and Nema says, Hi, guys, just listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast episode on Everest part one. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force flight surgeon in me cannot help but point
Speaker 1: out that you're mixing up H A C E with
Speaker 1: hypoxia altitude sickness that results in high altitudes. Serebrilladema is
Speaker 1: a slow biochemical process that involves damage to the brain cells,
Speaker 1: while hypoxia is a relatively quick lack of oxygen that
Speaker 1: temporarily causes you to not think clearly. While hypoxia is
Speaker 1: a symptom of H A C, H A C E
Speaker 1: is not hypoxias. He's referencings specifically when I talked about
Speaker 1: my dad's altitude sickness story. He says, also before you ask, Yes,
Speaker 1: we still do something very similar to what your dad described.
Speaker 1: It's done as part of regular aircrew training to teach
Speaker 1: folks how to recognize it and how insidiously it occurs. However,
Speaker 1: version is much safer and more supervised, and my dad
Speaker 1: would have been doing that decades ago, so I can
Speaker 1: only imagine how much it's advanced. Well, and I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it at that time, but that story reminded
Speaker 1: me of a friend of mine who, when he was
Speaker 1: doing research in the rainforest, became dehydrated and had that
Speaker 1: same surreal sense of realizing that his his mental faculties
Speaker 1: were not entirely present, and then being like, no, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Oh no, wait, I'm not okay. It's so weird how
Speaker 1: you become compromised and it's like your brain stitches together
Speaker 1: a narrative that everything's fine. I'm very fascinated by that
Speaker 1: aspect of brain science. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us, you can do so at History Podcast, Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com. Do you mind us on Facebook at Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash missed in History. You can visit us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mist in History, at missed in History
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com on pin Drift dot com slash
Speaker 1: mist in History and you can just go to www
Speaker 1: dot miss in history dot com and explore our shiny
Speaker 1: new website. It's very exciting, which has access to just
Speaker 1: about all these other things you just mentioned. The two things.
Speaker 1: There's two things that excite me the most about a
Speaker 1: new website. One is there's a search function. Yes, so
Speaker 1: if you were wondering if we have an episode on something,
Speaker 1: you can search for it. It's right there. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: still finishing up the tagging of older episodes. Yeah. Tagging
Speaker 1: is the second thing that is I'm very excited about
Speaker 1: because one day soon you'll be able to click on
Speaker 1: something like South America and you'll see all the South
Speaker 1: America stuff. Yeah. It's very very cool, and the back
Speaker 1: end team that worked on it did a great job,
Speaker 1: and Tracy and I are excited to have this sort
Speaker 1: of new framework to put information into in a new
Speaker 1: home online. You know, we hope you visited if you'd
Speaker 1: like to do some research on some of the things
Speaker 1: we talked about today. You didn't go to how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. And if you type in Civil War into
Speaker 1: the search far, you're gonna get so much content on
Speaker 1: the Civil War, and it was such a huge part
Speaker 1: of Ambrose Beers's writings that it's worth exploring. Uh, if
Speaker 1: she would like learn about just about cleaning else your
Speaker 1: mind can conjure. You can also do that at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and when out Day for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Classes brought to you by Linda dot com.
Speaker 1: You can learn it at Linda dot com, an online
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