WEBVTT - Ambrose Bierce 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.200 Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:13.920 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson and uh, Tracy, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.520 are you watching or did you watch True Detective? I 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:24.360 did not, which you still can. But thanks to its popularity, 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.160 as you may have earned, it actually crashed HBO go 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:29.600 on its finale night. I did hear that because so 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.920 many people were trying to watch it. Uh. Many people 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.040 have found are renewed or perhaps a new interest in 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.120 the writing of Robert W. Chambers because of a book 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.160 of short stories that he wrote in the late eighteen 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:43.640 hundreds which is called The King and Yellow And this 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:45.839 book is referenced throughout the season one story arc of 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.080 True Detective with references to the Yellow King and the 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.280 wearing of masks in the city of Carcosa. And in turn, 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:58.520 Chambers influenced, uh a whole subgenre of writers of so 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:03.640 called weird fiction, including people like HP Lovecraft. Definitely weird. 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:07.320 Well it's actually called weird fiction. Just me going that's weird. 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.679 I'm just saying, and I love weird fiction. So, but 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:15.039 influencing Chambers. So going back before the work of Chambers 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:17.480 was actually a man who has been on my list 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.280 for a long time. Uh. So now seems like the 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:22.880 perfect point to focus on him, since True Detective pointed 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.600 at all of this work so much recently, and all 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.319 of those mentions of Carcosa and True Detective that come up. Uh, 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.679 that name actually shows up in chambers work, but it 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:33.880 was borrowed from the man we're going to talk about today, 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.679 who is Ambros Beers, who first mentioned it in a 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.840 short story which was called an Inhabitant of Carcosa and 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:44.120 that was first published in and Ambrow's. Beers is a 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.800 really fascinating character. He was a soldier, he was a journalist, 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.000 he was an editor, He was something of a philosopher, 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.000 He was a cynic. Uh. He was a very complicated 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:57.440 man with an unwavering moral code. And his life experiences 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:03.080 he such so many things that are historically significant in 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:07.480 his time. Uh And much of it was fantastic, much 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.079 of it was horrific, and it all sort of informed 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:14.799 his writing. Ambrose was born Ambrose Gwinnette Beers on Dune 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.000 forty two in Ohio. It was in a settlement called 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:24.120 Horse Cave. His parents, Marcus Aurelius and Laura Sherwood Beers 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.560 had thirteen children, and Ambrose was the tenth. And here's 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:29.359 a fun fact that you can pull out at a 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.480 cocktail party if you have a conversation law. Marcus and 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:35.160 Laura only named their children names that started with the 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:42.400 letter A. So, in addition to Ambrose, they were Andrew, Aurelius, Arthur, Abigail, Augustus, 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:48.720 and Aurelia, so the female version of Aurelius, Addison, Albert, Amelia, Adelia, 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:50.919 and al Maida. I feel like at the end they 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.760 were just swapping around some consonants to try to make 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:59.079 new names. It seems that way. But thirteen kids in yeah, 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:03.240 creativity might fall away. There's no there's no Amanda. Did 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.480 we have that name yet? When Ambrose was still a 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.320 young child, the family moved to Indiana and eventually settled 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.919 in Elkhart, and Marcus had a really pretty impressive library, 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.040 which served as a major source of education and inspiration 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:19.959 to Ambrose in his early years. He enrolled in the 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:24.440 Kentucky Military Institute at seventeen, and while he excelled, he 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.120 wound up leaving the school early to take odd jobs. 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.760 Uh so this is right on the cusp of the 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:34.000 Civil War, and Beers ended up having a really impressive 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.120 military record during the course of the American Civil War. 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.800 At the start of the war, Beers's uncle, General Lucius 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.160 Varius Beers, established two companies of Union marines. This was 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.200 in April of eighteen sixty one. His nephew Ambrose was 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.040 among the men, and it was mere days after Lincoln's 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:58.080 call for volunteers when the younger Beers enlisted. Lucius had 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:02.320 instilled in Ambrose a strong opposition to the concept of slavery, 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.800 so he had been really eager to join the war effort. Yeah, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.240 just as many other UH figures we've talked about, and 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.160 some even recently, UH. The Beers family was very much 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:18.000 part of the abolitionist mindset. When Major General George McClellan 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.640 led an invasion on West Virginia, Ambrose was part of 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.400 that campaign. The following year, eighteen sixty two, he was 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.080 at Shiloh in Hardin County, Tennessee when it was attacked 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.599 by the Confederate army. That battle was devastating for the 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.039 Union forces, who were taken by surprise, but Beers was 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.040 one of the survivors who rallied under General Don Carlos 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:41.120 Buell and catalyzed a Confederate retreat, and the Shiloh Battle 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.320 was one of the bloodiest of the war, with more 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.560 than twenty three thousand casualties, and it's something that came 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.240 up a lot in his work. Two months later, the 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:55.360 newly promoted second lieutenant Beers saved his commanding officers life 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:57.880 at the Battle of Stone River, and I'm going to 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:02.799 start that totally over. Two months later, the newly promoted 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:07.159 second lieutenant Beers saved his commanding officer's life at the 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:11.560 Battle of Stones River in Murphysboro, Rutherford County, Tennessee, and 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.640 shortly thereafter, in February of eighteen sixty three, he was 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.159 promoted to first lieutenant, and in his role as first lieutenant, 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.280 Beers served with the ninth Indiana Regiment and he fought 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.919 at Chickamauga in September of eighteen sixty three. Beers was 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.719 also part of the Atlanta Campaign under General Sherman, and 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.839 this campaign was pretty rough for him personally. He lost 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:33.880 his closest friend during the fighting and he was also 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.560 struck in the head by a musket shot on June 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:40.560 twenty three, eighteen sixty four, during fighting at Kennesaw Mountain, 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:42.960 which is close to us. That kind of brings this 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:45.479 particular story very close to home. But yeah, the whole 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.559 we're in Atlanta. We're in Atlanta right now. Uh. Beers 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:50.599 was treated for his injury and he returned to the 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.000 front lines in September, so just a few months later, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.039 and he served for several months before being discharged the 0:05:56.040 --> 0:06:00.600 following January. Uh chronic dizziness and fainting spells that were 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.280 kind of brought on by this head injury had ended 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:05.200 his time in the war, but just a few months 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:09.320 before the conflict officially ended. It's not really surprising to 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:11.840 say that the Civil War changed him, because how could 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.000 it not. He was only eighteen when he enlisted, and 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:19.480 the horrors of battle affected him pretty deeply. The idealism 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.000 with which he had entered the service was replaced with 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:25.200 this cynicism that would become one of his most fundamental traits. 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.479 And his time in the war also, as I mentioned earlier, 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.200 informed a lot of his writing. There have been other 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.320 authors that wrote about the Civil War, and some of 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:35.640 them even served, like Mark Twain I think, had a 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.880 brief service, But Ambrose Beer served more than any of 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:40.839 those other writers. He was in the thick of it 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:44.159 for almost the entirety. I mean he enlisted days after 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.720 things began and was only a couple of months before 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.480 it ended when he was discharged. So those years he 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.560 was just constantly involved in the war. And a sad 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.880 commentary on how deeply his time and the war had 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:03.080 changed him. Beers wrote later in his life, when I 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.000 asked myself what has become of Ambrose Beers, the youth 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.360 who fought at Chickamauga, I am bound to answer that 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:15.840 he is dead. Yeah. He was uh, pretty open about 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.880 how much it had changed him and how sort of 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:23.880 bluntly it had ended his idealism. After leaving the war, 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.000 Ambrose worked in Alabama for a while as a treasury agent, 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.000 and then in eighteen sixty six he was employed by 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.840 General W. B. Hazen for an expedition into Indian territory. 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.960 And Beers had worked as a topographical engineer under Hazen 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.680 for a period during the war, and the general wanted 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.000 his map making skills again as his team made their 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.360 way west. Let's travel with Hazen took Beers all the 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:50.080 way to California. They arrived in San Francisco in eighteen 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:52.720 sixty seven and Beers decided to stay on the West 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.800 Coast and he found employment with the U. S. Mint. 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:58.760 But he had begun to work on writing in earnest 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.080 at the same time, and he started submitting essays and 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:06.200 short satire pieces to local papers. He was eventually published 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.200 in the San Francisco Newsletter, and when the managing editor 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.239 of the newsletter resigned in eighteen sixty eight, Beer spilled 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:15.800 the vacancy. Yeah, even though he really didn't have any 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:18.160 formal journalism training, he kind of decided he was going 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.280 to become a journalist and studied on his own and 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.840 came managing editor of a paper, uh. And as managing editor, 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.280 he made a name for himself by taking over the 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.280 weekly column called The Town Crier, and he really used 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:34.640 this as his soapbox to lampoon government officials. We mentioned 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.800 earlier his sort of uh rigid moral code, and he 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.240 basically if he thought anybody was doing anything wrong, he 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.880 would call them out publicly in his column and right 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:50.800 really derisive things about them. Just pretty aggressive. Yeah. While 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:52.920 he was still working as a managing editor, he was 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.360 also developing another talent outside of journalism by working on 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.160 short fiction and so much. In the same way as 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.600 he started HISALSM career by submitting essays while working for 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.080 the Mint, he started submitting his short stories to literary journals. 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.080 He eventually published his first fictional story, The Haunted Valley, 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.200 in the Overland Monthly. And before we get to his 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:16.920 life sort of blossoming in terms of becoming a family man. 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:18.680 Is it cool if we pause for just a second 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.720 for a word from our sponsor? Let's do it. So 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:26.720 back to Ambrose. On December eighteen seventy one, Beers married 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:29.480 a woman named Mary Ellen Day, and just a few 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.320 months later, in March of eighteen seventy two, he quit 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.320 his job at the paper so that the couple could 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.600 take an extended honeymoon in London, although they ended up 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.760 moving to Bristol not long into their stay abroad because 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.640 the weather there was more hospitable to Ambrose's asthma. While 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.520 he was in England, he also works submitting his writing 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.880 to British journals. He eventually published work in the journal's Figaro, 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.200 London Sketchbook and Fun and he ended up with a 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.960 regular column and Figaro. Yeah he was writing comedy even 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:00.880 though I will talk a lot, and that's about how 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.680 sort of dark some of his writing is. Uh. A 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.720 lot of what he was writing was really, uh, you know, funny, 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:10.520 little satirical sketches. And this time while he was in 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.360 England was productive for both his career and his family. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.880 The couple's first child, named Day, was born in eighteen 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:20.600 seventy two, and their second son, named Lee, was born 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.320 in eighteen seventy four, so they really were having an 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.880 extended stay in England. And in between these babies, Beers's 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.920 first three books were born, The Fiend's Delight, Nuggets and 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.720 Dust and Cobwebs from an Empty Skull uh. And after 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.960 baby number two, the Beers's returned to California in eighteen 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.800 seventy five, and not long after they returned to California, 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.840 they had a third child, who was a daughter named Helen. Meanwhile, 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.560 Ambrose returned to his writing career. Once they were stateside again, 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.640 he got a job as an editor of the journal Argonaut. 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.080 In another case of kind of repeating patterns in his life, 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.439 he wrote a weekly column. It often called out public 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.480 officials for their moral failings. However, this column, which was 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.520 called Prattle, also had the leeway to give him an 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.560 outlook for publishing fiction on a regular basis. He wrote 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.280 Prattle as editor of Argonaut for three years before setting 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:20.760 out on a surprising enterprise, you know, surprising and short lived. 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.560 In eighty Ambrose took a position as a general manager 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.520 of a mining company in South Dakota. And while the 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.760 allure of the job was probably the promise of you know, 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:36.280 significant income, the gold rush had really peaked several years earlier, 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.599 and the corruption in the general depravity that he encountered 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.400 uh soured him on this position almost immediately. I mean, 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:46.840 we've mentioned how he liked to really call out people 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.160 that he thought were morally corrupt, So you can imagine 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.840 an entire business that he felt was just filled with 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.600 those people. Was really distasteful. And so by the end 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.400 of that year he was back in San Francisco. Pierce 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.120 was about to start writing Prattle in but not with 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.760 Argonaut this time around. His column was featured in WASP. 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:07.120 In addition to using it as a soap box to 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.920 call people out for their behavior and for using it 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.920 for short stories, he also used the column to share 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:16.959 pieces about the Civil War, as well as short satirical 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.160 blurbs that would become the foundation of the Cynic's Word 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.720 Book and that would eventually be retitled The Devil's Dictionary. 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:25.640 Is the first thing I ever read by him, and 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.040 that's kind of how I fell in love with Ambrose Beers. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.240 And we'll talk more about that in a bit. Uh. 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.960 And after leaving the Wasp in eighteen eighty six, and 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:36.680 that's one of those things where, uh, when you see 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.280 it written about, there's always there were lots of reasons 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.280 he left like he was, as you might imagine, not 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:46.360 always the easiest man to be around, because he did 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.840 have this sort of very strict code in his head 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.240 about how people should be and behave, and he was 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.079 very opinionated and very outspoken about it. So that there 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.360 are many factors to that exit from the Wasp, and 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:03.000 they're not always clear, uh. But having burned many bridges 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.400 with his critical column, he had a lot of difficulty 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:07.800 finding work after that, so for about a year he 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:12.559 went without a job. However, a man with a huge 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:15.160 reputation for being difficult in his own right came into 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.160 the picture and changed everything. So Prattle was revived by 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.360 none other than William Randolph Hurst, who offered Beers a 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.559 position at the San Francisco Examiner. This was before Hurst 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.520 was the media giant that he would later become. The 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:33.079 Examiner was his first paper, and Beerst took the job 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:36.400 on the condition that he could write whatever he wanted, uh, 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:41.199 like no editorial shut down of anything. And those were 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.600 terms that Hurst actually agreed to. You know, he had 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.600 sought out Beers, so presumably he was willing to be 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.560 pretty generous with his deal. And so Prattle once again 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:55.199 became a combination of Ambrose Beers's fiction and his social commentary. 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:57.760 And this time he built on the work that he 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.199 did at the WASP, and he published a much arger 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.440 volume of his Civil War writings, including an occurrence at 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:05.760 Owl Creek Bridge, which is probably his most famous work. 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.240 In this tale, which was published initially in serial form, 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.160 a southern gentleman contemplates his life and reminiscence about his 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.360 home and his family. Is he's about to be hung 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.400 by Yankee soldiers. And it's much more complicated than that. 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:21.320 Beers is sort of a master of sort of shifting 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.200 what you think is real and what is actually happening. Uh. 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.280 And the tone of the piece is cold, and in 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.040 it a steady diet of violence has kind of jaded 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.720 all of the players. Uh, which is something that comes 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.000 up again and again in his work. This one's my 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.040 first exposure to Ambrose Bears. Did you like it when 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.560 you initially read it? It might have been in school, 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:49.960 So it was in school, and uh, I don't remember 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.760 liking or disliking it. It's also been made into a 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.520 film several times. Yes, I also remember watching a film 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:01.960 of it in school, so uh, yeah, there's it's it's interesting. 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.240 I feel like having come in from the Devil's Dictionary, 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:09.160 which is much funnier and kind of absurdist in some ways. Yeah, 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.800 I have a much different sort of relationship with him 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:16.240 than people that were assigned Civil war stories by him 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:17.840 when they were kids. Well, it's one of those things 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:19.800 that I feel like I read it at the same 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:25.520 approximate time as reading Romeo and Juliet, which there's It's 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:27.160 one of those things where, in hindsight I kind of go, 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:31.080 is that really the best thing for middle schoolers to 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.920 get there? You know, first taste of this thing with Anyway, 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.680 while Bears had achieved a certain level of success as 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:40.680 a writer at this time, his home life was kind 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:43.760 of unraveling. He and Mary had grown apart, and he 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.240 had started to suspect that she was being unfaithful, although 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:51.640 there was really no evidence of infidelity. Yeah, it's one 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.880 of those things that, similar to when he left the WASP, 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.760 there's a lot of fuzzy nous around it. There's not 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:00.360 a lot of hard details. He thinks that she received 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:04.280 two letters from an admirer, and it kind of seems 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.120 like his pride may have caused him to draw conclusions 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.240 and be dug in about something that really there was 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:14.480 no substance to. Uh. Which is a pity because then 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.400 after almost seventeen years of being married, they separated in 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.800 Then just a year later, their oldest son, Day was 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.040 killed in a gunfight over Day's fiancee, who had run 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.520 off with another man. Both of the young men wound 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:32.240 up dying as a result of their wounds. And despite 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.240 all of this turmoil that was going on in his 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.120 private life in the late eighteen eighties, UH the early 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.120 eighteen nineties were some of Beers's most successful years as 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:47.080 a writer. He published several books, all very quickly, tales 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.920 of soldiers and civilians, aggregated his Civil War stories, and 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.880 got a lot of critical acclaim. The Monk and The 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:56.840 Hangman's Daughter is written as a diary of a man 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:01.680 struggling with morality, and that was promoted as a translation 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.760 of a lost German text. Then there's Can Such Things Be, 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.720 which is a collection of supernatural short stories, and that 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:13.719 one includes an inhabitant of Carcosa. And he also started 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.840 at this time to mentor younger writers. Uh. And that's 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.199 something he would do for years, although apparently, you know, 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.760 he remained a rather critical human being, Like he was 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.200 very judgmental and critical of others, and he would distance 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:30.520 himself from his students and writers he was supposed to 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:33.359 be mentoring that he thought weren't very talented or didn't 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.320 have very original ideas, Like he wouldn't it sounds like 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:38.240 he wouldn't really address it and be like, I don't 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:39.720 really think you have what it takes. He would just 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:45.159 sort of quietly shut them out. He's a complicated and 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:49.720 difficult man, I think so. Right as Beerce's career was that, 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.720 it's apex Hurst sent him to Washington, d C. What 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.360 Hurst wanted to do was kind of enlist Ambrose Bierce's 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:02.200 vitriol and sense of justice uh into his fight with 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:07.600 against the dealings of Collis Huntington's. So Huntington's had been 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:11.119 accused of being politically corrupt before, and he was trying 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.480 to slide a bill through Congress, which, if it passed, 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.240 was going to forgive all the outstanding loans that the 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.840 government held. Some of these had paid for the construction 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.600 of the Transcontinental Railroad. And the reason this is important 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:27.560 to Huntington's is that he was basically the last man 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.800 standing of the group that was responsible for building the project, 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.000 so he was not super interested in bearing the financial 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.120 burden and paying back all these loans that he now 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.879 was responsible for. Hurst had gotten wind of Huntington's scheme 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:42.960 to shirk all these loans, and he basically sent his 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.840 journalist attack dog after him. Beers was not a blind 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:49.680 pawn in all of this. He thought that the railroad 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.600 was correct and that Congress shouldn't be helping, and so 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.560 his skilled rhetoric drew attention to the bill, which was 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.280 ultimately defeated. And that's the whole episode that I mean. 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.600 There have been book just about that event, about the 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.560 fight of the railroad and Congress being involved in the 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.119 legalities of the corruption, and UH, if anybody wanted to 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.240 explore that just know it's out there. Uh. Beers returned 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.879 to California after all of this for a while, but 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:18.159 soon he has to be transferred to Washington, d C. 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.680 Permanently and he and Hurst, as you can imagine, two 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:27.440 very opinionated, very outspoken men, were known to butt heads 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.080 uh and argue over things like this. But the request 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.159 was approved and Beerst moved to d C and started 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.480 writing his pieces for the Examiner as well as The 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.119 Cosmopolitan from his new home on the East coast. And 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:45.080 that was in eight so the nine hundreds did not 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:49.080 start off especially kindly for him. His remaining son, who 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.280 had followed in his father's footsteps as a journalist, died 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.080 in nineteen o one from pneumonia, which might have been 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.720 complicated by a drinking problem. And in nineteen o five, 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.600 his wife, Mary, from whom he'd been separated since, died 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.400 of a heart attack. And she had actually only filed 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.000 for divorce a few months prior to her death, citing abandonment. 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.919 And there is a whole other um theory that she 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:16.439 thought that Ambrose wanted to get remarried, so she was 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.880 sort of freeing him from their legal marriage, but he didn't. 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.359 He didn't ever marry again. From nineteen o nine to 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:28.600 nineteen twelve, Beers worked exclusively on a twelve volume collection 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:32.480 of his work that was published by Neil Publishing Company, 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.280 and he wasn't working for Hers anymore. During this time, 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:37.840 he seemed to be kind of done with new writing 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.919 in general, and once the publication project of that twelve 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:47.200 volume collection was complete, Beers began a tour of Civil 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.600 War battlefields while he was en route to Mexico to 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:54.280 witness ponto Villa's Revolution, which, as you can imagine, was 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.000 a rather dangerous place for a foreigner to be wandering. 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:00.480 He also squared away all of his personal business in 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.200 this time, although whether that was just the cautionary preparedness 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:06.760 of somebody getting ready to travel to a foreign country 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:09.880 that was potentially dangerous, or a man who pretty much 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:12.520 recognizes that he's at the end of his life tying 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.399 up loose ends is a little bit unclear. You know, 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:17.040 it would have played out pretty much the same way 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.800 either way. He wrote a letter to his niece just 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.560 before he left, and one of the things that said was, 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.159 if you hear of my being stood up against a 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:29.159 Mexican stonewall and shot to rags. Please note that I 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.119 think that a pretty good way to depart this life. 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:35.240 It beats old age disease, are falling down the cellar 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:41.879 stairs to be a gringo in Mexico. Ah, that is euthanasia. Yeah, 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:45.600 it's kind of jovial, but also a little ominous. Uh. 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:47.800 Many people have wondered if he really was just going 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.200 to Mexico sort of with the intent that he would 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:54.399 not ever come back. Uh. There continue to be rumors 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.040 and theories about that. Uh. And we don't know what 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.280 precisely happened to him on his travels while he was there. 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:05.080 His death date is generally listed as nineteen common nineteen 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.560 fourteen question mark. Uh. Sometimes it's just listed as nineteen 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.640 fourteen question mark. We have no way of knowing how 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.560 long he lived after his last correspondence, which was a 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.880 letter that he sent from Chihuahua in late December. In 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.320 that letter, he wrote as to me, I leave here 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:23.840 tomorrow for an unknown destination. And some people have read 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:26.480 into that that that was like a suicide note, and 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.639 others whore like, no, he he was just wandering. He 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.440 didn't have a plan, and we don't know. But after 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:34.880 it became apparent that he had disappeared and no one 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.280 had heard from him. His daughter Helen, petition the US 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.480 government to investigate what had happened to him, and they did, 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:44.280 but nothing was ever found. He really kind of did 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.200 a thin air move. And of course there've been sightings 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:51.640