A new online archive of Civil War letters offers a vivid portrait of the everyday lives of enlisted men. These soldiers lacked formal education so they wrote and spelled by ear. The letters show us how ordinary people spoke then. • Is there a single...
Private Voices, also known as the Corpus of American Civil War Letters, is an online archive of thousands of letters written by soldiers during the U.S. Civil War. Because the soldiers lacked formal education and wrote “by ear,” the collection is a...
Martha reads a special letter from the U.S. Civil War soldier who wrote this letter. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Particular Civil War Letter” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it...
What’s the origin of the warning phrase down goes your shanty!? This bit of menacing slang pops up in letters written by Civil War soldiers. One wrote, “If I ever get a chance to draw sight on a rebel, down goes his shanty.” It has a similar meaning...