It animates every native American Land session cession. All of those are made under great duress. The United States seized 1. 5 billion acres. Depending on estimates, that is an eighth of the arable world. You have to imagine it playing out. Between 1776 and 1887. Siteight guess that this is plugged into contemporary debates about who is an immigrant anyway, who is an american anyway. The site went viral, crashed our servers, and garnered views in every country where google doest one of our senators. , csiis my baby lately dixie, which aggregates corner inquests. Slate called it a beautifully conceived and profoundly mournful new digital history site. You all do not know me, but , they are married to , which is good enough for them. I drop you a few lines and answered your letter that you sent. We will talk about letters in a minute. Dear wife, you never said in your letter how much money you had received from me. I would like to know how much you had received. Let me know in your next letter. Dear wife, i have more money to send if i could get a chance to send it to you. Wife, i was sorrow to hear that mother has been sick but i am in hope that god will restore her to Perfect Health again. I can say to you that i do want to see you and the dear little children the worst i ever did in my life. May god bless you and them with this is back to the michaels. I hope i do not have to expend what a herculean effort it was to assemble and transcribe 10,000 letters written by soldiers who cannot spell. Obviously, you cannot use a spellchecker. You cannot use autocorrect. You have to get every letter right and none of them makes sense. There are erroneous stray punctuation marks that are not improper uses usage and you have to get those right. They do not have the greatest handwriting. This is a great example. This is a classic of the genre. Men who are transitional illiterate are not always do not always have the greatest penmanship. Here isneedle in a haystack and the michaels spent a decade and a half assembling a haystack of needles. To what end . These are ones we cannot figure out. Maybe you can help me. , it using the word fairly tends to be northerners use middling. I will someday give you a true detail of the killed and wounded because i believe i know middling well and i will inform you. That is what they. This is confirmed by google. Line, look at the blue is running stronger through 1900. Daddy comes on a as a term care that is the word father at the top, a very formal word term. Father athe word the top, a very formal word. What youre seeing here is that was running stronger until relatively recently. Dad value is ohmsg at neil loggias neologisms. Everything we talked about so far you might say it is interesting but who cares. I like the idea that i might that we might get to hear from them, but some of you might say you do not think the battle of gettysburg turned on what these boys call their daddies. I would agree. Neologisms. T an interesting way at measuring the impact of a war is the impact they leave on language. Wars typically do this. It demands and elasticity of expression and english is one of most elastic languishes languages in the world. If you want to know what difference a war makes, ask what impact it had on language. One of the classic examples is the word skedaddle, which basically did not exist anywhere on earth in 1860. By 1862, it was in every neologism. Th. Rebelsst two examples, have possession of this town because we have skedaddled essentially. The second example we have been skedaddle and dashed foraddl skedaddling days. The common soldiers take this word. New recruits come two days after we come. If they would stay, we would have a full battery, but after they get their bounty most of them will for taking military terms and making them ridiculous. The synonyms for desertion, and there are many, half of them are repurposed military terms. All of these mean desertion i will flank out, run the blockade, take a North Carolina discharge, chris a furlough, break the guard. These men are transitional he literate. Literate. Ionally that does not mean they are not creative in the way they use language. They wanted to take the air out of and they wanted to take the air out of anything. We are all familiar with seeing the elephant. We do not examine it. The dominant metaphor for getting a taste of battle, but doesnt it mary the weird idea that the whole world is an obscene circus . Less wellknown are terms like i seen the monkey show or i seen the monkey dance. John ingram writes home i guess you have heard before this time that i have seen the monkey dance. Is that world war iment was the midwife to the modern. It destroyed the victorian and gave birth to irony and a new that was more wistful, less trusting, more sad. If you go back to the greeks, all of literature a toughness, a rawness, a spare ss. The sources at private voices put me in mind of a world words they would never know, insouciant, which means a cultivated coolness, a sense of having no more f to give. Please let me know in your next whether he caner talk or not and whether it still sucks titty yet. What a romantic. About our children. There is an honesty to it. There is a rawness. That is what he wants to ask. Or this letter which ms. Ba ggerly receives. We have a heap of men here that have the clap and pox and all complaints. They get drunk and run after mean white women but i can tell you i take no part with them. I would be a little dubious. It is raw. Their life is lived close to the bone. It is honest. Rhonda bateman writing her brothers i have a sore throat. Describe it simply as the place where families meet to part no more. For many poor white families, the civil war marked the first and only time they were not together. Absence as much as violence defined what the war meant. I never knew what it was before to be from home, but i know something about it now. I still hope that the time is coming that we will meet again and if we do not meet in this world i hope we will meet in heaven, where we will part no more. I read this again and again. Part no more. All i want is to go home. What i yearn for most, what sounds like war with that letter, but what about this one . My dear children, you all express you want to see me so bad, but i know you do not want to see me any worse than i do you. I think through the mercies of god i shall be able to see you again in a short time because this will come to a close. It looks like we came cant stand it much longer. He was killed shortly after. Andy dear, you are my only dearest friend in this world. If ever i live to get through with this war, i will always take your advice hereafter in anything you say. It appears i will never get to see you anymore in this world. Could i just see you one hour, it would do me more good than the best things that ever could be. I never have craved anything much in my life but that it be the good lords will to spill the writer is john b. Gregory, a residing onvirginia a farm with his wife martha and therefore young children. In february 1862 he wrote his wife i am glad to see tom oakes come. He is going to touch my box where we paid for a pint of whiskey this morning. We do not by much but we are obliged to buy some. Somebody has drunk is drunk nearly every day and they do not them unless they fight and then they so much. I really appreciate it. [applause]