North versus South: Regional Patterns of Grammatical Variation in Nineteenth-Century American English

We reconstruct the inherent variability found in mid-nineteenth-century American English by drawing on a corpus of semi-literate correspondence, the Corpus of American Civil War Letters (CACWL), rich in non-standard grammatical features. The primary focus is on a comparison of morpho-syntactic variability (was/were variation and restrictive relativization strategies) in letters written between 1861 and 1865 by Civil War soldiers originating from Massachusetts and Alabama. Key findings include the elevated rate of was-levelling, particularly in the Alabama letters; the variable effect of the type-of-subject constraint on the selection of non-standard was; and the scarcity of WH-relativizers in restrictive relative clauses. Contextualization of these findings in relation to an ongoing quantitative investigation of grammatical variation in four additional states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina) represented in the CACWL provides further evidence of structured heterogeneity in Civil War correspondence as well as the sensitivity of variable grammatical processes to regional differences. Taken together, our findings demonstrate how judicious use of the CACWL can leverage new insights into nineteenth-century American English.

Letters home: German-American Civil War soldiers’ letters 1864–1865

Phillipp Schneider, German-American Civil War soldier and resident of Wisconsin since the age of 9, wrote 45 letters from March 1864 to August 1865, totaling ca. 22,500 words. I analyze these letters from a sociolinguistic perspective, considering both the unique mix of German and English usage and the socio-historical implications surrounding the letters. These are supplemented for comparison with two letters written by German-American Heritage German speaker and soldier, Jacob Goelzer, who wrote to Schneider’s sister twice in 1864. I describe the importance of when and under what circumstances these letters were written, and I also delineate instances from the letters of how the dominant community language, English, has influenced the German used and compare the use of German and English.

Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch

For eighteenth and nineteenth century Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, a variety of German was the language of their books, their newspapers, and their schools. Being far from the European homeland created a hegemonic shift in the linguistic lives of these early German Americans; they were adopting an American regional identity. Along with their shift in identities and in linguistic hegemony, structural aspects of the languages they used also changed: their written German was in contact with English and with their spoken Pennsylvania Dutch. In addition, the limitations of formal education in German at rural schools meant that the emphasis among most Pennsylvania Dutch was on the receptive knowledge of German and not on productive control of the language. In time, a variety of German called Pennsylvania High German emerged in the publications, writings, and schools of Pennsylvania. This article shares recent findings of a large corpus of written attempts at Pennsylvania High German by Civil War soldiers. It discusses both the structural aspects of their written language as well as the negotiation of their American regional identities through a multilingual lens at the first major moment of increased contact with outsiders.

Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat

Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat

Introduction

This chapter explores why surrender was so common during the American Civil War. One out of every four Civil War soldiers surrendered. It contrasts how frequent and accepted surrender was during the Civil War with American attitudes during the 20th and 21st centuries.