Could the average soldier read a book?

[redleggeddevil]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

Andrew,

That can also apply to Ocracoke or Tangier Islands well into the late 20th Century. I remember a young lady from Tidewater trying to explain "krugers" to an English teacher from Kentucky, and she only compounded the matter by innocently mentioning "taggers." It took a well known Wizard of Oz feline reference to bring these two people separated by a common language together. This was circa 1974.

Charles,

My place of birth (Long Island, New York) also boasts a few odd little linguistic pockets. Most people think of the Hamptons as a playground for the super-rich, but the locals have been there so long that they refer to anything west of the Shinnecock Canal as "the mainland".

The inhabitants speak with certain cadences and patterns that, linguists say, date back to 17th century Dorset speech.

Now if they would just allow me to set up a bear-baiting ring...

[rbruno]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

I think most of America at that time was "functionally literate." Think about the ways people had at the time to gain information. They had to read or hear information. They did not have TV, internet, sound bits, and especially visuals or other modern ways that allows us today to get information without reading. And, if reading and speaking were the main ways of communcation for the masses, I would imagine that writing would have been the least practiced. Would a functionally literate person injoy a novel from cover to cover or understand many of the allusion or figurative details, prbably not. As far as understanding Melville, Emerson, Longfellow, etc language or word choice, our language has evovled and continues to evolve over time as words appear and disappear from everyday usages. Again, I am not sure that the functionally literate would appreciate their writing, but I don't think the more educated people would have as much problem with the language as we do today. So, I think the people of the time were more literate then we give them credit for.
Rob Bruno
1st MD Cav

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

Also consider when and where they were writing. Not only could they likely read more than they wrote, but they were also in a less than wonderful situation while they were writing. To give a later example, Dad was nothing if not literate. He read literally anything he could find (including reading himself to sleep with a road map one night because he'd forgotten a book) and once sent my whole dorm floor into hysterics with a letter about getting stuck in the outhouse sans paper and the subsequent debate over which magazine to sacrifice. However, his WWII letters from Great Lakes are full of awkward sentences, crossed-out words and annotations of (sp?) Later letters from aboard ship are even less polished. He wrote when he had time and dashed off all he could.

Incidentally, I'm careful about judging someone's education by their level of writing because of another Dad-related incident. One of our professors claimed the ability to make such judgments and invited us to submit samples of friends' writing. Several of the grad school types I turned in were supposed to be dropouts. Dad, on the other hand, rated a "probably in law or graduate school". He dropped out of his junior year in high school to work in the coal mine. As any homeschooler would tell you, not all learning takes place inside a brick box.

[VMI88]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

One thing that he has mentioned regarding all the 'alternate' spelling found among letters was that spelling at that time in the English language had not been standardised across the board.

This is an excellent point. Many of the documents written by our Founding Fathers are full of what today would be considered misspellings and poor grammar, yet these men were geniuses by any standard.

[Rev]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

As any homeschooler would tell you, not all learning takes place inside a brick box.

As a homeschooling father I say, 'AMEN!'

[JustRob]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

I imagine the high level of trade in newspapers between soldiers casts some light on this situation.

[ElizabethClark]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

Also consider that not all published materials of the time were "great literature." Dime novels and other "pulp fiction" and "boilerplate" were not written to the same audience as "Great Literature". (And, keep in mind that Dickens was a boilerplate author, writing melodrama for the masses, though it does touch on relevant social themes...) Even a less-than-stellar personal writing style would not keep an "average guy" from enjoying mass market fiction or non-fiction (though it can be hard to tell the difference in some cases, given the hyperbole of some mid-century journalism.)

(And while I prize the wide variety of modern educational choices, let's do keep to mid-century commentary, please. :) )

[MarkTK36thIL]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

I imagine the high level of trade in newspapers between soldiers casts some light on this situation.

The 36th Ill Inf. Regt. had 10 trunks of books, one for each company, that went around with the regiment from 1862 onward. From that alone, I'd gather that at least the regiment as a whole was educated. I'm sure there were pockets of recruits where literacy was higher than others.

[YoungCampaigner]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

There is an interesting little passage in The Life of Johnny Reb about the reading and writing skills of soldiers. Judging from that, I would say that you would probably have been more likely to be able to read than you would to write a letter to your sweetheart. It does depend on your impression though. If you are the kind of person who would have grown up on a plantation, chances are you would have had a tutor and you could read and write in three languages. However, if you were some hick from the mountains, you probably would not have been able to read or write.

Sincerely,
William Chapman
40th Va. Infantry, Co. B
and
Signal Corps of the James
http://www.theyoungcampaigner.com

[Matthew Semple]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

There is an interesting little passage in The Life of Johnny Reb about the reading and writing skills of soldiers.

Can you provide it with quotation marks and with the appropriate citation? I am very interested in what the original source says.

[RJSamp]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

A little bit of help?

The 1860 US Census records if the person could read or speak English.

The 1870 US Census records if the person could not write or could not read English.

[NoahBriggs]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book? Yes.

Has anybody checked the article written by Virginia Mescher on this very topic? She has even taken the time to break the stats down by state/territory, and free/slave population and age bracket. You may find it on raggedsoldier.com, under "Virginia's Verenda Archive". I have even posted the title to help you find it even faster:

"Pick Up a Good Book: Literacy and Popular Literature of the Civil War" which does a state-by-state examination of literacy rates mentioned in the 1860 census, and identifies some of the popular books of the time period. Posted February 2005.

The "simple, illiterate American" is a mythology that needs to be shattered full-force with a sledgehammer.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book? Yes.

One thing that may not have come across when I started this new thread, was the previous conversation, where I mentioned that the majority of Americans could read and write based on the US census and other sources.

Terre made the point that there was a difference between being able to read and write simple things, which seemed to be the basis of the census question, and being able to do something like sit down and read an entire book for pleasure. She said that based on the actual surviving writing, it appeared most Americans couldn't do that, although they would be classed as literate in the census.

So that's why the thrust of the question is based on actual writing samples and what reading skills they would imply, rather than census data.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Gary of CA]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

The literacy rate was certainly higher than during the American Revolution or the French & Indian War. Setting as the greater numbers of soldiers who served during the Civil War, the sheer volume of material by them alone (and excluding those published later by their descendants) easily outweighs those of the former.

[Robert A Mosher]

Re: Could the average soldier read a book?

One point that I have not seen made in this thread is that NCOs were required to be literate - able to read and write - though I would not be surprised to see or hear about a wide variation in their abilities to do so. I believe that it has been pointed out that there is also the issue of being literate in languages other than English given the number of foreign officers and enlisted men. If you know the occupation or trade of a soldier before the war you can also make an informed judgment. In the records of the regiment I usually portray, the 28th Massachusetts, some 70 percent of the men were listed as laborers - which suggests that they were for the most part not literate, though there were also printers and other trades represented that clearly required literacy. (It was also by now a well-established American custom for one individual to read the newspaper outloud for the benefit of a group - thus saving time in sharing out the latest news and avoiding the singling out of anyone who could not read.)


Robert A. Mosher