Call Me a Voyeur

Thank goodness the Civil War happened before the computer age.

Because otherwise, the Civil War 150 Legacy Project wouldn't have any old letters or diaries to collect and scan for posterity. Or be able to give much of a lecture at the Library of Virginia about the endeavor.

And it's me being a fan of the written word that makes having access to other people's letters so appealing. What CW150 Legacy is doing is spending two years going around the state scanning and photographing  family letters, ledgers, diaries, whatever people are willing to share from the period just before and after the war.

LVA archivists Laura Drake Davis and Renee Savits talked about holding events around the state to record people's history; they've been to 43 such events since last September. And people line up to have their stuff scanned.

Savits said, "I'm a Pennsylvanian but Virginians keep and preserve their history better than anyone else," and then proceeded to show us images of some of the more interesting stuff they'd scanned.

There was a VMI diploma signed by Stonewall Jackson, a reunion photo of "Mosby's Men" from 1901 and a sketch  in the margins of a prisoner's journal done of six men being hung.

One of my favorite letters was from a young man home. He'd heard Lincoln speak to a huge crowd in 1860 Illinois . Afterwards, he went to Lincoln's house, hoping to meet him. Mrs. L. said he was taking a nap, so he and his friends snuck around the house and looked in the window to see the great man sleeping.

Today that would be the equivalent of stalking and invasion of privacy followed by texting Mom and Dad with the news. Just doesn't have the same resonance somehow.

Part of the goal of the project is to gather materials from underrepresented viewpoints.The diaries of women on the homefront provided information on how they were handling things on the farms. One spoke of letting Confederate soldiers use a parcel of their land to graze sheep...without even asking her husband.

Historical significance aside, the voyeuristic peek into long ago relationships and domestic goings-on is fascinating to me. People wrote for pages to say what they needed to say. Maybe you just have to be a big history geek to be willing to gather history through letters.

After the lecture, I met up with a friend from Williamsburg, also a history buff, and went to Perly's for lunch. It was less about the food and more about catching up since we last saw each other seven months ago.

I told him all about the CW150 Project lecture, resulting in him suggesting an historical field trip to Hollywood Cemetery. It was a perfect day to enjoy a garden-style cemetery what with the dogwoods in bloom and everything so newly fresh green.

If it hadn't been for the construction crews, we could have been post-war Richmonders spending an afternoon at the cemetery with a picnic lunch.

And then I would have come home and written a letter to my beau about how I passed a sultry Spring afternoon at Hollywood.

And in a hundred years, someone would have found it a fascinating glimpse at 2011. Even if they only read it on a computer screen.