Life does not stop for a War

In a historical concept it is easy to forget that in the midst of the political turmoil of the years preceding war and during the bloody fighting that in other places life goes on, much as it did before.  Such things are made clear when you read the documents within the Major Family Correspondence records from the time frame within the Civil War.  Later in the year the first of Douglas-Lincoln Debates would be held and a mere eight days previous the Marais des Cygnes massacre happened Bloody Kansas an unidentified families personal correspondence shows that in the prewar year of 1858 that despite all of this the tension between North and South was not a major concern of theirs.  The same goes for the next document written in the middle of the war also from the Unidentified Major family letters in 1863 in which the only way one could tell a war was happening was who the letter was addressed to.  

The first letter chronologically is perhaps one that exemplifies why some people can call writing letters a lost art.  Sewn into the top of each page of the letter is a flattened plant or flower, that the unknown woman sent to her cousin Sam.  The letter in detail goes about her travels and how her friend Lucy is whom it seems the unknown woman is playing matchmaker for the two of them.  Even how the woman scolded Sam for not noticing something about her appearance during their last meeting.  Despite the difficulty in deciphering the letter to a modern reader who is not used to reading handwritten cursive on a daily basis the love and care in the letter is undeniable.  Also due to it's length it would seem that if the growing tension between North and South were a major concern for the family it would be mentioned.  

The second letter I unfortunately do not have name only the addressee title which is a Major.  However the letter itself is almost entirely legible and easily readable as the writer seemed to only take liberties with his writing on names.  He was talking about establishing a "house" which I can only assume to mean a business of some kind as he later goes on to talk about hiring wage workers a 100 dollars for the year for wages and how it would be trouble within a years time to sell "a very large amount of goods."  

The two items are of not a great source of scholarly research, there will likely never been a thirty page research dissertation on these individuals and their actions.  However it is the people like this, living their lives the best they could at the time given the circumstances they lived in that lived in most of the country.  I find it very easy to forget sometimes when looking at battles or history over the years to forget that their were millions of normal people living during this time who don't so much as get a footnote in history.  Documents like these are our only ties to this kind of history.