Module 2: Colonial Times through Reconstruction

Overview:

In this module, we will explore ethics in creative nonfiction and the differences between public and private discourse in letter writing.  You will read women's letters from Colonial Times through the Reconstruction era.  Drawing upon these letters, you will analyze the themes, and utilize what you learn to create your own works of creative non-fiction.

Module 2 Objectives:

• Describe the difference between public versus private discourse

• Discuss the different experiences of black and white women as portrayed in the readings and videos

• Experiment with one or more elements of creative nonfiction.

Overview

"[L]etter-writing practices and correspondence networks that connected people in eighteenth-century America...enabled them not only to communicate with each other across great distances, but also to build relationships, develop associations and movements, and advance themselves socially, politically, and economically. During the eighteenth century, letter-writing manuals circulated widely on both sides of the Atlantic. Middle-class men and women turned to these manuals to learn the proper conventions of correspondence" (#RemembertheWomen). 

THEME: Public vs. Private Discourse

One of the key elements of this course is reading and writing responses to letters. We also must understand the context and importance of letter writing, and for our purposes, women's letter writing at different times in American history. Using these letters as prompts for your own exploration of the craft of creative nonfiction gives us a unique opportunity to work with primary source documents and create your own responses to the women who you will meet through their letters. 

Before we can begin to talk about this, we must address the concept of private versus public discourse.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

2. Privacy and Postal Service

See Photo from between 1912 and 1915 of the James Farley Post Office - Image Source: Public Domain

In our modern world, while we tend to take for granted that the physical mail, the letters we send and receive via the US Postal Service, are private missives sent between us and the intended recipient, this assumption of privacy has not always been the norm.  

We know that there are laws in place where the "Postal Service protects the privacy and security of mail under a long-standing framework of federal statutes and regulations. The statutes and regulations specify strict safeguards for the cover, i.e. the envelope or wrapper, as well as contents of all mail sent through the postal system"(Intelligent Mail). 

However, that sense of privacy and the idea that our mail will get to us no matter what is a bit of a more recent phenomena supported by the unofficial U.S. Postal Service motto, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," inscribed upon the James A. Farley Building as the main US Postal Service station in Midtown Manhattan.    

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In early colonial times, letter writers sent their correspondence by friends, merchants and Native Americans via foot or horseback. Most of this correspondence, however, were between the colonists and family members back home in England. 

In 1633, the first official notice of a postal service in the colonies appeared (Longfellow).  As you can imagine, the means of letter and package delivery were not always reliable, and definitely not done in "swift completion." As we moved from the late 1700s and the oversight of the US Postal Service by the first Post Master General Benjamin Franklin, into the mid-1800s, mail delivery was accomplished vial wagon trains, stage coaches, steamboats, the Pony Express, and ultimately railroads.  

While these transportation methods were helpful in increasing the speed of delivery of mail within the United States itself, the mail was still subject to the perils of travel and bandits. Then, at the turn of the century into the early 1900s, we moved to modes of ocean liners and air mail services. 

As we had faster and more efficient means of transportation and sorting methods, public mailboxes, and the like, the privacy of the mail became a little easier to secure at least at the point of delivery. In the next module, we will talk a little bit about the censorship of military mail which is another infringement on the notion that our physical mail is completely private. 

See an image Source: Public Domain                                 

If you are interested in learning more about the history of the U.S. Postal Service, click on this link for a comprehensive historical overview.  

3. Making the private voice a public one

"[E]ighteenth-century correspondents were part of a rising generation for whom letters were an increasingly essential part of their lives. Rather suddenly, through vastly expanded literacy as well as increased access to the material conditions necessary for letter writing, better and more efficient transportation of letters, and the dispersal of families that characterized so much of the colonial American experience, ordinary people put pen to paper and marked out their everyday lives and experiences. Increasingly in the eighteenth century, letters became a central means of communication and connection not only for elite families, but also for a variety of people in all walks of life"(Greer).

Making the private voice a public one

In early America, there were "varied possibilities that writing and reading provided some girls during the colonial period...as the eighteenth century progressed, elite girls were able to use their literacy to build and sustain relationships...by engaging in a broad spectrum of literacy activities...they shared texts with family and friends as they read aloud"(Greer).  Hilary Wyss (in the the article you will read as part of this module) notes that letters during the 18th century were shared more as part of a social network than a private correspondence between two individuals.  She writes, "[t]he implied dyad of the letter writer and recipient that we take for granted today is more or less a fiction: the letter writer may not have been a single individual since a letter might include messages to and from others, especially family members. For those whose literacy was not firmly established, the letter writer might more properly be considered its composer, with a scribe (either paid or acting out of kindness) writing down the actual words...Finally, the recipient of the letter would be not only the person to whom the letter is addressed, but would generally include a variably sized group of people—other family members, community members, and even passing visitors and friends with whom one might share all or part of the familiar letter, which would most often be read aloud upon its receipt—sometimes even by the person who had delivered it, who might be expected to carry a return message. There was rarely any expectation of privacy in epistolary exchange"(Wyss).

The push for literacy education and the instructive manuals like the one by Thomas E. Hill introduced in the first module, introduced people of all socioeconomic statuses to the power and connections possible through letter writing. Familial collections of letters began to accumulate "simply because nobody threw them out; others remain because they matter deeply as evidence of some element of family or community pride or identity. More often collections—especially letters collections—are a combination of the two"(Wyss). 

Beyond the social and necessary aspect of reading letters out loud in early parts of U.S. history, as we saw in the videos in the first module, there is a draw to reading letters to better understand our past, to learn more about the individuals who wrote the letters, and to vicariously "live" the experiences of the author and their intended audience.  

Image Source: Creative Common

4. The letters to one become the letter to be read by many

Letters that move from private to public: The letters of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus

There is considerable fascination with the art of letter writing and reading "found" letters. The edited collections of women's letters by Lisa Gunwald and her husband Stephen Adler, Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present, was the inspiration for this course.  While that collection is a treasure trove of correspondences across American history, I want you to be able to immerse yourself in what the letters looked like, imagine what they felt like, and see the "artistry" of the handwriting, use of white space, and papers and inks/typefaces in which they letters came to life. 

In the last module I indicated that we would explore the letters between Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus.  The correspondence between these two 19th-Century freeborn African American women was discussed in Nina Sankovitch's TedTalk starting at the 8 minute and 20 second mark.  Her retelling of the experience she had reading their letters, provides a rich and deeper understanding of the relationship between these two women. 

However, there is more to the Brown and Primus letters than what Sankovitch talks about.   Watch this 36 minute C-SPAN2 video to better understand their history in this talk by Faray Jasmin Griffin at the Giovanni's Room bookstore.  

Dr. Griffin is a professor and researcher at Columbia University and wrote the book, Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868 (1999). At about 13 minutes into the talk, Griffin talks about the fact that Rebecca knows that her mother reads her letters in public forums, so she is a bit more careful about what she writes.

Image Source: Amazon 

Letters that were intended to be public

When we look at the letter that Sojouner Truth "wrote" about her visit with President Abraham Lincoln (see this link).  Truth's letter, written for the public forum of an abolitionist press was "doubly" public since, as she was illiterate, she had to dictate her letter to abolitionist Lucy Colman. The letter was ultimate published as part of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and Truth's autobiography.  Regarding the letter, "[h]istorians continue to debate what actually happened. While pointing out that Truth’s accounts of her life varied and that she was regularly “edited” by her white sponsors, scholars also regard Colman’s account as unreliable"(Sojourner Truth). The power of a letter, despite the controversy about the full truth of the details of the visit, endure since there is evidence of the visit from the signature Abraham Lincoln gave to Sojourner Truth. You could say, that this letter (which you will read as part of this module), could be considered creative non-fiction.  

A final note on public versus private discourse. 

Letters Aloud is a performance group founded in 2013 with the mission of connecting people with "famous (and infamous) historical figures through their intimate correspondence. We’re also intensely interested in exposing modern audiences to a rapidly disappearing form of communication—the written letter. The eloquence, pathos, and individual experience of history captured in letters is intriguing, instructive, and often hilarious"(We Love Letters). This acting group takes what were private letter and makes them public through their performances. You will see more in regards to public performance of letters later in the module with the letters exchanged between John and Abigail Adams.

5. Required Readings and Videos

REQUIRED READINGS & VIDEOS

Wyss, Hilary E., et al. “Eighteenth-Century Letter-Writing and Native American Community.” Commonplace, commonplace.online/article/eighteenth-century-letter-writing/.

Faray Jasmin Griffin's (1999) talk about her book, Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends - link to C-SPAN2 video (36 minutes) 

OPTIONAL RESOURCES

Hawkins, B. Denise. “Addie & Rebecca – Letters of Free-Born African-American Women during the Civil War.” Diverse, 17 June 2007, diverseeducation.com/article/7496/.

6. References in this Section

References

Greer, Jane. Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present. ABC-CLIO, 2003.

“Intelligent Mail Usage and Privacy Policy.” Intelligent Mail Usage and Privacy Policy - Legal - Who We Are - About.usps.com, 2020, about.usps.com/who/legal/privacy-policy/intelligent-mail-privacy.htm.

Longfellow, Rickie. “Highway History.” U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration, 2017, www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/back0304.cfm.

“Sojourner Truth Visits President Lincoln.” Vermont Humanities, 24 Oct. 2014, civilwarbookofdays.org/2014/10/24/sojourner-truth-visits-president-lincoln/.

“We Love Letters.” Letters Aloud, 26 Nov. 2018, lettersaloud.com/about-us/.

Wyss, Hilary E., et al. “Eighteenth-Century Letter-Writing and Native American Community.” Commonplace, commonplace.online/article/eighteenth-century-letter-writing/.