At the time of the Civil War, the primary means of communication for most Americans was through personal contact. There were less than one-fifth as many people in the United States as there are today, and only one-fourth of them lived in cities. Most of the population led isolated lives in which contact was restricted to family and close friends. In the middle of the nineteenth century people got their information about the world outside their experience through faceto- face contact, correspondence, and newspapers. There was no radio or television; the telephone was available by the end of Reconstruction, but only to a small, privileged group. The telegraph offered something approaching instant communication, but its use was restricted to areas where lines had been constructed, and practical concerns, including cost and the awkwardness of the system, caused telegraphic messages to be brief.
Letters were.....
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