One of the most promising features of Private Voices will be the ability to search and automatically map dialect and word usage patterns by region. Such text-mining and mapping features will be added once we upload our full range of letters from the South, Northeast, and Midwest, but in the meantime we will make available maps and essays that capture some of our favorite findings.

Introduction provides a broad overview of the impact of the Civil War on American English.

Sowbelly and Hardtack focuses on a subject near and dear to most soldiers -- food.

Bushwhackers and Copperheads collects the terms Union and Confederate soldiers used to designate each other.

Gone Up the Spout examines the argot of average soldiers, with an emphasis on regional variations in the idioms and neologisms they employed.

NEXT: Introduction