Were Civil-War-era Americans better writers than modern Americans? [closed]

Question

Whenever I hear people recite speeches, letters, and historical accounts from Americans who lived through the Civil War, I'm struck by the exceptional quality of their writing. Compared to modern writing I read every day, those words sound like poetry to me. I don't notice this from earlier writing (though I haven't been quite so exposed to that) or later writing.

I have three theories, any or all of which may be bogus:

1. Selection bias means that bad writing no longer exists or is no longer put into modern works of history.

2. I associate the older style of writing with high quality writers of the era. Therefore, I'm being fooled into thinking that ordinary writers using words and phrases that were common in that time are of similar quality as exceptional writers who happen to use the same words. (I'm thinking of Dickens (not American obviously), Melville, Twain, and so on.)

3. People from the era really were better writers since they depended on the written word for day-to-day communication more than we do. Alternatively, teachers emphasized literature to a greater degree than we do today.

I suppose this might be better on English.SE, but is there any evidence from a historical perspective that my impression is correct?

Answer 1

I don't think your question is answerable in any objective sense. There's no way to unambiguously measure the "goodness" of a writer. That being said, subjective and anecdotal experience does have some value.

Selection bias and association probably have a lot to do with what you're seeing.

Consider how people often complain that music today is shallow and pointless, and that music of an earlier generation is so deep and well-crafted. Every era has music that's cheap and frivolous (Roger Miller's Do-Wacka-Do)*, it's the good stuff that survives the longest.

Let me quote a passage to you from a well-known writer of the 1800s:

As to the influence which the intellect of one man may have on that of another,
it must necessarily be very limited in a country where the citizens, placed on
an equal footing, are all closely seen by each other; and where, as no signs of
incontestable greatness or superiority are perceived in any one of them, they
are constantly brought back to their own reason as the most obvious and
proximate source of truth.**

I understand what the author is saying -- and he says it quite precisely -- but his writing style seems poorly organized and overly profuse.

Here's a sample from another author of the era:

The road is between this and the river, all near together. We go into the water,
then stay out till our clothes get dry and jump in again. Lots of the boys are
at work with a seine catching fish. They are very poor biters and never try to
get away when caught - no game at all. Very bony and soft. The natives call them
hardtails. Another kind humpbacks and flatheads. We stayed in the water nearly
all the time.***

The contrast between the two authors is strong. This one seems less-educated, a man of simple letters, narrating a simple story of his own experience. The word choice and phrasing seems almost quaint in a way.

In my opinion, neither of these two writers would be considered to have good writing style today. But with the passage of time, writers like these have been passed over (at least for their style), while writers like Mark Twain have been read and re-read by each generation.

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*Though I do happen to like Do-Wacka-Do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-Y0CMGwxo

**Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

***George Hand, Diary of Military Service in the Southwest, 1864

Answer 2

I'd guess that it is mainly selection bias. We have all heard of Mozart, Liszt, Bach, but never heard of Salieri, Emile Bernard, or Khosrovidukht. Similarly, we have heard of Pachelbel's Canon in D, but not Als der Gütige Gott even though they were both written by Johann Pachelbel. Art tends to survive only when it is good.