Hi, This is not really an answer, sorry Alex, but your question reminds me of the ngram research that English books stopped writing about the Usited States as plural rather than singular about 1880, which maybe suggests US residents weren’t talking about the state of the nation so much until communication technologies opened up national spaces. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/bigger-better-google-... https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=(The+United+States+is+%2B+The+... Donald — Dr Donald Matheson Media and Communication University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140 Aotearoa New Zealand tel: +64 3 364 2987 ext 7888 On 21/07/2017, at 1:07 PM, Jason Farman <jasonfarman@gmail.com<mailto:jasonfarman@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi Alex, I've written a bit about this here, which is a brief excerpt from my forthcoming book on the history of message exchange and time. This excerpt focuses mostly on communication between soldiers and their families, but touches on your broader question: <goog_1537437003> http://www.waitingforword.com/a-delayed-crossing/ I've found David Henkin's book, *The Postal Age <http://a.co/5O82qRW>*, to be an amazing book on this topic. Best, Jason -- Jason Farman, Ph.D. Director, Design Cultures & Creativity Program Associate Professor of American Studies Faculty Member, Human-Computer Interaction Lab University of Maryland, College Park http://www.jasonfarman.com <http://www.jasonfarman.com> http://twitter.com/farman New Book Out Fall 2018: Waiting for Word <http://waitingforword.com> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt@gmail.com> wrote: Not an internet question, but maybe people are familiar enough with communications technology to give some pointers: I've gotten REALLY into communications infrastructure history recently. There's a ton documented on World War 1 and 2, but less on the American Civil War. I'm looking specifically for documentation of non-war communication tools: less about war participants and more about ordinary people's communication patterns (letters, telegraph, photography, newspapers, etc.). Namely, what was an American before and during the Civil War doing to learn about the state of the nation? Does anyone have any good sources to look at? Thanks! Alex _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/