Professor James Scythes is an Assistant Professor History at West Chester University. He is the author of "This Will Make a Man of Me": The Life and Letters of a Teenage Officer in the Civil War and Letters to Lizzie The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All.

In this podcast, we mainly discuss Professor Scythe's Letters to Lizzie, which recovered a Civil War social network that united a community in New Jersey with its sons serving in the Union army. The social network that Scythe identified reflects similar structures found throughout the collections in the Private Voices archive. To view these collections, visit altchive.org

Andrew Turner is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His dissertation is on underage soldiers and sailors during the American Civil War, focusing on their conceptions of gender and manliness. To view the letters discussed during this program, visit altchive.org or the links pasted below

Jesse Pouns

https://altchive.org/node/10613

Pascal Gilmore

https://altchive.org/node/12582

John A. Boyette

https://altchive.org/node/10571

Arthur Martin

https://altchive.org/node/13552

William Ellis

https://altchive.org/node/13397

Errata: Andrew did some research after the episode and found that the phrase "how are you salt river!" was a common expression in antebellum political culture, and meant to suffer an ignominious defeat. It was especially common in the South, and you can read more about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_River_(politics). 

Garrett Kost is a Park Ranger at Ford's Theatre, an installation of the National Mall in Washington D.C. Kost graduated from Gettysburg College, specializing in military history and public history. In this conversation, Kost explores the spring of 1865, Washington D.C., and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln through letters written by Union soldier in the Private Voices archive. To read the letters discussed visit altchive.org or see the links below.

John Compton: https://altchive.org/node/14200

Harrison Nesbitt: https://altchive.org/node/14063, https://altchive.org/node/14064, https://altchive.org/node/14065, https://altchive.org/node/14067

James Aggas: https://altchive.org/node/14006

Benjamin Roy, host of the Private Voices podcast, introduces the program, describes its objectives, relationship to the Private Voices digital archive (altchive.org), future guests, and the sponsors who made the podcast possible.