Whenever I read statements like the following:

Craig Hancock wrote:

>. . . . I think the other point in Charrow's article, that people
>don't know as much grammar as they used to, including teachers and
>editors and professional writers, is very true,
>
I am reminded of the following petition from white women in Miller
County, Georgia  in September 8, 1863
to the Davis administration in Richmond, Virginia.

Our crops is limited and so short  [that we] cannot  reach the first day
of march next.  . . .  But  little [illegible]
of any sort to Rescue us and children from a unanamus starveation. . . .
We can seldom find [bacon] for non
has got But those that are exzempt from service . . . and they have no
humane feeling nor patraotic prinsables in
thare harts. . . . they care not ef all the South and its effort fail
and sink so they swim . . . an allwise god ho is slow to
anger and full of grace . . . will send down his fury and judgement in a
very grate manor [on] all those our leading
men and those that are in power ef thare is no more favors shone to
those the mothers and wives and of those hwo
in poverty has with patrootism stood the fence Battles. . . . I tell you
that with out som grate and speadly alterating in the
conduckting of afares in this our little nation god will frown on it and
that speadly.

(All brackets and ellipses are in the source -- Williams, David (1998).
Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat
in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley.  pages 113-4)

I doubt that any petition written by ordinary people to their leaders
today would be so non-standard.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

>
>

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