Comment by idlewords
5 days ago
Another fun format to read is military orders in the Revolutionary War/Napoleonic Wars era, how generals wrote (with a quill!) when actual bullets were whizzing around them. Even Civil War era orders still sound extraordinarily formal, and such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting.
I've read that Washington sent back, unopened, british letters which had been sent to him but without being addressed with all the proper military formalities.
Was that his way of ensuring he didn't get labelled as an unlawful combatant?
> such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting
the 1876 orders to bring ammunition sent at Greasy Grass ("Custer's Last Stand") are an obvious counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#/...
are you sure you haven't been looking at transcriptions? (as in the upper right of the example above)
Where can one read those