My Dear Martha.

Begun with a tone of loving familiarity, this letter goes on to express

no only love and longing but also feelings and purposes as simple as day planning within the
next week. This letter was written by a man named D.S. Green from Tennessee in 1834. He
wrote it to his sweetheart, Martha. The letter is a loving communication. Green uses many
phrases that are rather romanticized and beautiful in terms of the language he uses to express his
emotions to his love. The purpose that Green had in his mind and heart in writing this letter was
to quite simply and yet poetically tell his love how he felt about her and to assuage any feelings
of sadness had over their recent period of absence from each other.
This letter appears to be the first of a series of letters that stem from the separation of
Green and Martha for a prolonged time period due to an out of state venture by Green. He makes
mention that he will try to write at least once monthly which signifies that he will be at a
considerable distance and probably out of regular contact. He also says that it will be extremely
gratifying to me while alone in the mountains high or valleys lowe, to seat myself and read, what
my own true love has written.1 This to me signifies that it is quite possible that Green was part
of a venture taking place in the Western territory of the Unite States which was just beginning to
be widely pioneered by American settlers during the 1830s and 1840s. Green later quotes lines
from the poem Powers Celestial by Robert Burns, which reads in the letter as:
Guardian Angels O protect her,
When in distant lands I roam;
To realms unknown while fate exiles me,
Make her bosom still my home.2
1 From section of D. S .Green Letter dated as August 31
2 From Powers Celestial by Robert Burns

These lines infer not only the forthcoming distant absence that shall separate the two but also
helps to demonstrate the romantic feelings of love between the two.
The wording used in the writing of this letter helps to express the romantic feelings between the
author and, original, reader and the Romantic style of writing. Instead of saying Ill always be
thinking of you, Green wrote: oft will my longing eyes be turned toward the blue sky that over
thy head rolls and the sight of the evining star shall turn the good feelings of my heart to thee my
love, and in the dead and silent hour of night when all is wrapted in calm repose my wandering
mind shall be with you.3 The Romantic era, particularly from 1800 through 1850, is marked by
the flowing, beautiful, and emotional language of writers like Shelley, Keats, Blake, and Byron.
In his work, Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications,
William Decker used correspondence between John and Abigail Adams to show some of the
common traits of love letters of the time. He says that some of these common themes were those
such as a proliferation of metaphors that trope absence and the activity of letter writing; an
inscription of what are represented to be dreams of sleep or wakefulness that stand as metaphors
of erotic longing.4 The purpose of this style was to represent the ideals of human emotion and
the beauty of the natural world. It is evident in Greens letter that this is the style that has its hold
on culture.
Some interesting points of societal investigation can be viewed and examined as well through
this letter. Some of the basis for the following points relies on the concept of Honor and religion
in Southern culture at the time and on how they showed an application to daily life. This can be
3 From section of Green Letter dated 2nd September
4 William Decker, Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before
Telecommunications, page 80

evidenced in this letter in two specific places. The first scene of this follows from the following
passage:
my parents are near and ____ to me altho I may seem to think (as I know I do) that they
are wholy wrong in their opposition but such is the power of love that it draws as it were
by a thousand cords - now I have made a proposition of religion I feel resigned to be
satisfied and shall under all circumposition aim to pursue an even upright course trusting
that the almighty will be my help so long as I obey his commandments.5
Here Green displays both his own individuality and independence in setting his own interest in
opposition to the wishes of his parents who represent the strict concept of filial duty and
obedience owed to ones parents under the hierarchy of this society. He is also showing his
intense devotion to the power of religion through his respect and trust in God while he continues
to live in an upright manner.
Another example of this can be found in the statement: I must content myself by holding that
we shall ere long be without the bounds of concealment.6 This sentence taken in concert with
the passage above and the reticence to openly express their relationship as well as the secretive
means of exchanging their correspondence described in the letter seems to show that there is
some shame to this relationship because of the non-acceptance of the parents. The social
construct of the disapproving parents is such a known universal occurrence that is now and has
often been used as a clich in literature, television, and film.
This document comes to us from a time in which the practice of letter writing was not only still
very much a prevalent and necessary one but indeed the largest and most expedient form of
communication available. Speaking of letters, Simon Garfield says in his book, To the Letter: A
5 From section of Green Letter dated 31st August
6 From section in Green Letter dated 2nd September

Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing that they were the the silent conduit of the worthy
and the incidental, the time we were coming for dinner, the account of our marvelous day, the
weightiest joys and sorrows of love.7 The telegraph system was still a couple decades away
while the idea of the telephone was pure fantasy. The local post was the only alternative to
physically meeting with someone or being related a message by a third party messenger. This era
of the exchange of letters has attached to it a cultural impression of a romanticized sense of
emotional connection that was stretched and tested by the inability to stay in constant contact
like that which we can now have in the modern age. Letters had to evoke a sense of love and
longing. They had to condense everything that the writer wanted to tell the recipient into just a
few pages. This means that letters can form a solid sample of sources for any work of cultural or
social history. We can now use this letter and documents like it as evidence in building a cultural
impression and understanding of the times they have come from.

7 Simon Garfield, To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing, page
19