Sorry, back to Little Women, but a couple of years ago I got hold of a booklet that one of my cousins did of letters (originals copied in color so we could see the shade of the paper) and transcriptions between my great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother that they exchanged while he was fighting for the Union at Chickamauga and she was trying to hold down the farm in western Illinois (there’s still a town there named after him). It was about half news and half instructions about who to go to if she needed to sell some cows or corn to get through a certain month. So many families led by women in times of war. The movie lets you know the cost without dwelling on it.

Ironically, a couple of my mother’s ancestors from Georgia also fought at Chickamauga on the Confederate side, but we don’t have any such letters as far as I know. Her mother was was from Lookout Mountain on the Georgia side.