Many of us imagine our family homes as private, intimate, and even sacrosanct spaces. Do we have a right to intrude upon that privacy by reading someone\u2019s diary or their personal letters? Edward H. Fitzgerald\u2019s journal and Sara E. Neal\u2019s letters to her future husband offer us an intimate view of the sentimental nineteenth-century family, as well as insight into mental health in the U.S. military and gender norms in the American South. Another aspect of the sentimental family was its emphasis on childhood innocence. Families commonly commissioned photographers to create baby portraits like the one displayed. Photography, however, was not just a tool that families used to document themselves. It was also a new technology with the power to reveal secrets and hidden truths. Photos of white emancipated slaves from New Orleans were circulated widely during the Civil War to galvanize northern whites to join the abolitionist cause, but their persuasive power was fueled by many white Americans\u2019 fears about racial intermixture in the pro-slavery South.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many of us imagine our family homes as private, intimate, and even sacrosanct spaces. Do we have a right to intrude upon that privacy by reading someone\u2019s diary or their personal letters? Edward H. Fitzgerald\u2019s journal and Sara E. Neal\u2019s letters to her future husband offer us an intimate view of the sentimental nineteenth-century family,… Continue reading Love and Ethics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3898,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/familysecrets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}