We've all been there... 3 am, you're a little drunk, and quite lonely, so you send a text to that not so special someone. Is there any evidence of one of these pre-cellphone era? Perhaps even a letter? Anything at all really.
In Telegram!, Linda Rosenkrantz writes about one from 1861, from Centreville Virginia:
PLEASE SEND US PIECE ARTILLERY FOR FEW DAYS ALL DRUNK HERE.
Unfortunately, she does not provide a source for this - or even tell us whose side was requesting artillery while sloshed.
You might be interested in some previous threads on regrettable pre-telephone communications:
Drunk or Prank Messages
Background
It's only literary history but in Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' (1873) Prince Oblonskey's wife laments about his habit of sending frivolous drunken messages by carriers late at night while he was out partying. I remember thinking it was the equivalent of drunk texting when I read it.
As a side question I have heard that a drunken uboat commander sent out a happy Christmas message in multiple different codes. Now the British had cracked one or two of them, but not the others and having the merry xmas message enabled them to crack many more.
I have tried and failed to find any sources for this, and I suspect its one of those tales that has no real origin.
Could somebody possibly confirm or deny this.
One of the most famous telegrams in history, sent from Khrushchev to Kennedy during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been scrutinized by historians (and some historical actors) as possibly being sent by a drunk man. It is, at the very least, more emotional, and more personal than your typical Premier-to-President telegram. It was followed up by a very different, hasher, more formal telegram the next day that proposed a quid pro quo removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba and US missiles in Turkey (which was taken up by the Kennedy administration, secretly). I don't know if Khrushchev was actually intoxicated when he dictated the first telegram, but he was certainly in a rather florid state of mind:
If you did this as the first step towards the unleashing of war, well then, it is evident that nothing else is left to us but to accept this challenge of yours. If, however, you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.
I've not come across records of any telegrams that read like a drunk text myself, although tbh I haven't looked for them. However, Eamon de Valera’s youngest son is quite well known for this statement regarding Churchill's 'now or never' telegram:
Churchill was in very high spirits celebrating America's almost certain entry into the war. In fact, Father told me that Maffey told him that Churchill was intoxicated and was sending telegrams in all directions... he did not mince his words in describing Churchill as being 'drunk' on the night in question.
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/memories-from-a-son-of-the-chief-25911921.html