Hello, I am making a short film set during the civil war. Part of it takes place in a Northern cabin, housing a 16 year old and his mother.
I am wondering what are some common phrases of dialogue you would hear during that time period. Specifically in one scene, the boy comes downstairs to the kitchen and the mother is cooking and she offers him some. So I am wondering how much different that scene would sound from the 1860s to now.
Imagine the phrase in current time period would be, "Hey hun, you want some bacon?" or something along those lines, how would that sound back then?
Also what were some common curse/swear words a Northern teenager might use?
Thank you
Short answer: I don't really know the top of my head. Best advice I have would be to check out published sources from that era like books or newspapers which might give clues to what you're looking for.
Newspapers: check out Chronicling America, a collection of digitized US newspapers maintained by the Library of Congress. Pick a city and a date range and browse through some issues. Newspapers at that time would periodically publish personal interest pieces on various topics including (likely fictional) dialogue.
You could look into American popular literature from or about the era. Obvious examples would be Uncle Tom's Cabin (published 1854 (?), set in the South but written by a Northerner, or The Red Badge of Courage, published 1895 but set during the Civil War.
Other options might be travel literature, like Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes (1840s), depicting a tour of the Great Lakes region, or James Redpath's The Roving Editor, which is a Northern journalist touring the South (lots of dialogue but mainly of Southerners, sorry). other examples might come from Google.
The good news is that nearly all of this will be public domain, so finding free versions should be pretty easy.