"Civil War" and eloquence

I've rented (for the 20th time) Ken Burns's Civil War documentary and, of course, the standout element is the sheer eloquence of letters home, even from (relative to today) little-educated private soldiers. So I was thinking about this wierd turn of events, how we got better information and more access to it, and yet seem to have lost rhetorical skill in our personal correspondance. I wonder if it is because will the advent of telecommunications anc television and movies, we can now say more wiht inflection and tone of voice than could have been said with letters that needed to travel days and weeks. So now we need not be so loquatious when we can simply say the same things with less in less time.