To be fair it’s not just about reading cursive.....these are civil war era writings.
Not only were the writing implements crude 160 years ago, also the was people spoke and the words they used were far different from contemporary English.
Having transcribed several of the Jefferson Papers that were actually depositions taken for the Virginia legislature in 1775 or so, I can testify that there is some pretty difficult work involved.
The script is sometimes flowing and easy to make out but then some words or phrases lose the flowing cursive readability. There is also the problem of spelling. Old spelling is not the same as ours. Also, English was in fact English but some words are no longer in common usage.
Today we have one extremely important advantage over those trying to read the old stuff years ago. We can view it on the computer magnified many times to make the script clearer. If the document is not already digitized, it is easy to take a picture and read that on the computer.
For an old guy needing something to do, volunteering to transcribe the old cursive documents is in fact a worthwhile pursuit.
“the words they used were far different from contemporary English.”
The old folk in my Tennessee family still used thee and ye. They were from back in the hills though.