Data Mining – we do it all the time. Personally, going through George Mason’s Online Library the search for relevant topics depends on how well I decide to code the search words. I cannot complain as it makes searching for sources was less tedious than the days of old. I can only imagine utilizing the Dewey Decimal System that was prevalent in the late nineteenth century! (surely our generation would suffer) if our computers or access to the internet was taken away.

Daniel Cohen discusses this issue but his purpose is the search to refine such searching tools to give the researcher quality products instead of the massive document loads we tend to find on our searches. He first starts of using “Syllabus Finder” and this streamlines course materials into a search engine that surely relieves headaches for instructors. It is unique to witness the current dilemma of having rather easy access to a large amount of information and now trying to simplify it. This reminds me of General Meigs’ dilemma after the American Civil War where he has far too many documents and not enough room to store it.

Now we have far too may ways to access information without the tools to separate and streamline what we are looking for. I guess it’s just another challenge we will need to work through when regarding information access and retrieval. The question is what is the way forward to ensure all of this information continues to be accessible in a reasonable and easy way to find?

References:

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march06/cohen/03cohen.html

Copyright, the protection of intellectual property. In essence it is a no brainer that an individual should be compensated for the use of their work. However, what are the limitations and guidelines that ensure the creativity and compensation is adequate and not a detriment to future works. In class we discussed the compensation rights to be 20-30 years after an artist died and incrementally it began to rise in years over the years.

I would have to argue that while the individual who created the music or book is alive they should always be compensated. Upon death, the compensation should then be a smaller percentage and upon 25 years after death no compensation. Consequently, there is a similar thing the US Government does with certain reports and investigations where they lock up the results for a significant amount of time ie. Nixon Tapes, JFK report and MLK report.

The issue is that things start to become trivial and issues will always arise when it deals with money. We have witnessed in the last few years major cases of royalty rights with the “blurred lines” and “stay with me” songs created by Robin Thicke and Sam Smith respectively. They each were charged by the public of stealing the creative rights to the song and sounding similar to the original song. As such, Robin Thicke was sent to court and ordered to pay millions of dollars in royalty and Sam Smith voluntarily (he probably knew he would lose in court) settled out of court with Tom Petty.

This really takes the fun out of enjoying the music – an artist creates a song and then we hear the backlash that takes away from the creativity of the song. Maybe that is just my weird thoughts…

Folk Music is defined as music that originates from ordinary people from a specific region which is passed from generation to generation orally. As such, the beginning of “folk music” albeit the lack of the term will undoubtedly trace back to the beginning of mankind. There is belief that the “Troubadours” that performed in cities and towns throughout the 1100’s-1600’s were the first performers of “folk music”. The unfortunate issue is that many of the works were lost or destroyed throughout history and therefore many of the historical documentation required did not survive or is no longer available.

However, throughout my recent journey of research I have found the actual word “folk music” to have it’s earliest newspaper reference was in the 1800’s. In 1870 The Evening Telegraph from Philadelphia Pennsylvania introduced the word “folk-music” in an article that was discussing the history of European art such as plays and social life. The article then attributes the history of playing folk music to Scotland and Germany and then discusses how beautiful folk music is. In 1889 The Evening Star from Washington D.C. wrote an review in there magazine for the “Swedish Ladies Concert” who sing folk-music from the Scandanivis and remarked how well the ladies sang without instruments. They then proceed to say that this concert will again be played tonight. Many articles through this time referred to folk music in the sense of Indian or Negro works that gave the listeners the opportunity to hear foreign music here at home. One article was even so bold to claim and I paraphrase that “it was strange that the only folk-music we have is from the slaves” and that was presented from “The Courier” located in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1897.

After more research that left the realm of “folk music” and the use of keywords such as of “folk” and “songs” “historical songs” I found a gem. There was a published work and was from a Russian artist Nikolay Lvov. He actually published the “Collection of Russian Folk Songs with their tunes” in the 18th Century and was sponsored by the royal government of Russia. This is important because it shows that “folk music” was real and even the government understood the  significance. The bases for folk music in the later 18th century was a discussion of nationalistic pride as Lvov attempted to present.

Towards the 19th century Americans began to not only embrace folk music of their europeans ancestors but also created their own unique folk music. As such, folk music began to remind travelers of home – especially during the civil war. There is a story that was promoted by General Winfield Hancock’s wife Almira in her book about her husband about how a song “Kathleen Mauvourneen” brought tears to General Lewis Armistead. It was said that this song reminded the old friends of better times before they would go off to serve different armies throughout the civil war.

Sources used to collect information:

Google Books
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Chronicling America at Library of Congress

Books:

Reminiscences of Winfield Scott Hancock – Almira Hancock 1887

Magazines:

The Evening Telegraph – Philadelphia, PA 1870

The Evening Star – Washington, DC 1889

The Courier – Lincoln, NE 1897

The concept of African Americans serving as Confederates during the civil war is often considered far-reaching because of the belief that why would slaves support the Confederate cause. However, it must be understood that African Americans may have supported the cause because they were forced to or because of the possible propaganda that the Confederates may have placed toward African Americans. Therefore, Slaves may have felt that they had far to less of numbers to rebel against the Confederate forces “IF” they were armed. Also, they may have been told lies regarding how Union soldiers will receive them and may have thought that Union soldiers would commit crimes against them.

However, a greater subject of debate is whether African Americans were ever armed and fought for the Confederacy before the Confederate President Jefferson Davis made it legal in 1865. Dr. Lewis Steiner’s account has gained a lot of attention because it claims that African American’s were armed, in uniform and fought in the Battle of Antietam in 1862. There have also been various smaller claims that African American’s served as Confederates but there has been a lack of supporting documents. African Americans who have applied for a veterans pension for various states do not verify armed service but rather labels them as cooks, servants or other domestic or labor occupancies.

I therefore decided to look through several memoirs of Civil War leaders and soldiers. Some of those include Lieutenant General James Longstreet who was considered as General Robert E. Lee’s trusted war horse, Lieutenant General John Hood, Brigadier General Edward Alexander and Private Samuel Watkins. In each of these memoirs there was never any mention of any armed African Americans fighting for the Confederacy. Yet, I still refrain from saying that altogether African Americans did not serve. I believe that African Americans did fight for the Confederacy but not in organized units as I do not believe the Confederates believed the African American’s suitable to that requirement. However, I do believe that African Americans accompanied their masters on reconnaissance missions, raids and ambushes based on a individual augmentee structure.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that the organized structure of slaves into fighting units could not have been kept a secret – someone would have reported it in a battle report or one of the aforementioned memoirs. The 1800’s had limited resources to report on battles – usually through newspaper, telegraph communications and very structured photographs. The time it took to take one photo meant that oftentimes it was not practical or safe to take actual battle photos. That is also why a lot of civil war photos have been staged. Consequently, the information regarding this topic is often sparse and lacking supporting documents. In today’s world the use of hand held camera’s and social media networks close that gap that the civil war did not have the ability to.