Kansas History and Folksong
KANSAS HISTORY AND FOLKSONG by Bill and Mary Koch America's musical heritage is a strange mixture, but from its songs, and especially its folksongs, we can relive our historical past. As our ter ritories developed and new states came into the union, songs were made and sung which purported to tell of life and conditions in the new state. Kansas was a crucial area a hundred years ago, and the whole nation's at tention was directed toward her and toward what might transpire on these prairies. The Civil War slowed down the westward movement, but only temporarily, for a new hope had already been fired in the hearts of people, especially those from the old northwest and from the eastern seaboard. Walt Whitman, America's great poet of democratic principles, real ized early in the 19th century the part that music would play in this west ward movement and the settlement of America's great heartland. He praised the west and foresaw what Frederick Jackson Turner, the eminent historian, was to say later about the west\vard movement-that the natural processes of settlement in succeeding new areas afforded the opportunity to slough off undesirable, non-democratic principles and institutions. Both Turner and Whitman were romanticists; that well-known phrase, "The American Dream," meaning the idea of the freedom of opportunity to all, is the theme of much of their literary output. Only a vast public domain and free land could spark this dream to a reality, so men would actually point their covered wagons westward with kids, dogs, hogs, and all,
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