With a Rebel Yell?

What did the "rebel yell" used by Confederate troops in the Civil War sound like? For years and years this question as been posed as mysterious and unanswerable. Historian Shelby Foote, appearing in Ken Burn's Civil War, said we could never be sure, going on to describe it as probably sounding like "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall." But it turns out we can know exactly what it sounded like, thanks to some early recordings at the Library of Congress:

The Library of Congress - C-SPAN Video Library

The Library of Congress - C-SPAN Video Library: "C-SPAN's original feature documentary, The Library of Congress, is a behind-the-scenes look at the national repository, providing the history of the institution, a tour of its iconic Jefferson Building, and glimpses of some of the library's rare book, photo, and map collections."

You have 90 minutes to spare, right?

Briefly Noted

Some things that I wish I had more time to explore:

• Memento is an experimental "time machine right in your web browser . . . [to] . . . explore content from a date in the past" according to the Library of Congress.
  
• Google Earth 6 is turning heads (see above)with its scary-good integration of street view into the virtual world. But not all the street views available in Google Maps show up in Earth yet.
  
• Building on Google Earth 6, HistoryPin allows you to "pin your history to the world" by inserting historic photographs into the street view. I am so going to do this with a class.
  
• Did you see where the FCC came out today with a very strong statement of support for net neutrality? Change I can believe in.
  
• ...and I have been meaning to tell you all that my employer, the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, is tweeting. I mostly write the tweets, and so far they have focused on exploring the 92 million digital objects in our collection. I may be a while. Follow us here.

"to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves"

Happy Fourth, Dear Readers. I wasn't sure what to post today when I saw that my local newspaper ran this wonderful letter from Thomas Jefferson. So I am stealing it. In the letter an elderly Jefferson declines an invitation to visit Washington D.C. on the 50th anniversary of Independence, and reflects of the significance of the event. Jefferson would die a few weeks later--on July 4, 1826.

(Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman)

Monticello, June 24, 1826

Respected Sir-

The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which I should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington and its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of the public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my affections, as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health forbids me the gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself, and those for whom you write, the assurance of my highest respect and friendly attachments.

Th. Jefferson

I copied the text of the letter from an older but still excellent Library of Congress web exhibit: Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents. The image of the letter is taken from the LOC Thomas Jefferson Papers.

Crowdsourcing Redux

In an amusing twist, Flickr user Heather Falk discovered my post "Lick This": LOC, Flickr, and the Limits of Crowd Sourcing and said hi (actually she said "LOL"). It was of course Falk who posted "lick this" to the forehead of a 1942 woman aircraft worker at the Library of Congress Flickr photostream, a comment that I held up as illustrating the limits of historical crowdsourcing. In any case, Falk has a Flickr photostream and appears to be a perfectly nice person with a cute cat.

This reminds me that I had promised to follow up with another post about crowdsourcing showing some of the triumphs of this approach. Stay tuned.

LOC Launches a YouTube Channel

The Library of Congress has just announced that they have a YouTube channel. I'll let them tell you about it:

Well, this is a day that has been a long time in coming. The Library of Congress has been working for several months now so that we could “do YouTube right.” When you’re the stewards of the world’s largest collection of audiovisual materials (some 6 million films, broadcasts and sound recordings), nothing less would be expected of you, and our own YouTube channel has now gone public.

We are starting with more than 70 videos, arranged in the following playlists: 2008 National Book Festival author presentations, the Books and Beyond author series, Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions), “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904 (I defy you to watch some of them without thinking of the Carl Stalling song “Powerhouse”), scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center, and the earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made (curiously enough, a sneeze by a man named Fred Ott).

There is not a ton of material there yet, let alone Northwest material, but I did find this wonderful snipped of some unidentified Plains Indians who worked for Buffalo Bill doing a buffalo dance:



I see that the LOC has disabled comments on the videos! I am a bit surprised--not very 2.0 of them!