Harper’s Weekly of December 21, 1861 features Winslow Homer’s “A Bivouac Fire on the Potomac”:
Homer depicts an encounter between diverse American cultures, centered on the evening’s entertainments of dance, fiddle, and other camp pastimes…
FOR BACKGROUND, SEE:
Dubois: “The Banjo” (2016)
“The growing of a new gourd in strange lands to replace the broken ones of the old, the crafting of strings to sound out new songs.”
Lhamon: Raising Cain (2000)
Lhamon reconstructs the hidden history of public dance, musical fusion, Jim Crow, and racial identity (& transgression) in antebellum U.S. cities, then traces it forward into the 20th century:
The Hardtacks 