AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MILITARY MARCH - DIXIE
Another version of this with lyrics performed by Derek Warfield (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsy0molI94A)
Dixie, also known as Dixie's Land, I Wish I Was in Dixie, is a popular traditional American song. It is definetly one of the most distinctively American musical products of the 19th century. Although not a folk song at its creation, Dixie has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word Dixie in the American vocabulary as a toponym for the Southern United States. Although most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition, other people have claimed to have composed Dixie, even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem of definitively establishing the song's authorship are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing, and his tardiness in registering the song's copyright. The latest challenge has come on behalf of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, who may have collaborated with Emmett to write Dixie.
The song originated in the blackface minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly became popular across the United States. During the American Civil War, Dixie was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy. New versions appeared at this time that more explicitly tied the song to the events of the Civil War. Since the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, many have identified the lyrics of the song with the iconography and ideology of the Old South. Today, "Dixie" is sometimes considered offensive, and its critics liken the act of singing it to sympathy for slavery or racial separation in the American South. Its supporters, on the other hand, view it as a legitimate aspect of Southern culture, the fight for states rights and freedom from big government, and heritage. The song was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln; he had it played at some of his political rallies and at the announcement of General Robert E. Lee's surrender.
Several theories exist regarding the origin of the term Dixie. According to Robert LeRoy Ripley, Dixie has nothing to do with the south. Dixieland was originally located on a farm in Long Island, New York. This farm was owned by a man named John Dixie. He befriended so many slaves before the Civil War, his place, Dixie's Land, became a sort of a paradise to them. James H. Street, in his book, Look Away! A Dixie Notebook, as condensed in the August 1937 Readers Digest, page 45, says that "Johaan Dixie" a Haarlem (Manhattan Island) farmer and slave owner, upon deciding that his slaves were not profitable because they were necessarily idle during the New York winter, sent them to Charleston, where they were sold. Subsequently, the slaves were busy constantly, and, longing for the less strenuous life on the Haarlem farm, would chant, "I sho' wish we was back on Dixie's lan'. Lawdy Lawd. If we wuz all back on Dixie's lan'." Dan Emmett had toured the south, and had heard the Dixie ditty. Dixie did not catch on when Emmett introduced it in New Orleans in the late 50s, but a few years later at the secession convention in Montgomery Alabama the bandmaster was inspired to adapt Dixie, stepped up the tempo, and it became an instant success, and the anthem of the South.The most popular theory maintains that the term's origins lie in the Mason–Dixon line. Another theory posits that it derives from the term, Dix Notes, which referred to ten dollar bills in Louisiana.
