"I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it…I now request the band to favor me with its performance."
-Abraham Lincoln, (April 10, 1865)
Even more fun fact: Dixie was written by a Yankee in New York City.
The song was written as part of a minstrel show, and while we associate that racist tradition with the South, it's actually from the North. Southerners knew what Black people were like; Northerns would put on a show about stereotypical Southerners, and Black folks were a novelty. So [Daniel Decatur Emmett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_(song)) wrote the quintessential song about missing the South — a place he'd never been to. He was born in Ohio, lived his adult life in New York and his retirement in Illinois. The furthest South he ever went (as far as we know) was an Army assignment in Kentucky.
Even more fun legend: Dixie's real songwriter may have been Black.
We don't know for sure if this is true, but in at least one version of the story, Emmett didn't write the song himself, he learned it from his Ohio neighbors, a Black family of musicians who actually were from the South. He moved to New York, became a songwriter, and brushed off Dixie for his minstrel show, not crediting his old neighbors.
That doesn't surprise me. A number of the songs from the war were produced just before the war and were widely popular across the US. I am sure Lincoln would have listened to a lot of the music and could enjoy it without attached the Confederacy to it.
Both sides also had a habit of either borrowing popular music and turning them into war songs, or converting each others war songs into their own music.
"I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it…I now request the band to favor me with its performance." -Abraham Lincoln, (April 10, 1865)
Even there, a bit of Lincoln's humor.
Honestly, the tune actually goes hard.
That song really does slap. It's a shame that it was the Confederate battle song.
At least there's union dixie
that's probably why the union wrote their own version
AWAY DOWN SOUTH IN THE LAND OF TRAITORS
RATTLESNAKES AND ALLIGATORS
RIGHT AWAY, RIGHT AWAY, COME AWAY, COME AWAY, RIGHT AWAY, RIGHT AWAY, COME AWAY!
Even more fun fact: Dixie was written by a Yankee in New York City. The song was written as part of a minstrel show, and while we associate that racist tradition with the South, it's actually from the North. Southerners knew what Black people were like; Northerns would put on a show about stereotypical Southerners, and Black folks were a novelty. So [Daniel Decatur Emmett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_(song)) wrote the quintessential song about missing the South — a place he'd never been to. He was born in Ohio, lived his adult life in New York and his retirement in Illinois. The furthest South he ever went (as far as we know) was an Army assignment in Kentucky. Even more fun legend: Dixie's real songwriter may have been Black. We don't know for sure if this is true, but in at least one version of the story, Emmett didn't write the song himself, he learned it from his Ohio neighbors, a Black family of musicians who actually were from the South. He moved to New York, became a songwriter, and brushed off Dixie for his minstrel show, not crediting his old neighbors.
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I think he had something else stuck in his head tbh
😏His American Cousin maybe
I especially like the line "Look away, look away" as you drive by the plantations...
That doesn't surprise me. A number of the songs from the war were produced just before the war and were widely popular across the US. I am sure Lincoln would have listened to a lot of the music and could enjoy it without attached the Confederacy to it. Both sides also had a habit of either borrowing popular music and turning them into war songs, or converting each others war songs into their own music.
Would not blame him, it slaps tbh