Document – Bryant’s Minstrels, “Dixie” (1859)

Abstract and Keywords

In April 1859, Bryant’s Minstrels first performed the song “Dixie” before a New York audience. Its authorship remains disputed. Blackface performer Daniel Decatur Emmett, known also for the songs “Old Dan Tucker” and “Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel,” claimed authorship, but recent scholars think that he may have lifted it from a black acquaintance in his native Ohio. Whoever deserved the credit, “Dixie” swept the country, later becoming the unofficial marching hymn of the Confederacy. When crowds came to the White House to celebrate the war’s end, Lincoln asked the band to play it “as our lawful prize.”

Source: Atlantic Monthly, February 1862, quoted in Henry Steele Commager, ed., The Blue and the Gray: The Story of the Civil War As Told by Participants (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1950), 1: 561–63, 571–73.

Excerpts

  • Oh, I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
  • Old times dar am not forgotten.
  • Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
  • In Dixie Land, where I was born in,
  • Early on one frosty mornin’.
  • Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land!
  • Chorus: Den I wish I was in Dixie,
  • Hooray! Hooray!
  • In Dixie Land I’ll take my stan’,
  • To lib an’ die in Dixie.
  • Away, away,
  • Away down south in Dixie!
  • Away, away,
  • Aaway down south in Dixie!
  • Dar’s buckwheat cakes an’ Injun batter,
  • Makes you fat, or a little fatter.
  • Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
  • Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble,
  • To Dixie’s Land I’m bound to trabble,
  • Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
  • Chorus: Den I wish I was in Dixie,
  • Hooray! Hooray!
  • In Dixie Land I’ll take my stan’,
  • To lib an’ die in Dixie.
  • Away, away,
  • Away down south in Dixie!
  • Away, away,
  • Away down south in Dixie!

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