Dixie

Daniel Decatur Emmett

Dixie, the Southern U.S. states, especially those that belonged to the Confederate States of America (1860–65). The origins of the name are debated, but it was popularized by the song “Dixie,” composed in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett. The tune was popular as a marching song of the Confederate army, and it was often considered the Confederate anthem.

According to the most common explanation of the name, $10 notes issued before 1860 by the Citizens’ Bank of New Orleans and used largely by French-speaking residents were imprinted with dix (French: “ten”) on the reverse side—hence the land of Dixies, or Dixie Land, which applied to Louisiana and eventually the whole South. Another theory suggests that the term refers to the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the pre-Civil War period, the demarcation was regarded, together with the Ohio River, as the dividing line between the slave states south of it and free-soil states north of it.

The song “Dixie” was originally a “hooray song” or walk-around in Jerry Bryant’s minstrel show, for which Emmett, a native Ohioan of Virginian parents, performed and wrote music. It was played at the inauguration of Confederate Pres. Jefferson Davis on February 18, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama.