Where Did the Term Dixie Originate?
The term was applied originally to New York City when slavery existed there. According to a myth or legend, a person named Dixie owned a tract of land on Manhattan Island and had a large number of slaves. As Dixie’s slaves increased beyond the requirements of the plantation, many were sent to distant parts. Naturally the deported negroes looked upon their early home as a place of real and abiding happiness, as did those from the “Ole Virginny” of later days. Hence “Dixie” became the synonym for a locality where the negroes were happy and contented. In the South, Dixie is taken to mean the Southern States. There the word is supposed to have been derived from Mason and Dixon’s line, formerly dividing the free states from the slave states. It is said to have first come into use there when Texas joined the Union, and the negroes sang of it as Dixie. It has been the theme of several popular songs, notably that of Albert Pike, “Southrons, Hear Your Country Call”; that of T. M. Cooley, “Away Down South where Grows the Cotton,” and that of Dan Emmett, the refrain usually containing the word “Dixie” or the words “Dixie’s Land.” During the Civil War, the tune of “Dixie” was to the Southern people what “Yankee Doodle” had always been to the people of the whole Union and what it continued, in war times, to be to the Northern people, the comic national air. The tune is “catchy” to the popular ear and it was played by the bands in the Union army during the war as freely as by those on the other side. During the rejoicing in Washington over the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, a band played “Dixie” in front of the White House. President Lincoln began a short speech, immediately afterward, with the remark, “That tune fairly belongs to us now; we’ve captured it.”