Dixie's Land (Dixie)

DIXIE’S LAND (DIXIE) 1859

Dixie was always one of Lincoln’s favorite songs. He first heard it in Chicago a few months before his presidential nomination in 1860, and was heard to shout “Let’s have it again boys, let’s have it again!”

Although it would go on to become the southern call to arms, Dixie’s Land as it was originally known, was written as a minstrel song by northerner Daniel Emmett in, of all places, New York City. Even the famous line, “Oh I wish I was in Dixie” is not a Southern expression as most folks might expect. It actually came from the circus people of the North who began to yearn for warmer climes as the increasingly cold weather began to make life in the tents less bearable.

The song’s popularity in the South began to soar when it was introduced at the Varieties Theater in New Orleans as a march and drill routine featuring forty female dancers. Lincoln liked the song so much he had it played at his inauguration, as did Jefferson Davis.