"Dixie"

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"Dixie", also known as "I Wish I Was in Dixie", "Dixie's Land", became a Confederate War Song. It is one of the most distinctively American musical products of the 19th century, and probably the best-known song to have come out of blackface minstrelsy. Although not a folk song at its creation, "Dixie" has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a synonym for the Southern United States.

The word "dixie" (as used and understood by the COnfederates) originates from the ultimately worthless ten dollar bills issued in New Orleans which were called "dixies" because of the word "dix" (ten in French) printed on them. But it's source in the original title of this song ("Dixie's Land") originates elsewhere, according to Mr. Robert LeRoy Ripley (founder and originator of “Ripley's Believe It or Not�). It referred to a farm in Long Island New York, owned by a man named John Dixie. He befriended so many slaves, before the Civil war, that his place "Dixie's Land" became a sort of a paradise to them. It wasn't until the song writers came along, that "Dixie" was transplanted to the south. That's also where "Dixie's land" was changed to "Dixieland".

Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition; however many other people have claimed to have composed "Dixie", even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem of definitively establishing the song's authorship are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing, and his tardiness in registering the song's copyright. The latest challenge has come on behalf of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, who may have collaborated with Emmett to write "Dixie".

The song originated in the blackface minstrel show of the 1850s and quickly grew famous across the United States. Its lyrics, written in a comic, exaggerated version of African American Vernacular English, tell the story of a freed black slave pining for the plantation of his birth. During the American Civil War, "Dixie" was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy.

Today, "Dixie" is sometimes considered offensive, and its critics link the act of singing it to sympathy for the concept of slavery in the American South. Its supporters, on the other hand, view it as a legitimate aspect of Southern culture and heritage and the campaigns against it as political correctness and even cultural genocide.