Dixie

For other uses, see Dixie (disambiguation).

Southern U.S. (or Southeastern states) in dark red, light red and cross-shaded/diagonal-striped to designated different descriptions of "The South"

Nicknamed as "Dixie", the term is often used to refer to the area of the Southern United States or specifically in geography (sometimes east of the Mississippi River), as the Southeastern states of the United States. There are various definitions and categories/lists of those several states of the Union of the United States of America when referring to the geographical, historical, cultural, and even political regions of the wide-ranging, now coast-to-coast nation on the North American continent. The American states in dark red of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, are almost always included in modern day definitions of the "The South" - the Southern United States, or the Southeastern U.S.A., while those in light red: (Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, and Oaklahoma (the former long-time "Indian Territory") known as the "Upper South" are usually included. Further to the west, Oaklahoma and Texas are often listed today as now being in the "Mid-West" or lower "Plains States", the Southwestern United States or Western United States, because of later different historical and cultural influences such as the westward expansion movement of the nation. Although the early eastern third of modern State of Texas had strong cultural "Southern" influences from the lower/deep South of cotton-growing states, leading the former "Republic of Texas", now the "Lone Star State", having being in the Union only since 1845, to secede in 1861 with the first seven states then forming the old Confederacy. Those states "cross-shaded" with diagonal lines - the states of Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia (seceeded itself and divided during the Civil War from the eastern two-thirds of the "Old Dominion" in 1861-1863 and admitted to the Union as the 35th State), along with Maryland and Delaware]] were slave-holding states before the American Civil War of 1861-1865, and are usually referred to as "Border States". Both Missouri and Kentucky had divided governments during the War and were represented in both Congresses of the United States and the old Confederate States as well as being designated with stars on both the U.S. and Confederate flags. These border states or extensions of the Upper South are sometimes included due to their historic connections to the traditional "deep" South. "Dixie" is a nickname for the Southern United States, "The South" and the old Confederacy, especially since the writing and immediate popularity of the folk minstrel show tune "Dixie" in 1858-1859, which became an unofficial anthem of the C.S.A.

Origin of the name

Ten Dollar Note from Banque des citoyens de la Louisiane, 1860

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of this nickname remain obscure. According to A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1951), by Mitford M. Mathews, three theories most commonly attempt to explain the term:

1. The word "Dixie" refers to privately issued currency originally from the Citizens State Bank (located in the French Quarter of New Orleans) and then other banks in Louisiana. These banks issued ten-dollar notes, labeled "Dix", French for "ten", on the reverse side. The notes were known as "Dixies" by English-speaking southerners, and the area around New Orleans and the French-speaking parts of Louisiana came to be known as "Dixieland". Eventually, usage of the term broadened to refer to most of the Southern States.
2. The word preserves the name of a "Mr. Dixy", a slave owner on Manhattan Island, where slavery was legal until 1827. His rule was so kind that "Dixy's Land" became famed far and wide as an elysium abounding in material comforts.
3. "Dixie" derives from Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor of the Mason-Dixon line which defined the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, and, for the most part, free and slave states (Delaware, a Union border state, and slave state up to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, lay north and east of the survey line.)

"Dixie" as a region

Bayou Navigation in Dixie, engraving of a Louisiana Steamboat, 1863.

As a definite geographic location within the United States, "Dixie" is usually defined as the eleven Southern states that seceded in late 1860 and early 1861 to form the new confederation named the Confederate States of America. They are (in order of secession): South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

Additionally during the later year of 1861 and early 1862, additional internal contending political and military forces in the border, slave-holding states of Missouri and Kentucky formed divided provisional state governments, each with legislatures and governors, each professing loyalty to either the northern Union or the southern Confederacy and were eventually represented in both Congresses, that of the United States in Washington, D.C. and also the Confederate States in Richmond, Virginia. These account not only for the previously admitted peace-time stars on the Union's U.S. Flag but also the thirteen stars on the several national and battle flags of the Confederacy and the several general maps published by Confederate authorities and publishing companies in "The South", showing the northern border of the C.S.A. including Missouri and Kentucky up to the Ohio River.

Although similarly split between Northern and Southern-sympathizing populations and leaders in Maryland, despite several early movements to have the General Assembly of Maryland call for a convention to decide upon secession for the also border/slave-holding state, while it met at the temporary location of Frederick, in the mid-western portion of the state, sixty miles west of the state capital of Annapolis, then occupied by the Union Army in April-May 1861, the legislative houses did not act (with the spector of the Lincoln administration looming over the State's destiny and the demand to protect the access and approaches by the North to the national capital of Washington, D.C. on the Potomac River. Consequently, without being pushed by Maryland's then vacillating neutralist governor Thomas Holliday Hicks, the "Old Line State" of Maryland stayed in the Union. However, of the State's military-age male population that served in the War, almost forty percent "went south" and formed Maryland state regiments in the Confederate States Army in the Eastern Theatre. This contributed for the next century or so of these "Border States" considering themselves for many years as part of "The South" until with increasing immigration and urbanization with its resulting industrialization, tied them more firmly in later decades to the North and upper Mid-West culturally, by the times of World War I and World War II. This definition of the extent of the region of "The South" or "Southern" is strongly correlated with the history and resulting culture, strengthened by the economics and, in the minds of many "Southerners", remains the traditional "South".

However, the location and boundaries of "Dixie" have become, over time, more limited, vernacular and mercurial. Today, it is most often associated with those parts of the Southern United States where traditions and legacies of the Confederate experience and the Antebellum South live most strongly.

Many businesses in the South contain "Dixie" in their name as an identifier, e.g. "Dixie Produce". One of the more famous is supermarket/grocery store chain "Winn-Dixie" by the 1920's.

Songs

"I Wish I Was in Dixie"

Main article: Dixie (song)

"I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land" sheet music

Sheet music version

"I Wish I Was in Dixie" is a popular song about the South. It was allegedly written by composer Daniel Emmett, a Northerner from Mount Vernon, Ohio, and published in 1859. Emmett's claims of the origin of the song were many and varied. According to one such version, Emmett was taught the song by the Snowden family of African American musicians, then freemen of color, with the lyrics coming from a letter written longingly of life in the south by Evelyn Snowden to her father. Emmett's blackface minstrel-show troupe debuted the song that same year in New York City when they needed a song to lengthen their presentation and it became an immediate hit. As with other minstrel show numbers, the song was performed in blackface and in exaggerated Black English vernacular. The song proved extremely popular and became widely known simply as "Dixie". The song has also been published as "Dixie's Land".

The song became the unofficial anthem of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The tune's minstrel-show origins have created a strong association of "Dixie" with the Old South, despite the fact that it was written in the North. As a result, some today perceive the song as offensive and racist while others see it as an honorable part of Southern heritage. Abraham Lincoln, upon hearing of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, asked the military band to play Dixie.

See also

• Black Belt Region
• Bible Belt
• Deep South
• Dixie (Utah)
• Dixieland Jazz
• Mason-Dixon line

References

• John Shelton Reed (with J. Kohl and C. Hanchette) (1990). The Shrinking South and the Dissolution of Dixie. Social Forces. pp. 69 (September 1990): 221–233.
• Sacks, Howard L. and Judith Rose. Way Up North In Dixie. (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993)