Way Up North in Dixie

Finally received this morning a copy of the book I've been looking for for ten years or so, ever since I saw an ad for it in an issue of Harper's Magazine. I was told back then that the publisher was too obscure to order from. I used to actually dream about it, the cover art was so evocative, but eventually I had to let it drop. All that was before the days of all the Internets, or at least my very own personal sit-at-home Internet. I thought of it again a couple of weeks ago in the course of doing research to write a play about Austin Steward, one of the founders of the Wilberforce settlement in Ontario, better known these days as Lucan, home of the infamous (or saintly) Donnelly clan.

This book, by Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks, tells the story of the origin of Dixie's Land, the National Anthem of the Confederate States of America and, ironically, a favourite song of America's (unofficially) gay President, Abraham Lincoln.

Apparently, "Dixie" became ubiquitous again last year, at least in the big country to the south of here, when it got rewritten and thrown onto the net as part of an animated political satire of the Bush/Kerry election campaign. But that, it seems, was not the first time it had been retooled for political purposes.

The song is generally considered to have been composed by Dan Emmett in 1859, as a celebration of "de Land ob Cotton" in the Confederate South. The Sackses, however, contend that Dixie was actually *stolen* by Emmett from a neighbouring Ohio family of Black musicians, the Snowdens, who actually wrote the song to make a celebration of the *North* and tell of the experience of breaking away from ye olde Cotton Land. Apparently this is the subject of much debate down in Mount Vernon, Ohio, in contrast to the rest of the country who generally believe, I would imagine, that a song that old couldn't have been written by anyone at all.

Sounds like a good book, n'est pas? At least to me. Of course I would be interested even if it didn't present a powerful example of approbation and stereotyping. I'm the sort of guy who cares about whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. So...

(Image above by Lloyd Ostendorf)