Dan Emmett Writes “Dixie,” 1859

He started with the tune his mother had hummed in Ohio, nostalgia he’d carried for years, and by Sunday afternoon he had the words. A triumph, already; he whistled the banjo’s part. (Himself a sympathizer from the North, called copperhead, called traitor by his own kin.) Something lively, some git-up-and-git they’d wanted and didn’t he deliver— Miss Susan got seven encores the first night. That gave them their tune, their Negro walk-around— Look away, look away, look away, they sang. Vipers, that spring, spread thick on the ground.