In Jesus Name: Week 6
Look Away... Look Away...
Audio Version:
The song Dixie is a familiar one and depending on your personal history within the United States, its tune will ring differently in your ear. For some, it will chime pleasantly, almost comically so. To some others, it will clang, almost like a death knell. But for others, it will sound as silent as a dog whistle to human ears, unheard and unchallenged. They will not hear it. They will not notice.
This is how the song rang for Abraham Lincoln. Though it’s reported to have been one of his favorite songs, he clearly wasn’t really hearing it. And this is how it rang throughout the North throughout the Civil War. Union soldiers sang the Confederate cheering song without hearing its battle cry.
While the North sang:
On! ye patriots to the battle,
Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle!
Then away, then away, then away to the fight!
Go meet those Southern traitors,
With iron will.
And should your courage falter, boys,
Remember Bunker Hill.
Hurrah! Hurrah! The Stars and Stripes forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!
the South sang:
Southrons! hear your country call you!
Up! lest worse than death befall you! ...
Hear the Northern thunders mutter! ...
Northern flags in South wind flutter; ...
Send them back your fierce defiance!
Stamp upon the cursed alliance!
Though the song originated in the North, it made its debut in blackface and it became the song of the South. Perhaps it has always belonged to the South. After all, it was about the South—what it had lost and what it had hoped would someday return. So while the North won the war, the South won the tune of Dixie, and today—whether you are north or south—the lyrics ring as follows:
I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land where I was born in, early on a frosty mornin',
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.
Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie.
This is the version Elvis Presley famously sang, trilling into the Battle Hymn of the Republic at the end. And it’s the version Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist sang when he led a sing-along at a judicial conference in Virginia in 1999.