As far as we can tell, the Confederate government never adopted a National Anthem. That might seem odd, but the “Star Spangled Banner” was not adopted as the national anthem by the United States Congress until 1931. (The words were penned by Francis Scott Key in September 1814, while watching the attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore).
Many people today
probably believe that “Dixie’s Land" was the official Confederate national
anthem. It does not appear that it was ever even considered. “Dixie’s Land” was
composed in New York City by Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmitt. Dan Emmitt was a
performer in the Black-face Bryant’s Minstrels. Minstrel troops were wildly
popular forms of entertainment in the 19th century. The genre was
created by Manhattan native Thomas D. Rice, a traveling actor who popularized a
slave song, “Jump Jim Crow.”
There was
considerable discussion about “Dixie’s Land” during the war, and scores of
different lyrics were written to the tune. That discussion spilled over into
the after-war years. Some groups preferred the lyrics penned by former
Confederate general Albert Pike over those by Dan Emmitt. Regardless, “Dixie’s
Land” was never adopted as an official National Anthem.[1]
In 1861, George H.
Miles (1824-1871), an English professor in Maryland, under the pseudonym
Earnest Halphin, penned the words to “God Save the South!” Although trained in
law, Miles had found success in writing books and Broadway plays. He was
obviously a Confederate sympathizer, but his further participation in the war
effort seems lost to history.
“God Save the
South!” seems to have first appeared in print in New Orleans in June 1861. No
author is given, only that it was “Contributed to the Sunday Delta.”[2] New Orleans was the leading printer of
Confederate sheet music during the war, with 167 pieces identified as coming
from presses in the city.[3]
Just a couple of weeks after the words appeared in the New Orleans newspaper,
there appeared an advertisement in a Charleston newspaper advertising a “supply
of new Southern” music. “God Save the South” was included in the listing.[4]
Three months later, at a concert in the Odd Fellows Hall in New Orleans, “God
Save the South! Set to the air of Britian’s national hymn, [was] the other
performance of the evening.”[5]
New Orleans fell in
the spring of 1862, and several of the sheet music publishers went to Georgia.
Starting in October 1862, Virginia newspapers began calling “God Save the
South!” the Southern national anthem.[6]
A version of the sheet music was published by C.T. DeCoeniel in Richmond,
bearing a similar phrase: “Our National Confederate Anthem.” There were other
editions as well, published in Baltimore, Charleston, and Macon/Savannah.[7]
One Southern
newspaper thought that the song was “what we have long wished for—a national
anthem, breathing a spirt of patriotism and devotion suited to our troublous
times. The pure and simple religious feeling which pervaded the poetry of this
piece is beautifully interpreted by, and carried home to, the heart, in the
deep pathos and majestic tones of the music. The sentiments of the anthem are
perfectly in accordance with the religious feeling and faith of our people. . .
. As a national anthem, we know nothing to compare with this sublimity.”[8]
What did “God Save
the South!” sound like? It was set to the same turn as “God Save the King,” the
National anthem of the United Kingdom. “God Save the South!” is little
remembered today. And if you ask the casual observer what the Confederate
National anthem is, you will probably get the response, “Dixie.” It is unlikely
that the high-browed members of Southern society would have ever consented to a
minstrel tune being bestowed with the title, National Anthem, on Dixie’s Land.
For more information on Confederate music, check out Richard
B. Harwell’s Confederate Music (1950) or Lawrence Abel’s Singing the New Nation (2000).
[1] Hardy,
“Dixie’s Land,” America’s Civil War, May 2018.
[2] The
Sunday Delta, June 30, 1861.
[3] Wolfe,
“Music,” Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 3:1100-1105.
[4] Charleston
Daily Courier, July 19, 1861.
[5] The
Times-Picayune, October 16, 1861.
[6] Richmond
Enquirer, October 21, 1862.
[7] Harwell,
Confederate Music, 59.
[8] Moore,
The Civil War in Song and Story, 360.
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