Driving Dixie Down

Virgil Caine is the name and I served
on the Danville Train,
’Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore
up the tracks again.

These are the opening lines to the song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” written by Robbie Robertson and recorded in 1969 by The Band, a group whose origin traces to touring days with Bob Dylan in the 60s. One might think the songwriter has deep roots in the South, but that would be wrong. Robertson is a Canadian, the product of a Jewish father and a Mohawk mother.

When asked about the inspiration for the song, Robertson said in a 1988 interview that it came from the cultural shock of making a move from Toronto to the Mississippi Delta. He instantly liked the way the people talked, how they moved, and he “liked being in a place that had rhythm in the air. . . . I thought ‘No wonder they invented rock ’n roll here.’” He especially was taken with how oldtimers spoke of the South rising again. He did not mock the sentiment, but instead admired the people for their pride of conviction and historical perspective. “I didn’t take it for granted,” he said, “it made me write something like ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.’”

Chris Hartley’s feature article is about Stoneman’s Raid, which began from Knoxville in March 1865. All parts of it put together, the raid lasted some 2,000 miles. Most of the significant parts of the raid occurred in central North Carolina, which is the focus of Hartley’s article. By tracing Stoneman’s route within the context of other critical events, maps of the raid truly depict the collapse of the Confederacy, which is the essence of Robertson’s haunting lyrics.

I remember several years ago being in Dixie and having a few beers with my friend and former book review editor Steve Davis—a devout Southerner—when the subject of the song came up. I happened to mention the Joan Baez version. He bristled and became quite animated, as Steve is apt to do when mixing beer and talk about the Lost Cause. “Dave, she changed the words!” he blurted. “She took out the Yankee SOB’s name!” Instead of “Stoneman’s cavalry came,” Baez sings “so much cavalry came.”

One might wonder how Stoneman came to be mentioned in the song at all, since it was Benjamin Grierson whose famous 1863 raid came closest to the locale of Robertson’s inspiration. Another line in the song refers to May 10—not April 9, when Lee surrendered to Grant, or April 26, when Johnston surrendered to Sherman. The significance of May 10, 1865, in the historical record is the capture of Jefferson Davis near Irwinville, Georgia, after his flight from Richmond that began on April 2. Who was in at the end of the chase for the Confederate president? The same men who had raided through North Carolina with Stoneman (minus the general, who had returned to Tennessee on April 17, with a bad case of hemorrhoids). On that same day, May 10, President Andrew Johnson—ironically, the Southern-born (North Carolina) successor to the assassinated Lincoln—declared armed resistance at an end.

Dixie had been driven down.

Editor