The most straightforward explanation for the South-Dixie connection concerns the Mason and Dixon Line, a boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that was drawn in 1767 by English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. In fact, there are at least three competing theories for how the term originated.
Emmett’s ditty is now generally credited with popularizing “Dixie” as a nickname for the southern states, but he never claimed to have coined the word itself. In 1859, the musician and performer Daniel Decatur Emmett composed “Dixie,” a minstrel song that included the now-famous refrain “Away, away, away down south in Dixie!” The song was a smash hit in its day- Abraham Lincoln called it “one of the best tunes I have ever heard”-and it later became the de facto national anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Group portrait of the band, 24 uniformed men, many of whom are holding musical instruments, Fort Monroe, VA, 1864.
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