DIXIE, a name associated in negro min strelsy with the Southern States. It is supposed to be derived from the name of one Dixie, a large-holding and kind-hearted slave owner on Manhattan Island in the latter part of the 18th century. His treatment of his negroes caused them to regard his plantation (or °Dixie's))) as little short of an earthly paradise, and when any of the slaves were taken away from home they always pined for °Dixie's° while singing and talking of its joys. When slavery moved south ward in search of a more secure and congenial habitat the same ideal of °Dixie's)) was taken along, and the chant which the former slaves of Dixie sang of their old home became so widespread that its origin was lost sight of and it came to be applied to the Southern homes of the negroes.
In fact in the South °Dixie° is held to mean the Southern States, the word being regarded as a derivation and corruption of °Mason and Dixon's line" (q.v.) which originally divided
the free and slave States and was supposed by the Southerners to have first come into use when Texas joined the Union and the negroes frequently sang of it as °Dixie? Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904) com posed a song known by this name as a "walk around° for Bryant's Minstrels in 1859, and it was first performed at the Mechanics' Hall in New York. It was first used as a song by the Confederates at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President at Montgomery (18 Feb. 1861) and was afterward distinctively the Con federate song of the War of Secession. On 30 May of the same year a version of the same song appeared in the Natchez Courier from the pen of Gen. Albert Pike and also written in the Confederate interest. A third version, but asso ciated with the cause of the North, was written by T. M. Cooley.