Confederate "Heritage" Month 2020, April 1: Steve Earle's "Dixieland"

Every year since 2004, I've posted daily posts during April as a way of debunking the widespread and toxic pseudohistory of neo-Confederate thinking.

Neo-confederate thinking and propaganda are important in the American versions of white racism/white nationalism and have been since the Civil War.

This year, I want to highlight some of the music that invokes a real-world history of the Civil War and closely related themes.

I've been on a bit of a Steve Earle binge lately, so I'll start with this one, Dixieland from "Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band" (1999):

The title "Dixieland" suggests that it's some sentimental song about how wonderful the South is. Actually, the narrator in the song is an Irish immigrant with a revolutionary bent who is a Union soldier serving under Joshua Chamberlain, a Maine professor who became an Army colonel:

He is best known for the courage he showed as colonel of the 20th Maine regiment that fought heroically in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Chamberlain also accepted the Confederacy's surrender of arms at Appomattox at the war's end. Less well known is the fact that, after the war, he served four terms as governor of his home state and also as president of his alma mater, Bowdoin College. Chamberlain died in 1914 at the age of 85. (Joshua Chamberlain Biography.com 06/15/20)

Joshua Chamberlain (1828-1914)