Last Word on the Origin of ‘Dixie’
Scholars know that Dixie comes from the ten-dollar notes issued by the Citizens’ Bank in bilingual Louisiana before the Civil War and bearing the French word dix “ten”, on the reverse side. Soon New Orleans, then Louisiana and the entire South were called The Land of Dixie, and later Dixieland and Dixie.'”
It is true that all currency issued by Banque de Citoyens was referred to as dixies and, moreover, steamboat owners preferred that currency because the bank was one of the most stable and dependable in the South and its currency was accepted in both the French and English sections of New Orleans.
Remember, this was the 1850s, before the Federal Government printed money. Money was printed by private banks, most of which went under during the Civil War. The most dependable printed money in Lousiana at the time was that printed by the Citizen’s Bank. This made it highly desirable up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries.
We also need to keep in mind that the Mississippi was the main thoroughfare between the North and South at the time, the cotton-tobacco highway in the heyday of cotton and tobacco. For this reason, when departing from the North, and asked where they were going, stemboat captains and members of their crews often responded, “To Dixie Land,” meaning to the place where they planned to make lots of dixies.
The reason Dixie came to apply to the entire South is because the word was popularized in a song written by a minstrel musician and performer named Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904) Emmett, a staunch unionist, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, served in the Army briefly in his teens, then joined the Cincinatti Circus and traveled through Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and Kentucky, where his fame grew from perfoming in black-face minstrels. No doubt from time to time he traveled by steamboat, where he would have certainly heard the word.
In 1842 he moved to New York City, where his career began to grow rapidly. He performed in blackface under the name of “The Renowned Ethiopian Minstrel” in bars, restaurants, and billiard parlors with several other performers, just as minstrel shows were becoming popular.
His most famous composition was published in 1859 on the eve of the Civil War (1861-1866), “I Wish I was in Dixie’s Land“. The song was already very popular in New York and surrounding area but when the War started, it became the veritable theme-song of the South.
Emmett’s song was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln who said, “I have always thought that ‘Dixie’ was one of the best tunes I ever heard. I had heard our adversaries had attempted to appropriate it. I insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it.” So its appeal was general, throughout the nation. The meaning of the term “Dixie” had expanded to include the entire South, as opposed to the North.
