AWAY DOWN SOUTH IN THE LAND OF TRAITORS
(ANONYMOUS/DANIEL DECATUR EMMETT) (1860s)
Tune: "DIXIE"

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Announcement of a "Grand Ethopian Concert" by "The Original Virginia Minstrels"
(featuring Daniel D. Emmett), Glasgow, Scotland, June 15, 1844

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Just as "John Brown's Body" spread through the North, so... "Dixie" spread throughout the newly formed Confederacy.... The Northerners were reluctant to have such a stirring song become sole Southern property, so the New York Commercial Advertiser editorially stated:

"Whenever Dixie is produced, the pen drops from the fingers of the plodding clerk, the spectacles from the nose and the paper from the hand of the merchant, the needle from the nimble digits of the maid and matron, and all go hobbling, bobbling in tune with the magical music. Won't someone set it to words of Union sentiment?"

Northern versions poured forth, but none was successful, for the North was not Dixie Land, and never could be. The Confederacy had irrevocably established the song as her own.

C. A. Browne (revised by Willard A. Heaps), The Story of Our National Ballads, New York, NY, 1960 (originally published in 1919), pp. 129-130.

Away down South in the land of traitors,
Rattlesnakes and alligators,
Right away, come away, right away, come away.
Where cotton's king and men are chattels,
Union boys will win the battles,
Right away, come away, right away, come away.

Then we'll all go down to Dixie,
Away, away,
Each Dixie boy must understand,
That he must mind his Uncle Sam,
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.

I wish I was in Baltimore,
I'd make Secession traitors roar,
Right away, come away, right away, come away.
We'll put the traitors all to rout,
I'll bet my boots we'll whip them out,
Right away, come away, right away, come away.

Then they'll wish they were in Dixie,
Away, away,
Each Dixie boy must understand,
That he must mind his Uncle Sam,
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.

Oh, may our Stars and Stripes still wave
Forever o'er the free and brave,
Right away, come away, right away, come away.
And let our motto ever be -
"For Union and for Liberty!"
Right away, come away, right away, come away.

Then we'll all go down to Dixie,
Away, away,
Each Dixie boy must understand,
That he must mind his Uncle Sam,
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.
Away, away,
And we'll all go down to Dixie.

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