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Whitewashing Blackface and Whistling Dixie : The Commemoration of Dan Emmett

A Wartime Democrat

Dan Emmett was pro-Union, but he was not a supporter of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. Like many other blackface minstrel performers, Dan Emmett was a pro-Union Democrat. During the Civil War, Democrats advocated for settling with the South in order to preserve the Union and they argued that there was no need to abolish slavery in order to end the war. In 1864, Emmett supported the presidential bid of General George McClellan who ran against Lincoln. McClellan called for the restoration of the Union without the abolition of slavery, which he saw as protected by the Constitution. Emmett’s 1864 song, “Mac, will Win the Union Back,” was written in support of his campaign:

"So cry hurrah, hurrah for little Mac
For he's the boy to win the Union back,
And sail the ship of state on safer track.
Hurrah, Hurrah for little Mac."

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Dan Emmett, Dixie, and the Mythology of the Lost Cause In 2017, as a national debate raged about whether monuments to the Confederacy were racist and should be taken down, a local fan of Dan Emmett tried to convince me that Mount Vernon’s commemoration of Emmett and "Dixie" had nothing to do with the ongoing controversy. Local memorials to Emmett, she insisted, had absolutely nothing in common with monuments to the Confederacy. As proof, she pointed out that Emmett had sided with the Union during the Civil War and that he had been dismayed when his song was enthusiastically embraced by the South.

Her facts weren't wrong. Dan Emmett did support the Union during the Civil War (although he would have preferred saving the union without having to resort to ending slavery) and he did object to the how the South used "Dixie" during the war. Indeed, he supposedly told friends in 1861 that if he had known “to what use they were going to put my song, I’d be damned if I would have written it.”

But this story is incomplete and misleading. It freezes Emmett’s relationship with the Confederacy in the 1860s, at a time when neither were fans of the other. During the Civil War, in fact, southerners were dismayed by the idea that their beloved song might have been written by a northerner. But in the decades after the Civil War, white southerners came not only to accept Emmett’s authorship of "Dixie," but even to celebrate it. Emmett for his part came to cherish the support he received from the South, and especially from the Confederate heritage organizations that by the 1890s had made Emmett and his song part of their mythic narrative of the “Lost Cause.”

The Lost Cause, to paraphrase historian Adam Domby, was a historical narrative invented by white Southerners in the aftermath of their defeat. Its fabricated history about the antebellum South and the Civil War provided ideological justification for white supremacy in the post-Civil War era. Proponents of the Lost Cause ideology insisted the Civil War had been about defending states’ rights, not about slavery. They argued that slavery had been a benevolent practice and that slaves had been happy. In their eyes, Confederate soldiers were not traitors, but brave defenders of American principles of freedom and liberty.

While scholars have expended a lot of ink writing about the development and impact of the Lost Cause ideology, none have explored the ways in which Emmett became part of the story. But "Dixie" was perfect for those promoting the Lost Cause narrative. For one thing, it offered a romanticized version of slavery with its picture of a black man longing to return to his cherished home on a plantation. As importantly, "Dixie" had been an anthem for the Confederacy; the song inspired their brave soldiers and nurtured a sense of southern nationalism. An 1895 article in the Montgomery, Alabama Advertiser referred to the song as the South’s “Marseillaise." It was, the newspaper, enthusiastically recalled, “our martial song, exciting our men to deeds of bravery in times of war, and echoing throbbing chords of patriotism in times of peace.”

Perhaps most importantly, "Dixie" and Emmett offered proponents of the Lost Cause a powerful symbol of their hopes for national reconciliation on white southern terms. Confederate boosters wanted to shape the ways in which Americans in both the North and the South understood the war. It was important to them that northerners acknowledge that southerners had fought bravely, that the war had been fought for liberty rather than to defend slavery, and that, ultimately, southern whites were the rightful rulers of the South. A “critical element” of reconciliation, historian Karen Cox notes, “was to cement a sectional relationship based on the commonly held values of Anglo-Saxonism.” The fact that "Dixie"—a song that portrayed slaves as content with their lot and that had inspired Confederate troops—had been written by a northerner became increasingly important to white southerners at the start of the twentieth century. It suggested that white northerners shared the white South’s vision of itself. So where white Southerners had once claimed "Dixie" as a southern song, by the turn of the century they instead described it as a national song, one that showed national unity rather than sectional divisions. Not surprisingly, southern newspapers eagerly reprinted a 1915 Cleveland Plain Dealer article that described "Dixie" as “the song that was adopted as the national song of the south and the inspiring strains of which were ever after heard in the battle lines of the declining nation; the song that was sung with equal popularity north of the Mason & Dixon line and in later years became like a forging link in the new unity of north and south.”

So it should come as no surprise that Confederate heritage organizations proved some of Dan Emmett’s biggest supporters and promoters. When Emmett toured the South in 1895 with Al. G. Field, his rendition of "Dixie" brought down the house and earned him rapturous praise, especially when Emmett went out of his way to signal his embrace for the southern perspective on the war. While he had always been a Union man, he told a Montgomery, Alabama audience, “I love the southern people, I admire them for the way they fought for a cause they believed to be right.” Little wonder that Montgomery Advertiser article called “Uncle Dan Emmett” a “renowned man in the South” whose name was immortal and who deserved a monument be erected to his memory.

The Confederate Veteran began running stories on Emmett within months of its founding in April 1893. Founder S. A. Cunningham travelled to Ohio to visit Emmett in 1894, returning with a copy of what was supposedly an original version of "Dixie." When he published it in the journal for the first time in its December 1894 issue, Cunningham described it as “the greatest treat ever yet given to the public through the Veteran." The journal facilitated Emmett’s sale of autographed prints of "Dixie" for 25 cents. In 1897, after Emmett appealed to Confederate Veteran readers for funds (writing that he was living in poverty and was living "in hope of my Southern brethren doing something for me”), Cunningham organized a fundraising drive and urged other Confederate groups—like the newly formed United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Children of the Confederacy—to raise money for the elderly man. One member of the UDC responded by writing a public plea in an Alabama newspaper. The composer of "Dixie" should not have to live in poverty as long as any descendants of Confederate soldiers still lived, she insisted. Emmett's song had “inspired our heroes of the Confederacy,” and the South now had a debt to repay. “Aid him now,” she implored “Do not wait to erect to him a national monument.” At least $160 dollars—or the equivalent of about $5800 today—was sent to Emmett as a result of these campaigns.

The idea of building a memorial to Emmett would not have long to wait. Within five years of Emmett’s death, Confederate Veteran editor S.A. Cunningham, Walker Kennedy, the editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Al. G. Field, had appointed themselves as a committee to raise funds to build a monument to Emmett somewhere in the South; apparently, Memphis and Richmond both wanted the honor of housing the memorial. While that effort came to naught, a monument to Emmett would be erected in Fletcher, North Carolina in 1927, part of a project by the Calvary Episcopal Church to install monuments to notable people in southern history. A year later, a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a plaque in Montgomery, Alabama that recognized Emmett and orchestrator H.F. Arnold for writing and arranging the music that was performed at Jefferson Davis’s inauguration.

These efforts to commemorate Emmett and "Dixie" as part of a Confederate memory project would reach all the way to Mount Vernon and would have a profound impact on the town's memorial landscape. The first recognition of Emmett in Mount Vernon that reached beyond his gravesite at the cemetery resulted from a campaign by the Ohio Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who decided at their annual convention in 1930 that it was up to them to ensure that Dan Emmett not be forgotten. A year later, they gifted the city of Mount Vernon a commemorative tablet mounted on a large boulder to "be placed in a suitable location with due ceremony." They were thrilled that the mayor and local residents were so supportive of their plans, evidence of "wonderful civic spirit," in the words of the chairwoman Ouida LaRue of the Daniel Emmett Memorial Committee. The placement of the memorial also excited LaRue and the UDC. They secured permission to place it outside the city’s Memorial building, which LaRue described as "quite the show place of the city and on a beautiful main street and a coast to coast highway." The boulder remained in that prominent downtown location for 75 years before being moved to another site in town. "In remembrance of Daniel Decatur Emmett," its tablet reads, “Composer of ‘Dixie’ Whose Melody Inspired and Encouraged the Southern People and Now Thrills the Hearts of a Reunited Nation.” The program for the dedication ceremony was a major town affair: the high school band played, the mayor formally accepted the gift, speeches were made, and, of course, the audience sang "Dixie."

Yet this Confederate memory campaign had not reached its apex. That would have to wait until 1935, when Kentuckian Mary Darby Fitzhugh came to Mount Vernon with a singular mission: to erect a national memorial to Emmett and the song, "Dixie."
Who Was Dan Emmett? Daniel Decatur Emmett gained fame and a national reputation as a composer and practitioner of blackface minstrelsy. In the 19th century, blackface performance was the most popular cultural form in America. White men would darken their face using cork—the practice was sometimes called burnt cork performance—and pretend that they were black while performing comedic songs and skits. While blackface performance is today nearly uniformly considered racist and offensive, its practice was widespread as late as the 1950s.

Emmett came to minstrelsy after a childhood spent in Ohio, which was then on America’s far west frontier. Emmett’s grandfather moved his family to Ohio from Virginia in 1807. Emmett’s father, blacksmith Abraham Emmett, married Sarah Zerrick in 1812 and their firstborn, Daniel, arrived soon after Abraham returned from fighting in the War of 1812. Dan Emmett’s middle name—Decatur—honors Stephen Decatur, a naval hero from that war.

Like many children at the time, Emmett’s formal education only lasted until age twelve. At thirteen, he began training as a printer’s apprentice. But music was Emmett’s real love. Brought up in a musical household, he learned to play the flute and fiddle. By the time he was fifteen, he had written his first song, “Old Dan Tucker,” and begun performing for his neighbors. After a brief stint in the army, where Emmett became an expert in fife and drum, he joined a travelling circus. It was as a circus performer in 1835 that Emmett began performing in blackface and composing "Ethiopian" songs in exaggerated Negro dialect.

The young performer soon moved on to New York to seek his fortunes there. By 1842, Emmett was living in New York and performing in a “fiddle and bones” duo with blackface singer and dancer Frank Bower. His career really took off a year later when he and Bower began performing with two other musicians as the Virginia Minstrels. This four-man minstrel show was a departure from the typical one or two-man minstrel performances. The Virginia Minstrels also pioneered a new kind of entertainment. They advertised an entire evening of blackface minstrelsy with songs, skits, dancing, and comedic sermons, all of which, they promised, would be “entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas.” Emmett wrote much of the music and many of the sermons and skits for the shows. The Virginia Minstrels proved such a huge success in New York that they left for a tour of England. By the time they returned in 1844, many other four-man minstrel troupes had begun performing and Emmett would spend the next fourteen years forming new minstrel groups, founding the first minstrel theater in Chicago (“Emmett’s Burlesque Ethiopian Varieties”), and continuing to write music.

Emmett wrote his most famous song, "Dixie", in 1859, a year after being recruited to join the successful New York troupe, the Byrant’s Minstrels, as a performer and principal songwriter. Bryant’s Minstrels were well-known for their finales which typically depicted the life of slaves on a southern plantation and featured singing and dancing by all members of the troupe in what became known as a “walkaround.” Emmett wrote "Dixie"—supposedly in a single sitting,—as a walkaround and it became instantly popular, first in the show, and then nationally. By 1861, a version of "Dixie" had become popular throughout the South as a kind of anthem for the Confederacy. Emmett spent the Civil War working with the Bryant Minstrel’s. A supporter of the Union, Emmett did not appreciate the South’s use of the song to support their cause, but like most other blackface performers, Emmett was a Democrat who believed that ending slavery was not necessary to preserve the union.

Emmett’s career reached its apex in the heady days of the Civil War. In 1866, he moved back to Chicago where he performed with a minstrel troupe, played fiddle at saloons, and gradually fell into such poverty that younger minstrels staged benefits to raise money for him in the early 1880s. In 1888, at the age of 73, Emmett returned to his hometown of Mount Vernon. Back home after more than fifty years, Emmett built a one-room cabin, lived off a small pension from the Actor’s Fund of New York City, and performed with local musicians.

Emmett’s star would rise one more time: in 1895, Al. G. Field asked him to join the tour of his Columbus-based minstrel company, the Field’s Minstrels, as they toured Ohio and the South. Emmett, now an elderly man, would come out on stage and sing his signature tune, "Dixie." Performances in Ohio earned polite applause, but Emmett became the showstopper once the troupe reached the South. In Richmond, where "Dixie" had been played at the 1861 inauguration of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, women threw flowers at him and the Virginia elite came to pay him their respects. Fields marveled that even though old Dan Emmett’s voice was largely gone, every time he stood to sing "Dixie" in the South, “the audience went as nearly wild as any I have ever seen. It seemed to me a if they would actually raise the roof from the theater.” Emmett proved so popular that Fields named one of his circus cars, “The Dan Emmett.”

Emmett returned to Mount Vernon in 1896 to live out his final years, where he made money by selling autographed copies of "Dixie" and by taking donations from southern fans, some of whom came to visit him in Ohio. He would perform one last time, at a show sponsored by the Mount Vernon Elks in 1902. When he died in 1904 at the age of 89, Al. G. Fields led the procession to the cemetery as a band played Emmett's most celebrated song.

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Dan Emmett, "Mac, Will Win the Union Back"