The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

The Band realized that the pain that the civil war caused and was still felt in the south at the time was perfect inspiration for a song. And they are refering to George Stoneman, but he was a Union General with the cavalry corps and not the Confederacy. His major task as a commander was to destroy railroads and supply lines. "tore up the tracks again." Great song full of emotion.

Sherman's March to the Sea started in Georgia, then went next door to S. Carolina. As z4kmorris correctly said above, the Georgia part was primarily for military reasons--Atlanta was one of the few industrial areas in the South, and it was the main rail hub in the Deep South. The South Carolina action was punitive, as S.C. was the first to secede, and the first shots were fired by S.C. My great-great grandfather fought for the Union (wounded 3 times) as he was an abolitionist, and yet this song moves me so much, it almost makes me feel sorry for Southerners. And I mean no irony in that last sentence. As my Uncle Bill, a combat infantryman in WWII said, "Rich old men start wars and send poor young men off to die in them." Pretty much the case for almost every war.

This is probably the greatest & truest song ever written about the South and the mindset of Southerners as the loss of the Civil War became inevitable. Remarkable when you consider it was written by a Canadian. But perhaps it took an outsider to see things as they really were.

Robbie Robertson said the music came from the grit of the soil, from the thickness of the air in the South. And the lyrics came from talking to Southerns & the way they clung to their belief that the South would rise again and also from the feeling he got from Levon Helm in his reminisces of the South & the past.

The song is a quite simply about the death of a dream. Of course the Civil War was about slavery above all else, but to Southerners it was about much more than that. It was about the dream of having their own country & maintaining their way of life. And as delusional as it was, in their minds it was a righteous cause. To them as righteous as the Colonies rising up against England or American fighting the Nazis.

So what the song captures perfectly in lyrics & music and in tone & context is the emotional fallout from slowly realizing the death of your dream, the shattering effect of knowing the cause you put everything into & gave up so much for must not have been righteous after all because you lost. This was God himself saying: "you're wrong & it's over." This was an unthinkable tragedy to the South, so emotionally devastating that it can be reasonably argued that they still haven't gotten over it.

The psychic impact of their dream dying was earth-shattering and hasn't allowed them yet to feel fully proud or correct the sins of racism because racism was so tied up in their dream that to part with racism would be to part with the dream.

Now that part is not in the song. However, the song is so knowing & empathetic that it allows one a deeper understanding of the emotions of Southerners. There aren't that many songs around that change the way you see people, places, or the world. This is one of them.

It's an old song, but very much timely in 2017, too. There are some good interpretations here, but maybe I can add a bit to them.

Virgil Caine is a railroad engineer--a good job because it's more stable than farming (like his father) and it gets him exempted from conscription. He supports the Confederacy because he lives and works there and because even in the middle of a war, his life looks pretty good. He might even become a railroad conductor some day.

In late March 1865, Union Major General George Stoneman leads a cavalry division through northwestern North Carolina, southern Virginia, and Tennessee, tearing up railroad tracks at every opportunity to cut the lifeline between Virginia and the states further south. It's not in the song, but Virgil is no fool. He knows what his trains have been carrying to Richmond. Realizing that the war is almost over, he packs up his wife and they move to Tennesee Lee's surrender. By May 10th, one month and one day after the surrender, Virgil has given up all hope. Apparently he holds out in Virginia until Jefferson Davis passes through Danville after the surrender, but knowing all is lost, he and his wife move to Tennessee.

Railroads aren't running. and Virgil has to cut wood for his livelihood. His customers, some of whom are probably Union occupation troops, take the best of his wood and they don't pay well. It's not in the song, but all around he sees the economic, social, and political system of the south in ruins. One day, his wife calls to him to point out the steamboat Robert E. Lee on the Mississippi. The Lee was (and might still be) the fastest commercial vessel on the river. The boat, however, was built in Indiana. It's decor is majestic, but it has nothing to do with what Virgil's life is like now.

When Virgil says "Like my father before me, I will work the land," he is expressing his determination to get back something of what he has lost. It would have been much easier if his brother had survived the war to work with him, but as it is, Virgil is alone. "You can't raise a Caine back up when it's in defeat."

What about the chorus? On the night the war ended, bells undoubtedly rang to celebrate the return of peace. "na na na na na na na na na"? That could have been any of a number of syllables. For me, at least, "Na na na" conjures schoolyard taunting: "You can't catch me. Na na-na na na."

As I see it, the song is critical of both the Confederacy and the Union. After all, the side that shouldn't have taken "the very best" is the forces of Robert E Lee, whose Confederate dollars weren't worth the paper they were written on. The best in this case refers both to the quality of the trees - raping the landscape - as well as taking the best of people - the brother referred to in the next stanza. Bottom line for me is that this is a song that doesn't look at war from the perspective of ideology but rather from the perspective of how it tears apart the lives of individuals. Above all else, Virgil Caine is lamenting the loss of his brother, not defending the cause of the South. An individual caught up in the storm.

Ummm. No one took over singing responsibilities. The band always had three great singers. Levon Helm, Rick Danco, and Richard Manual.

Actually, it's not Stonewall. It's Stoneman, as in George Stoneman, the Confederate General.

check http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html

Virgin Caine was a railroad man, a good job in the pre-war south. By the early months of 1865, though, Union troops had burned their way through the Shenandoah Valley, "the breadbasket of the south." In other areas, so many men were away in the army that it was impossible to conduct any agriculture, so people (especially those between Richmond and Danville) were hungry. Stoneman;s cavalry ripped up the tracks again, and Caine was out of work. Very likely he sent his wife to Tennessee, far from where the fighting was taking place, and went into the army. He may not have heard about the fall of Richmond until May 10, perhaps because he had been captured and sent to a prison camp (where prisoners weren't released until they signed the oath of allegiance--sometimes as late as the end of June. He went to Tennessee, where he and his wife were able to settle, apparently on family land. They were near the Mississippi River and saw the steamboat Robert E. Lee, which many southerners regarded as a symbol of hope. But Union troops were now occupying the south, and the reconstruction policies were rough at best. To make any money at all, Caine had to sell wood from his property, probably not getting what it was worth and concerned that the best wood was being taken. He mourns his brother, who was killed during the war, but he is determined that he will stay alive by working the land and survive the occupation, even though he realizes that southern independence and the south in which he grew up are gone forever.

This song came from their 2nd cd, where Levon Helm i believe took over the singing responibilites, helm being the only american in the band, and from the southern states brought a southern feel to the band forsure.