The Night They Raised America Up: The Invention of Memory and Tradition
8/28/09 6:09 PM
brigades would be unstoppable. All that they'd need to do would be to burn all buildings and stores, and lay waste to fields, and then leave. (I sometimes wonder if the standard successful anti-guerrilla method is to create a famine). 3) There was quite a bit of anger in the north; if significant resistance continued after the official surrender, savage retaliatory attacks should have been politically palatable. The US was already in the process of waging a harsh war; continuing that would have been quite easy. 4) Support for the Confederacy was positively and significantly correlated with the slave population. This meant that the areas with the most die-hards would also have large, available and politically reliable pro-US forces. And if they needed to be unleashed to biblical methods, well, photos were hard to take back then, and see (3). Posted by: Barry | August 19, 2009 at 12:48 PM Mark, Since you were involved in writing the song, I suppose I'll take your word. But are you sure? The version I have on the (LP) album "The Band" has the article in it. I just invested $.99 to buy the song from that album on iTunes and it too has "the." The sentence is slurred a bit. It says "there go the Robert E. Lee." Maybe that sounds like "There goes Robert E. Lee." Googled references (perhaps inaccurate) also have "the" in the Band's version, and not in Baez'. Also, the lyric seems to scan better with two syllables instead of one. Not that any of this matters a lot. Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | August 19, 2009 at 02:12 PM @Bernard Yomtov, I hope you're being sarcastic as I certainly never meant to imply that I had anything to do with the writing of the song. I'll take your word for what the google says (I haven't tried to replicate it) but I went and listened to my old Joan Baez and Dylan/The Band LPs (yes I have a turntable) and they're responsible for what I believed. However, Just to muddy up things a bit I found versions of both The Band and Joan Baez singing it both ways in a video search: With article (the riverboat): http://vodpod.com/watch/1277890-the-band-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down http://video.yahoo.com/watch/161151/1222643 Without article (the General): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EiHgz7NNn0 http://vodpod.com/watch/1414146-joan-baez-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down So go figure. There are evidently two versions depending on the performer's mood. Now I'm not sure what Robbie intended. The website I quoted might be right or wrong. Who knows? (Seriously, anybody have an opinion?) Posted by: Mark | August 19, 2009 at 02:53 PM Mark: Let me respond to your latest response. 1) Although Nazi Germany was worse than the Confederacy, the Confederacy bears comparison with Nazi Germany. Here are some points largely borrowed from comments that I made elsewhere. (I am using these comments not because I feel they brilliant, but because I am a slow writer and a slower typist.) a) Ideology - The southern ideological defenses of slavery and white supremacy began the development of an early "Blood and Soil" ideology. The frequent murder by Confederate soldiers of captured Black Union soldiers strongly suggests Confederates believed and acted upon that ideology, even if they could not articulate it. I am not arguing http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/the-night-they-raised-america-up-the-invention-of-memory-and-tradition.html
Page 11 of 14