The Rebel Yell: A Cultural History

1. “A Very Peculiar Sound”: 1861–1865

1 “A very Peculiar sound” 1861–1865 White southerners greeted secession, in 1861, with a mixture of regret, disquiet , pride, and unbridled enthusiasm. over time, most came to recognize the value in building a distinct national identity for the young southern Confederacy. by doing so, Confederates could boost morale, find common ground, and articulate shared values and objectives. Just as important, they could show the Confederacy to be culturally and politically independent from the United states. southern symbols became an essential part of the mission to establish national unity and independence. from the design of a new national flag to the writing of patriotic poetry, many citizens responded to the general hunger for Confederate emblems.The press encouraged such behavior, as when a Richmond magazine argued that new monuments— from statuary to songs—would arouse “a new and holier love and zeal for the welfare and happiness of [our] country.”1 but as historians have pointed out, the Confederacy faced symbolic challenges from the very beginning.White southerners shared cultural,political, religious, and familial roots with their northern counterparts, and such connections went deep.many Confederates celebrated george Washington and the founding fathers as their ancestors and heroes.Yet northerners could do the same. That shared history likewise clouded the Confederacy’s efforts to develop its national flag.As Paul Quigley has noted,“there were calls for the south to retain the stars and stripes,or something very close to it,”reflecting a widespread feeling that the U.s. flag “belonged as much to the south as it did to the north.” eventually the Confederacy developed three different national banners. but like the American flag, each employed red, white, and blue and used stars to represent states. less formal symbols of Confederate 2 / Chapter 1 identity likewise blurred with Yankee culture, as found in popular songs and sheet music. “some songs circulating in the Confederacy came straight from northern pens,” another historian observed, while “others simply had had their lyrics adapted to southern climes.”southern purists may have objected to the use of these works,but they failed to persuade neighbors to shed southern versions of songs like “Who Will Care for mother, now.” even that beloved Confederate anthem,“Dixie,”had been written by a northerner. so while “southerners clearly felt the need to create symbols of national identity ,” they struggled to find symbols that at once stood apart from northern culture and appealed to most Confederates.2 The Rebel yell proved to be an exception. The battle cry erupted organically from the throats of Confederate troops in 1861, an unnerving and uneven scream with no known lineage connecting it to the northern populace. it had no physical shape whatsoever and made no use of words, cadence, or melody.These qualities freed the yell from the problems hampering the nation ’s visible emblems and familiar anthems, many of which derived from european or northern precursors. What is more, in a Confederacy “whose only experience was one of war,” and indeed “had no existence apart from war,” the martial qualities of the Rebel yell appealed to the citizenry’s sense of self.While Confederates developed more formal and standard markers of southern nationhood through 1865, they never found a more unique, naked symbol of Confederate unity and defiance. far more than most Confederates realized during the war years, the scream made for a potent symbol of an independent southern nation.3 it would be impossible to name the precise moment when the Rebel yell first rang out, but it almost certainly occurred outside of battle. The irishborn journalist William Howard Russell crafted what may be the earliest account of the screech on record, published in the london Times on July 10, 1861. Russell was a groundbreaking war correspondent whose reporting on the Crimean War earned him acclaim in britain.When he toured the south during the opening phases of the Civil War, he found little to admire about the military bearing of Confederate troops. Although he admitted that “the Tennessee and mississippi infantry were generally the materials of good soldiers ,” the journalist found a widespread lack of order, discipline, and training among the southerners he encountered in camp. The sentries behaved nothing like proper soldiers: he observed that some “carried their firelocks under their arms like umbrellas, others by the muzzle with the butt over the “A very Peculiar sound”: 1861–1865 / 3 shoulder; one, for ease, had stuck...