Dixie Victorious?

The last paragraph of Mr. Zeitz’s article on the victory of Southern culture uses Joan Baez’s cover of Robbie Robertson’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” as a metaphor for his theme. It’s a better metaphor than he lets on. The Band recorded it first because Mr. Robertson was the guitarist for the Band. Furthermore, he’s Canadian. Why would a Canadian write songs about the American Civil War from the perspective of the South? How is it that the Civil War so resonates within the soul of a Canadian that it inspires him to verse? Slavery and the Civil War are events with no obvious counterpart in Canadian history. We can take this to signify that the cultural victory of the South is so complete that the influence of Dixie has moved not only beyond the South but beyond the borders of the nation.