Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Monday, 28 Sep 1992 18:22:21 CDT
From: <U21187@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.guitar.tab
Subject: Re: REQ: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

In article <1992Sep27.185422.1295@tamsun.tamu.edu>,
   e343gv@tamuts.tamu.edu (Gary Varner) writes:
> I'd like to get the chord pattern to "The Night They
> Drove Old Dixie Down," which was, I understand, written

It is Stoneman, not Sherman. After the chords, I'm appending
an article I posted to rec.music.gdead last October which goes
into this in some detail.

I worked the chords out from the Jerry Garcia Band CD version, so it
may be quite the same as the Band version, which I haven't heard.

Top of lyric:    chord
Bottom of lyric: bass line
This song is quite playable on piano.

Am     C/G                    F             Am/E     Dm     d d c a g
Virgil Cain is the name and I served on the Danville train
A      G                      F             E        D

Am              C/G              F           Am/E   Dm
Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
A               G                F           E      D

Am            C/G Fmaj7      C/G              Fmaj7
In the winter of '65, we was hungry, and just barely alive
A             G   F          G                F

Am     C/G    Fmaj7                       C/G      Fmaj7  C/E   D
By May tenth, Richmond had fell, it was a time I remember oh so well
A      G      F                           G        F      E     D

    C/G        F         Am    C                 F
The night they drove old Dixie down, and all the bells were ringing
    G          F         A     C                 F

    C/G        F         Am    C                 F
The night they drove old Dixie down, And all the people were singing, they went
    C          F               C                 F

C         Am        G              F
La, la la la la la. La la la la la la la la la.
C   B     A         G              F


Like my father before me, I'm a peaceful man
Like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand
Just eighteen, proud and brave,
but a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the blood froze on my feet
You can't raise a Cain back up when he's in defeat

Back with my wife in Tennessee. One day she calls to me
``Virgil quick come see, there goes Robert E. Lee''
I don't mind, chopping wood
and I don't care if the money's no good
Take what you need, and leave the rest
They should never have taken the very best

=========================================================================
Date: 2 October 1991 15:34:39 CDT
From: "John Schulien  " <U21187@UICVM>
To:   <Dead-Flames@Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Till Stoneman's cavalry came, and tore up the tracks again.

     George Stoneman was a minor Civil War Union general. He doesn't
figure much in the outcome of the war, and isn't mentioned in most
history books. He appears to have been an untalented bureaucrat
who happened to go the right school, and was allowed to bungle assignment
after assignment and still receive new commissions. (Some things never
change :-)

     Ordered to flank the Confederates at Fredricksburg in 1863,
he and his Cavalry got bogged down for weeks, and never showed up for
the raid at Chancellorsville. In July, 1864, he was captured and his
cavalry broken up during an aborted attempt to free some Union soldiers
at Macon -- a strategically useless manuever of his devising that
may have seemed good at the time -- about 100 miles S.E. of Atlanta.

Exchanged in a POW swap, he was taken to Knoxville, where he
was given another assignment. He was to lead a cavalry assault on
Saltville, Va, and destroy the salt works -- Salt was critical
to both the Union and the Confederacy because there was no other
practical way to preserve perishable foods at the time.

This time there was no Confederate resistance, and he was able to
get to Saltville and destroy the salt works in a single day.
Apparently, he had found his calling.

On March 20, 1865, Stoneman and his cavalry left Knoxville, under
orders to destroy the Confederate railroads. Back to Stoneman
in a little bit. First, the end of the war, which had little to do
with George Stoneman.

On Sunday, April 2nd, it was clear that Lee could not hold Richmond
and Petersburg, and Lee sent word to President Davis to evacuate.
The government archives were packed up and the government fled via
the Richmond & Danville train to take refuge in Danville. Seeing
the government pack up and abandon them must not have exactly
inspired confidence in the population; by the time the Union
forces arrived much of Richmond had been already looted and burned.

On April 4th, the Government-on-wheels arrived in Danville,
and started to set up government there, expecting support from Lee
as soon as he could get there.

Lee had his retreat planned. His forces were to travel to Amelia
Courthouse. There they were to be met by trains carrying provisions.
Expecting to restock his supplies, Lee had his men travel light. His
army had only one days rations. Unfortunately, when the supply trains
arrived in Amelia Courthouse on Sunday, April 2nd, they were told of
the impending fall of Richmond and told to continue to aid in the
evacuation. No one thought to unload the provisions, and when
Lee arrived, he found himself with no food for his army. He was
forced to stop and send out foraging parties. This gave Grant
time to catch up to Lee. Grant scattered Lee and his provisionless
army west, and finally, his forces disintegrating, Lee surrendered at
Appomettox Courthouse on April 9th, and the Confederate military was
defeated.

When word reached Danville that Lee had surrendered, the
Government-on-wheels took the train to Greensboro, where they
were not welcomed. The Government party broke up, and Davis fled
south, heading for Texas, and trying to avoid capture. The Union
cavalry caught up with him, and Jefferson Davis was captured on the
morning on May 10th, 1865, putting an end to the Confederate Government.

While Grant was busy defeating Lee, Stoneman and his calvalry
meandered through Virginia and North Carolina, tearing up railroads
and other bits of the Confederate infrastructure. Besides wrecking
some cotton mills, his cavalry destroyed about 80 miles of the
East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad southwest of Lynchberg,
and then tore up the North Carolina Railroad, which was the
southbound continuation of the Richmond & Danville line. All this was
done by April 10th. Apparantly his raiding parties continued their
work until the 23rd, when they received word of a truce and stopped.

So back to the song.

> Virgil Cain is the name and I served on the Danville train

Probably refers to the Confederate government evacuation train.

> Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again

Definitely *Stoneman*

> In the winter of '65, we was hungry, and just barely alive
> By May tenth, Richmond had fell

Now I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. Someone posted
that the original lyric was "I took a train to Richmond, it fell."
Possibly whoever revised the lyric confused things and used the date
of the capture of Jefferson Davis instead of the date of the fall of
Richmond. Technically, the lyric isn't wrong, but heck, by May 10th,
Richmond had been defeated for more then a month.

> It was a time I remember oh so well
>
> The night they drove old Dixie down
> And all the bells were ringing

The evacuation was carried out on a Sunday. Davis was told the bad
news of Lee's withdrawal while in Church, hence the Church bells
ringing.

> The night they drove old Dixie down
> And all the people were singing, they went
> La, la &c.
>
> Like my father before me, I'm a peaceful man
> Like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand
> Just eighteen, proud and brave,
> but a Yankee laid him in his grave
> I swear by the blood froze on my feet
> You can't raise a Cain back up when he's in defeat
>
> [Chorus]
>
> Back with my wife in Tennessee. One day she calls to me

Well he certainly didn't take the train home. All lines heading
east-west were wiped out, thanks to Stoneman's cavalry.

> ``Virgil quick come see, there goes Robert E. Lee''

And what was Robert E. Lee doing in Tennessee? After he surrendered
his army, he returned to Richmond. Maybe this refers to the riverboat?

> I don't mind, chopping wood

If Virgil was a railroad worker, then the destruction of the North
Carolina Railroad would have put him out of work. I guess that
chopping wood is as good a way as any to try and put food on the table.

> and I don't care if the money's no good

Towards the end of the war, as the confederacy ran out of
real supplies to pay its troops in, it wound up printing
money as fast is it could, causing enormous inflation.
By the end of the war Confederate currency wasn't worth
the paper it was printed on.

> Take what you need, and leave the rest
> They should never have taken the very best

I take this to mean that Virgil can forgive the warmakers for
destroying his country, his life, in short everything except
for the bloodshed -- the deaths of his brother and his countrymen.

- John
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