The song Abraham Lincoln requested after the Civil War was “Dixie.” On April 10, 1865, one day after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Lincoln asked a White House band to play the popular tune for a gathered crowd.
Lincoln had already been fond of “Dixie,” which was written by Daniel Decatur Emmett and premiered by Bryant’s Minstrels in New York City on April 4, 1859. Although it originated in a blackface minstrel show, the song became strongly associated with the American South during the Civil War and was adopted as an unofficial Confederate anthem.
Lincoln’s request was deliberately symbolic. He joked that his “adversaries” had tried to appropriate the tune, but that the Union had now “captured” it. He even described the melody as a “lawful prize,” turning a Confederate-associated song into a gesture of national victory.
“Dixie” is sometimes mistaken for a formal Confederate national anthem, but the Confederacy had official anthems and the song’s status was informal. It is also unrelated to “Yankee Doodle” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” despite all three being associated with the Civil War era.