Today, this song would never get air play. Yes, the south lost. That didn’t mean that the army was dishonorable, nor did it mean the people were.
President Lincoln, famously said:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Later, after the surrender, he stated I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. It is good to show the rebels that, with us, they will be free to hear it again.
There are so many things that are now labeled “racist” because somebody is offended.
Some things change because they should. Some things are removed from history, to allow the past to repeat itself.