Although there is some uncertainty about the origins of the song "Dixie," the most popular version, also probably the first, is that of Daniel Decatur Emmett (1859). Of the many variations, one of the most interesting is by Albert Pike, who made it a war hymn in 1861, beginning his version with the lines:

Southrons, hear your country call you!
Up lest worse than death befall you!
To arms! to arms! to arms! in Dixie!
Lo! all the beacon fires are lighted,
Let all your hearts be now united!
To arms! to arms! to arms! in Dixie!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Dixie's land we'll take our stand,
To live or die for Dixie!

Pike's battle cry continues through several stanzas. It is indicative of his literary reputation that his hymn is now hardly known at all.

Had Pike's contemporaries envisioned a literary assessment of his work...