I have the CD (Places along the way) of Bob Gibson playing the song with an introduction. Dixie was a huge hit just before the outbreak of the war. Carl Sandburg states in v.6 of his biography of AL that while on a cruise on the Ben Hur on April 8, 1865 that Lincoln claimed the song as Federal property and that "Lincoln wanted it to be a goodwill song of the reunited States." This was also Gibson's point in his intro. and song, it was not to recognize the confederate soldiers.