Interesting that you in fact obviously were not seeking various perspectives on the topic, just uncritical applause for your shaky (to say the least) theory.   There were a lot of songs full of nostalgia for the Old South, and full of pernicious stereotypes.   But they were almost entirely written in the 19th century and into the 1920's.   "Country music" is usually considered to only have started in the 1920's.    "I Sang Dixie" was written long after the '20's.

Ironically, I actually agreed with you about the Coe song, just not this one. But you must be related to Gen. Grant--you only believe in unconditional surrender.

You may--or may not---be interested to know that I talked to a black friend of mine at work about the burning issue of whether "I Sang Dixie" is a racist song. Now admittedly he is a very sensible individual (i.e.agrees with me on a whole host of issues--you know that's the definition of "reasonable" I suspect.)    We were both strong supporters of Obama long before he got the nomination, and we were annoyed at Hillary's tactics.   We both feel the Left should stop whining about what President Obama has done or not done.   We feel NATO (and the US) should finish the job of toppling Gadhafi quickly, with everything short of ground troops.   Also that Trump typecasting himself as a "birther" will destroy his possible candidacy--in a very satisfying way.   Etc.

In fact the vast majority of my co-workers are black, including the 3 on my level.   And we get along just great, helping each other out, joshing etc,   I have sung "My Prayer" (Platters) to one of the women and "Goodnight, Sweetheart" (Spaniels) to another, and I and a friend write parodies and sing them at retirement celebrations..

At any rate, I did not tell the co-worker in question my view on "I Sang Dixie", just gave him the lyrics of the song to read.    He pronounced it non-racist.   When I told him certain brilliant commentators on the Net claimed it was racist, his response was:   "You're serious?"

Face it, people are just people. If you treat them right everything is OK. And if they are sensible, they do not go looking for imaginary threats. There are enough real problems without manufacturing artificial ones.