much as i love and admire joan baez, she implanted a public misrepresentation of this song, singing it as a celebration of the souths defeat in the the civil war, when it fact it is a lament for the destruction of southern people and property as well as a jeering swipe at the northern armies who celebrated the destruction of the land and people. i try to rectify that in my interpretation, as i am sympathetic to the non-slave-owning southerners who were slaughtered by northern troops who, after coercing the seceded states back into the union, began their war against the native american nations whose presence impeded their western expansion,