Rebel yell facts for kids
The rebel yell was a special battle cry used by Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. Soldiers used this yell when they were charging at the enemy. It was meant to scare the enemy and make their own soldiers feel braver. The yell was also used for other reasons.
We don't have any actual sound recordings of the yell from the Civil War itself. But there are audio and video clips of older soldiers performing the yell many years later. These were recorded at reunions for Civil War veterans. We are not completely sure where the yell came from.
Some army groups were even named because of how well they could yell in battle. For example, the 35th Battalion of Virginia Cavalry was nicknamed "Comanches" because of the sound they made.
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What Did the Rebel Yell Sound Like?
People have talked a lot about what the rebel yell sounded like. Soldiers from the Civil War sometimes joked that hearing the yell from far away meant it was either "Jackson, or a rabbit." This suggests the yell might have sounded a bit like a rabbit's scream. Some also compared it to the scream of a cougar.
In movies or video games, the yell is often shown as a simple "yee-haw." In some parts of the United States, it's shown as "yee-ha." The yell has also been described as similar to cries made by Native American people. One description said it was a mix between an "Indian whoop and wolf-howl."
Recordings of the Yell
There are a few recordings of Civil War veterans doing the yell. One recording is from a 1938 newsreel. It shows the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. In this clip, several Confederate veterans perform the yell. It sounds like a high-pitched "Wa-woo-woohoo, wa-woo woohoo."
The Library of Congress has a film from the 1930s. It shows about a dozen veterans performing the yell by themselves and as a group. In 1935, a 90-year-old veteran from North Carolina performed the yell, and it was recorded.
Different Versions of the Yell
Because there are different descriptions of the yell, it's possible that different army groups and areas had their own unique yells. However, a historian named Waite Rawls looked for recordings of the yell for a long time. He found two old recordings from two different soldiers from different states. One was from a North Carolina infantry soldier, and the other was from a Virginia cavalry soldier. He says they sound almost the same.
In the famous Civil War novel Gone with the Wind, a character gives the yell as "yee-aay-eee." This was written about 70 years after the war. In the movie version, the yell sounds like a high-pitched "yay-hoo" repeated quickly.
In Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War, historian Shelby Foote said that historians aren't sure exactly how the yell sounded. He described it as "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall." He told a story about an old Confederate veteran who was asked to show the yell at a dinner. The veteran said he couldn't do it unless he was "at a run" and couldn't do it with "a mouth full of false teeth and a stomach full of food."
Former Union soldiers described the yell as giving them "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine." They also said that if you claimed you heard it and weren't scared, it meant you never truly heard it.
Personal Accounts of the Yell
In his book My Own Story, Bernard Baruch remembered his father, who was a doctor in the Confederate army. His father would jump up and give the rebel yell whenever he heard the song "Dixie". Baruch wrote: "Mother would catch him by the coattails and plead, 'Shush, Doctor, shush'. But it never did any good. I have seen Father, ordinarily a model of reserve and dignity, leap up in the Metropolitan Opera House and let loose that piercing yell."
Where Did the Rebel Yell Come From?
The yell has often been connected to cries made by Native American people. Confederate soldiers might have copied or learned the yell from them. Some Texas army groups even mixed Comanche war whoops into their own version of the yell.
Another idea is that the yell came from the screams traditionally made by Irish and Scottish Highlanders. They would make these screams during a Highland charge in battle. At the Battle of Killiecrankie, the Highlanders used "the eerie and unsettling howl" to scare their enemies. Their war-cry was described as "a high, savage whooping sound."
A final idea, especially for the yells used by the Army of Northern Virginia, is that the rebel yell was partly taken from special cries used by men who hunted foxes. Sidney Lanier, a poet and Confederate veteran, said his group's yell was "a single long cry as from the leader of a pack of hounds."
Since there were many different versions of the yell, it's possible it had several different origins.
Early Uses of the Yell
The "Southern war cry" was used even before the Civil War. In the mid-1850s, in the Kansas Territory, groups who were against slavery fought against groups who supported slavery. Sam Reeder, an anti-slavery fighter, remembered hearing "fierce yells" during a battle in 1856. He said, "It was not that; it was the ... Southern war cry."
One of the first times the yell was written about was during the First Battle of Manassas. During this battle, General Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson's soldiers were told to "yell like furies" during a bayonet charge. This yell helped them push the Federal forces back to Washington D.C..
What People Said About the Yell
Many people who heard the rebel yell described it in strong ways:
- Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade said it was "that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens–such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men."
- A reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune said, "It paragons description, that yell! How it starts deep and ends high, how it rises into three increasing crescendos and breaks with a command of battle."
- Colonel Harvey Dew of the 9th Virginia Cavalry described it as "Woh-who-ey! who-ey! who-ey! Woh-who-ey! who-ey!" He explained that the first part "woh" was short and low, and the "who" was very high and long.
- Lieutenant Ambrose Bierce, a Union soldier, described hearing the yell at the Battle of Chickamauga: "It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard – even a mortal exhausted and unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food and without hope ..."
- William Howard Russell, a war reporter, noted that "the Southern soldiers cannot cheer, and what passes muster for that jubilant sound is a shrill ringing scream with a touch of the Indian war-whoop in it."
The Rebel Yell in Pop Culture
The rebel yell has appeared in many places in popular culture:
- The song "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol was named after a brand of whiskey.
- Stan Freberg started his funny song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" with his own version of the rebel yell.
- You can hear a sound similar to the yell in the 1951 movie The Red Badge of Courage, which stars Audie Murphy.
- In the Civil War video game War of Rights, Confederate soldiers will do the yell when the Union team's morale (their fighting spirit) goes down.
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