For all the emphasis reenactors put into reenacting the looks, feel, and smells of the past, one area is strangely neglected---the sounds. I'm not talking about the music of the era of the War Between the States or the sounds of musketry or artillery. Instead, I'm referring to the unauthentic sounds that emanate from our mouths...the twentieth century vernacular tat is supposed to pass for the mid-nineteenth century...and just as importantly, the battlefield cry of the Confederate soldier, the rebel yell.

In ten years of reenacting and living history experience, I've never heard would-be Confederate troops attempt an authentic rendition of the rebel yell. Instead, I've heard severed up to the public the pathetic, television-influenced "yee-haa!"of an unrestrained bodine or one of the boys from" The Dukes of Hazard.".

"An exultant sound," is how one Confederate described it, "unshrouded by the form of words." A northern foot soldier was less poetic: "shrill" and "savage," he called it. More that in one Union report likened the cry to the "yelling of fiends."

The rebel's screams reminded some of Indian war whoops, leading to the speculation that the yell had Native American roots. More likely, it grew out of the cry, or yip, used...and still used...by southern houndsmen to communicate with their packs and fellow hunters. It is probably no more coincidence that the word "cheer"...once used to describe the urging on or encouraging of hounds...is frequently used synonymously with "rebel yell" in firsthand accounts of Civil War battles.

No doubt there were many variation of the Confederate war cry. The Virginian's version of the rebel yell must have differed from the Arkansan's as much as a Tidewater accent differs from the Ozark Plateau. Certainly the rebel yell sounded like nothing that ever emanated from the lips of a Yankee. Union soldier's battle cries, when they made them, tended to be more formal and structured, given as one confederate veteran reported, "in a regular hip! hip! hurrah! style." The rebel yell, on the other hand, said one who heard it, was a sound "that only Confederates could make."

The best phonetic expression of how the rebel yell is to be performed is given by J. Harvie Dew a horse soldier in the 9th Virginia Cavalry, who offered this analysis of the rebel yell as he heard it in 1863 at Brandy Station:
"Our command was alone in the field, and it seemed impossible for us to withstand the coming shock: but our commander, as brave an officer as ever drew a saber, frequently repeated, as the charging column approached us , his precautionary order to "Keep steady ,boys! Keep steady!" And so we remained till the Federals were within a hundred yards of us The waving his sword in the air, he gave us the final order loud enough to be heard the field over: "Now is your time boys! Give them the saber! Charge them, men! Charge!"

In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously shouted that "Rebel Yell," which was so often heard on the field of battle. "Woh-who-ey" Who-ey! Who-ey! Woh-who-ey! Who-ey"" (The best illustration of this "true yell" which can be given the reader is by spelling it as above. with directions to sound the first syllable "woh" short and low, and the second "who" with a very high and prolonged note deflecting upon the third syllable "e."

So come on boys. lets complete our attempt at an authentic impression with a valid recreating of the rebel yell at our next event and show the other fellows how it should be done.

Source-
The illustrated Confederate Reader 1989
Southern Partisan Magazine 1995

Submitted by Steven Alcorn
Pvt.. 22nd Arkansas Infantry

Hear a REAL rebel yell!!
old reb gives the yell one more time for the recordists back in the 1930s.