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The rebel yell was a battle cry used by Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. Confederate soldiers used the yell during charges to intimidate the enemy and boost their own morale, although the yell had many other uses. No audio recordings of the yell exist from the Civil War era, but there are audio clips and film footage of veterans performing the yell many years later at Civil War veterans' reunions. The origin of the yell is uncertain, though it is thought to have been influenced either by Native American war cries or a Scottish war cry tradition.
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Units were nicknamed for their apparent ability to yell during battle. The 35th Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, "White's Cavalry", were given the nom de guerre of "Comanches" for the way they sounded during battle.
Sound
The sound of the yell has been the subject of much discussion. Civil War soldiers, upon hearing the yell from afar, would quip that it was either "Jackson, or a rabbit," suggesting a similarity between the sound of the yell and a rabbit’s scream. The rebel yell has also been likened to the scream of a cougar. In media such as movies or video games, the yell is often portrayed as a simple "yee-haw" and in some parts of the United States, "yee-ha". The yell has also been described as similar to Native American cries. John Salmon Ford, in an 1896 interview with Frederic Remington, describes a charge his Texas Rangers made into a Comanche village in 1858 and that his troops gave the "Texas Yell". One description says it was a cross between an "Indian whoop and wolf-howl".
Several recordings of Civil War veterans performing the yell exist. One, from a newsreel documenting the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, documents several Confederate veterans performing the yell as a high-pitched "Wa-woo-woohoo, wa-woo woohoo." The Library of Congress has a film from the 1930s of a dozen or so veterans performing the yell individually and as a group. In 1935, a North Carolina veteran aged 90 performed it and was recorded.
Given the differences in descriptions of the yell, there might have been several distinctive yells associated with the different regiments and their respective geographical areas. However, in the documentary film Reconvergence, head of the Museum of the Confederacy and historian Waite Rawls describes his long odyssey to recover recordings of the yell. He found two historical recordings of two different soldiers from two different states (North Carolina infantry, and Virginia cavalry), and he claims they sound nearly identical.
Though hardly a definitive description, having been published some 70 years after the war ended, Margaret Mitchell's classic Civil War novel Gone with the Wind has a character giving the yell sounding as a "yee-aay-eee" upon hearing the war had started. The film version, by contrast, has the yell sounding as a high-pitched "yay-hoo" repeated several times in rapid succession.
In Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War, Shelby Foote notes that historians are not quite sure how the yell sounded, being described as "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall". He recounts the story of an old Confederate veteran invited to speak before a ladies' society dinner. They asked him for a demonstration of the rebel yell, but he refused on the grounds that it could only be done "at a run", and couldn't be done anyway with "a mouth full of false teeth and a belly full of food". Anecdotes from former Union Soldiers described the yell with reference to "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine when you heard it" along with the comment that "if you claim you heard it and weren't scared that means you never heard it". In the final episode, a sound newsreel of a 1930s meeting of Civil War veterans has a Confederate veteran giving a Rebel yell for the occasion, sounding as a "wa-woo-woohoo".
In his autobiography My Own Story, Bernard Baruch recalls how his father, a former surgeon in the Confederate army, would at the sound of the song "Dixie" jump up and give the rebel yell, no matter where he was: "As soon as the tune started Mother knew what was coming and so did we boys. 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."
The Confederate yell was intended to help control fear. As one soldier explained: "I always said if I ever went into a charge, I wouldn’t holler! But the very first time I fired off my gun I hollered as loud as I could and I hollered every breath till we stopped." Jubal Early once told some troops who hesitated to charge because they were out of ammunition: Damn it, holler them across.
Origins
The yell has often been linked to Native American cries. Confederate soldiers may have imitated or learned the yell from Native Americans, many of whom sided with the Confederacy. Some Texas units mingled Comanche war whoops into their version of the yell. The yell has also been associated with hunting cries. Possibly Confederate soldiers imitated the cries of their hunting dogs.
Another plausible source of the rebel yell, advanced by historian Grady McWhiney, is that it derived from the screams traditionally made by Scottish Highlanders when they made a Highland charge during battle. At the Battle of Killiecrankie "Dundee and the Chiefs chose to employ perhaps the most effective pre-battle weapon in the traditional (highland) arsenal – the eerie and disconcerting howl," also "The terror was heightened by their wild plaided appearance and the distinctive war-cry of the Gael – a high, savage whooping sound..." Also earlier documentation during the Roman conquests of Britain suggest the use of a particular yell uttered by the northern Celtic tribes of the region, in conjunction with wearing blue woad body paint and no clothing.. There is another interesting reference in a book by Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton: "By the way, Irish cheering is a thing sui generis. In place of the deep-throated, reverberating English cheer, it is a long, shrill, sustained note, usually, very usually, very high-pitched." S. C. Gwynne quotes Stonewall Jackson at First Bull Run asking his infantry to attack 14th New York: "Reserve your fire until they come within 50 yards, then fire and give them the bayonet, and when you charge, yell like Furies." The 33rd Virginia had just taken Union guns on Henry Hill. Company E consisted of the Emerald Guard, Irish volunteers. Gwynne claims the rebel yell was first heard during this charge. Company E may have initiated the yell.
The notion that the rebel yell was Celtic in origin is further supported by James Hill. "The first United States census in 1790 revealed a well defined ethnic division between the Northern and Southern states. In New England 75 percent of the people were Anglo-Saxons in origin, while Celts outnumbered Anglo-Saxons in the South two to one." "A decade before the American Civil War the South—from Virginia to Texas—was probably three-quarters Celtic." This evidence is also supported by McDonald and McWhiney's research into the Celtic nature of the Southern States.
The Rebel yell may have been heard at the battle of Kings Mountain. The Over Mountain men were mostly Scots-Irish. DePeyster said to his commander Ferguson, "These things are ominous. These are the damn yelling boys." Campbell said to his men as they started their first charge up Kings Mountain, "Here they are, my brave boys. Shout like hell and fight like devils."
A final explanation, with special reference to the rebel yells uttered by the Army of Northern Virginia is that the rebel yell was partly adapted from the specialized cries used by men experienced in fox hunting. Sidney Lanier, the poet and Confederate veteran, described his unit's yell as "a single long cry as from the leader of a pack of hounds."
Considering the existence of many differing versions of the yell, it probably had multiple origins.