The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War, when George Stoneman was raiding southwest Virginia.

I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect."

The lyrics tell of the last days of the American Civil War, portraying the suffering of the protagonist, Virgil Caine, a poor white Southerner.

[6] The song's opening stanza refers to one of George Stoneman's raids behind Confederate lines attacking the railroads of Danville, Virginia, at the end of the Civil War in 1865: Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville trainTill Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks againIn the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely aliveBy May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember, oh so well"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is considered one of the highlights of The Band, the group's second album, which was released in the fall of 1969.

[7][8] The Band frequently performed the song in concert, and it is included on the group's live albums Rock of Ages (1972) and Before the Flood (1974).

It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity.Some commentators in the 21st century have questioned whether the song's original lyrics made it an endorsement of slavery and the ideology of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

[15] In an August 2020 interview in Rolling Stone, contemporary singer-songwriter Early James described how he had started changing the lyrics of the song, while covering it, to oppose the Confederate cause – for example, in the first verse, "where Helm sang that the fall of the Confederacy was 'a time I remember oh so well', James declared it 'a time to bid farewell'", and he reworked the final verse to state "Unlike my father before me, who I will never understand...

"[16] An editorial in The Roanoke Times in 2020 argued that these views are based on a misunderstanding of the song, which does not glorify slavery, the Confederacy, or Robert E. Lee, but, rather, tells the story of a poor, non-slave-holding Southerner who tries to make sense of the loss of his brother and his livelihood.

[17] Jack Hamilton, of the University of Virginia, writing in Slate, said that it is "an anti-war song first and foremost", pointing to the references to "bells ringing" and "people singing" in the chorus.

Others to record versions of the song include Don Rich, Steve Young, John Denver, the Allman Brothers Band, Derek Warfield.

Glen Hansard (of the Frames and the Swell Season), accompanied by Lisa Hannigan and John Smith, performed the song in July 2012 for The A.V.

The song follows a fictional storyline of three separate events, written by MC Pressure and influenced by a "series of robbings, stabbings and bashings of senior citizens" across the various Adelaide Metro train-lines in South Australia.