Rebel Yell…
‘If you heard it and weren’t scared, that means you never heard it’

“If you cross the scream of a scalded wildcat with a Comanche war whoop, you’ve got it,” according to a grizzled Confederate re-enactor.

That’s a Kentuckian’s description of the Rebel Yell, a sound that struck fear in the hearts of Union soldiers and a battle cry that fed adrenalin into the charge of Southern troops.

However, with the dawn of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, the “Yell” has become a victim of the past. Few, if any, disciples of the War Between the States really know how to duplicate one of war’s most fearsome sounds.

A reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune once described the cry as starting “deep and ending high, rising into three increasing crescendos.” Another said it was “more overpowering than a cannon’s roar” and “a mingling of an Indian war whoop and wolf-howl.”

Confederate Col. Keller Anderson of Kentucky’s Orphan Brigade described the yell this way:

“Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curling 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, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.”

Col. Harvey Dew, 9th Virginia Cavalry, was said to have heard the sound repeatedly in his war days under J.E.B. Stuart. Col. Drew recorded its intonation as it was given by his regiment during a charge at the Battle of Brandy Station. In an April 1892 article in Century Illustrated Magazine, he said: “In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously shouted the Rebel Yell, which was so often heard on the field of battle.”

He described the sound as "Woh-who-ey! who-ey! who-ey! Woh-who-ey! who-ey!"

In 1934 at age 91, Confederate veteran Sampson Saunders Simmons made a recording of his rebel yell on a wax cylinder for MGM Studios in Hollywood. Unfortunately, his recording was not used in the film, “Operation 13,” but it was donated to the Headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

In 1935 at age 92, Thomas N. Alexander made a recording of his rebel yell on an Edison disc for WBT Radio in Charlotte, N.C. His grandson gave a taped recording of the disc to a local Civil War reenacting group.

Through the magic of modern technology and sound mixing, the voice of each of the veterans was made to sound like a group of 70 men, eventually 500 men and, finally, 1.400 men.

Author Shelby Foote, in Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary, notes that historians aren't quite sure how the yell sounded, being described as "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall."

He tells 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."

Former Union soldiers described the yell with reference to "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine when you heard it."

One Yankee explained that "if you claim you heard it and weren't scared, that means you never heard it."