A Rare Recording of The Civil War's Confederate Rebel Yell

The Rebel Yell was a battle cry used by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The yell was hollered when soldiers were charging into battle, as a way to intimidate the enemy and to boost their own morale. There is some debate about how the Rebel Yell began. Confederate soldiers may have learned the yell from Native Americans, or simply imitated them. It is known that some Texas Confederate units combined Comanche war whoops into their version of the yell. Another claim is that it came from the screams traditionally made by Irish and Scottish Highlanders when they made a Highland charge during battle. According to Encyclopedia Virginia: "Distinctive noises made by soldiers were identified from the very beginning of the war, but the yell’s first appearance in combat may have come at the Battle of Manassas, on July 21, 1861, and it is strongly associated with the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson." Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade said: "Then arose 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, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted."