The rebel yell was a battle cry used by Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. Confederate soldiers would use the yell during charges to intimidate the enemy and boost their own morale, although the yell had many other uses. While no audio recordings of the yell exist from the Civil War era, there are both audio clips and film footage of veterans doing the yell many years after the war. 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.
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.
Read more about Rebel Yell: Sound, Origins, Contemporaneous Accounts, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words rebel and/or yell:
“I wouldn’t have turned out the way I was if I didn’t have all those old-fashioned values to rebel against.”
—Madonna [Madonna Louise Ciccione] (b. 1959)
“You don’t hit a child when you want him to stop hitting. You don’t yell at a children to get them to stop yelling. Or spit at a child to indicate that he should not spit. Of course, you want children to know how to sympathize with others and to “know how it feels,” but you ... have to show them how to act—not how not to act.”
—Jeannette W. Galambos (20th century)