The violent and vulgar rhetoric at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday has prompted finger-pointing within the former president’s inner circle and deep concern that his message was once again eclipsed by controversy.

Trump wanted a splashy, triumphant return to his hometown. Instead, speakers’ gendered insults on Vice President Kamala Harris and racist attacks on Latinx and Puerto Rican people set the tone.

As the Civil War approached it became the anthem of Confederacy. It was played during South Carolina’s secession convention. Later it was played at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as the Confederacy’s first and only president. “Dixie” was also part of the score of “The Birth of a Nation,” the movie that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.