Wouldn’t the ring of truth require getting the month of Richmond’s fall correct? And wouldn’t it include Lee having actually gone to Tennessee during the war?
Historical fiction, OK; history, no.
Yes, I caught the inaccuracies. Here is a good link about the song and its composition:
http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html
The original lyrics were “there goes THE Robert E. Lee”. Talking about a steam wheeler. However, after the war lots of people thought they saw Lee so it works either way.
It doesn’t say when Richmond fell. It says “by May 10th Richmond had fell”.
From Songfacts.com .. Richmond fell in early April ... but by May 10 it had fallen. May 10th is the day that Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia and the Confererate government ceased to exist ... so the verse is not false.
As for the lyric "back with my wife in Tennessee" ...
In 1870, the "Robert E. Lee" raced the "Natchez" (another steamboat) from New Orleans to St. Louis. (The "Robert E. Lee" won the contest.) This race would have taken the Robert E. Lee along the Mississippi on the western border of Tennessee, where Virgil's wife might have seen the steamboat. Virgil tells the story of his involvement in the Civil War in the first two references, and then quips "back with my wife in Tennessee", obviously following the events described earlier in the song. The logical conclusion is that Virgil's wife saw the "Robert E. Lee" sometime between April 1865 and 1870
Historical fiction? Maybe not