What song is this?

[Hank Trent]

The following is from Prison Life in the Old Capitol by James J. Williamson, 1911, page 78:

This morning as Keleher [a southern sympathizing prisoner] was looking from the window, singing:

"The niggers we will sell
And the Yankees send to hell," etc.,

What song is that? That's all the author quotes of the lyrics or says about the song. I've searched the usual places and can't find any other mention of those lyrics.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Old Cremona]

Re: What song is this?

I can name that tune in...

A couple of more stanza's t'would of helped.

[Eric Burke]

Re: What song is this?

Is it possible that it was just the words to a ditty Keleher composed himself while imprisoned? Heaven knows there's annals upon annals of music that's written in prisons, I'd wager he had plenty of time to devise such a song..

[Lone Guard]

Re: What song is this?

Is it possible that it was just the words to a ditty Keleher composed himself while imprisoned? Heaven knows there's annals upon annals of music that's written in prisons, I'd wager he had plenty of time to devise such a song..

This was my first thought as well.

[Hank Trent]

Re: What song is this?

If nobody else recognizes it, that may be the answer. Thought it might be a well-known song that I just hadn't heard.

For your entertainment, here's another song from the book that the author says was written by prisoners in 1862, which includes all the words and tune (from page 48-49 of the same book as above):

SONG.
Air — Villikins and His Dinah.

All persons confined in the Capitol jail
Must know that habeas corpus shall never avail
In taking them hence, for 'twas lately decreed
That laws are denied to all men of our creed.

Chorus
So let's be contented, whatever may come,
We'll live upon hope in the absence of rum;
And in water we'll drink, when affected with drought,
A health to old Jeff and success to the South.

Now, this one advantage 'tis ours to claim —
Though prisoners in fact, yet proud of that name ;
While others their statutes pull down from their shelves
We legally make other laws for ourselves.

Chorus

Abe Lincoln, full gorged with imperial power,
Destroying the work of long years in an hour,
Makes anarchy reign, heaping sin upon sin,
Whilst we are establishing order within.

Chorus

On the streets, in the halls where the multitude throng,
To speak certain things is essentially wrong,
But here we're more free, be it spoken or sung;
There's a lock on the door, but no lock on the tongue.

Chorus

Outside, if you drill with a stick for a gun,
You are called a vile Rebel, and treated as one ;
But here we've a barrack in every room,
In lieu of a gun, we disport with a broom.

Chorus

We're healthy within, but there's danger without,
For wherever you turn there's a gun at your snout,
But here we're as safe as a bug in a rug,
And the adage is false, "There's death in a jug."

Chorus

But heed not the twaddle of tyrants and knaves;
Though they the laws make, they cannot make us slaves ;
Unheeding the wrong and maintaining the right,
We'll stick to our creed to the end of the fight.

Chorus

OLD CAPITOL PRISON, Washington, 1862.

However, in February 1863, the order came that prisoners were no longer allowed to sing rebel songs, so the words didn't ring quite so true after that.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Army30th]

Re: What song is this?

He might have made up the whole thing. Let's not forget that he did manufacture some of the conversations in his previous book "Mosby's Rangers".

He was only in prison for 3 months.