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Southern War Songs

I’M A GOOD OLD REBEL.

Reading edition

By J. R. T.

[The music of this song can be obtained of the Oliver Ditson Co., Boston, Mass.]

O, I’m a good old rebel, Now that’s just what I am, For this “Fair Land of Freedom” I do not care a damn; I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon For anything I done. I hates the Constitution, This great Republic too, I hates the Freedman’s Buro, In uniform of blue; I hates the nasty eagle, With all his bragg and fuss, The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees, I hates them wuss and wuss. I hates the Yankee nation And everything they do, I hates the Declaration Of Independence, too; I hates the glorious Union— ’Tis dripping with our blood— I hates their striped banner, I fit it all I could.

Illustration from Southern War Songs: Camp-Fire, Patriotic and Sentimental

“I’m a good old rebel.”

hundred thousand Yankees Is stiff in Southern dust; We got three hundred thousand Before they conquered us; They died of Southern fever, And Southern steel and shot, I wish they was three million, Instead of what we got. I followed old mas’ Robert For four year near about, Got wounded in three places, And starved at Pint Lookout; I cotched the roomatism, A campin’ in the snow, But I killed a chance o’ Yankees, I’d like to kill some mo’. I can’t take up my musket And fight ’em now no more, But I ain’t a-going to love ’em, Now that is sartin’ sure; And I don’t want no pardon, For what I was and am, I won’t be reconstructed, And I don’t care a damn.

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