The Cotton’s Burning

Tell your Captain
I have come to claim my dead
And let the flag of truce arise
Richmond's burning
All the politicians fled
We are the last men to survive

You can tell old Jefferson Davis
That his prayers, they cannot save us
Nor will Robert E. Lee's

(Chorus:)
Oo--OO
The cotton's burning
Dixie's crumbling down
Oo-oo
Tobacco's turning
There's a fire in Richmond Town

We raised our rifles
In the backwoods of Tennessee
We been marching a thousand miles
Through white cotton fields
800 hundred men to feed
Some were no more than a child

We were torn and battered at Antietam
"Don't fire until you see 'em boys!"
Then we laid the field down, down

We set the town on fire
We poured the whiskey in the road
And the flames, they rose higher
Then the arsenal exploded
And lit up the night
The night, the night, the night

I am a Colonel in the Fourteenth Tennessee I am a carpenter by trade
Back home I'm gonna build some cradles
I am tired of laying coffins and graves
When I get home from this thousand mile parade