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
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