Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

The next also has a military ring about it, and the first line is well matched by the music. The rest is conglomerate, and one or two lines show a more Northern origin. “Done” is a Virginia shibboleth, quite distinct from the “been” which replaces it in South Carolina. Yet one of their best choruses, without any fixed words, was, “De bell done ringing,” for which, in proper South Carolina dialect, would have been substituted, “De bell been a-ring.” This refrain may have gone South with our army.

VI. ride in, kind Saviour.

Ride in, kind Saviour!
No man can hinder me.
O, Jesus is a mighty man!
No man, &c.
We're marching through Virginny fields.
No man, &c.
O, Satan is a busy man,
No man, &c.
And he has his sword and shield,
No man, &c.
O, old Secesh done come and gone!
No man can hinder me.

Sometimes they substituted “hinder we,” which was more spicy to the ear, and more in keeping with the usual head-over-heels arrangement of their pronouns.

Almost all their songs were thoroughly religious in their tone, however quaint their expression, and were in a minor key, both as to words and music. The attitude is always the same, and, as a commentary on the life of the race, is infinitely pathetic. Nothing but patience for this life,--nothing but triumph in the next. Sometimes the present predominates, sometimes the future; but the combination is always implied. In the following, for instance, we hear simply the patience.