"Worse"? Well, the good thing about Foster's song is that it treats Ned with proper respect and affection, and there's no attempt at poking fun at him. The last verse implies a benevolent side to slavery, a distortion, but you could read it as a suggestion that slaveowners should recognise slaves as fellow humans to be mourned. And writing in 1848, that's maybe not such a bad thing to be saying.

The spelling convention of the time perhaps gets the way. As with other songs by Foster - or for that matter Kipling or even William Barnes, they are much better with the spelling adjusted. In context, say in a programme looking at the various ways songs of the time dealt with these matters, there'd be no case for making any other changes. But in a different type of setting, where its being sung just as a song about an old man, rather than primarily about slkavery, replacing "darkey" by "man" and (maybe) "wool" by "hair", would make it perfectly singable.

There was an old man, they called him Uncle Ned,
He's dead long ago, long ago!
He had no hair on the top of his head,
The place where the hair ought to grow.
Then lay down the shovel and the hoe
Hang up the fiddle and the bow:
No more hard work for poor old Ned
He's gone where the good men go.

His fingers were long, like the cane in the brake,
He had no eyes for to see;
He had no teeth for to eat the corncake
So he had to let the corncake be.
Then lay down the shovel and the hoe
Hang up the fiddle and the bow:
No more hard work for poor old Ned
He's gone where the good men go.

When Old Ned died Master take it mighty bad,
The tears run down like the rain;
Old Missus turn pale and she gets very sad,
Cause she never see Old Ned again.
Then lay down the shovel and the hoe
Hang up the fiddle and the bow:
No more hard work for poor old Ned
He's gone where the good men go.