Stan Hugill, in "Shanties From the Seven Seas," pp. 208-210, speaks of a letter he received from a Mr. Wexler:
"In a book entitled "Army Life in a Black Regiment" by Thomas W. Higginson, the author, who commanded a black regiment of Federal troops raised among the ex-slaves of the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast, devotes a full chapter to the songs sung by the men of the regiment. As one of the two songs he remembered which were not in the religious or spiritual class, he quotes two verses of hanging Johnny, and speaks of a third verse whose words apparently had some relation to men's enlistment in the army during the Civil War. The quotation is on pp. 220-221 of the edition of the book printed in Boston in 1870 by Fields, Osgood & Co.

Higginson also published this "remarkable ditty" in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1867, under the title, "Negro Spirituals."

HANGMAN JOHNNY

"O, dey call me Hangman Johnny!
O, ho! O, ho!
But I never hang nobody,
O, hang, boys, hang!

O dey call me Hangman Johnny!
O, ho! O, ho!
But we'll all hang togedder,
O, hang, boys, hang!"

"My presence apparently checked the performance of another verse, beginning "De buckra 'list for money," apparently in reference to the controversy about the pay-question....and to the more mercenary aims they attributed to the white soldiers."
Negro Spirituals