I went to the websites and found words and music and some very interesting notes. Obviously what seemed a very obscure song to me is pretty well known. Recorded by many artists including Pete Seeger and according to the author of the notes, Alan Lewis, "...one of the greatest popular songs in the history of American music. Public opinion on the sloavery isssue was starting to change; and it is of much interest that this piece, written for the minstrel stage, ridiculed not the African-American slave, but rather the slaveowner and his overseer."
I know my mother consciously edited out the dialect in which the song is written, but other than that it is the song I remember.