Zip Coon was an unusual blackface character because he was a freedman rather than a slave. He dressed like a dandy but in ill-matched clothing. He spoke like a "larn'd" man but used wrong words causing great hilarity among audiences. He was portrayed by George Washington Dixon in the very early days of minstrelsy--early 1830s--and was a contemporary of Thomas D. Rice who invented the blackface character of Jumpin' Jim Crow.

The Zip Coon song shown below we get an unusual window into America's past. Zip Coon carries a besom or broom which was common in the days of early minstrelsy when shows were put on at people's houses in their kitchens and bears an uncanny resemblance to the English mummers of that period even though the mumming play never reached the shores of the US to any significant degree. The broom is used to sweep out an area in which the entertainment will unfold. It is a tool of sanctification and purification. Today, Wiccans use their besoms to sweep out a circular area before casting a spell.

The line, "Did you eber see [t]he wild goose sailing on a ocean" is the opening line of "Wild Goose Shanty" according to the version I have by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd.

The reference to "a nullifier what they call Calhoun" refers to John C. Calhoun who was "ole general" Andrew Jackson's vice-president who anonymously backed the Ordinance of Nullification enacted in the state of South Carolina against his boss's policies which resulted in declaring the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 (which favored Northern manufacturers over Southern planters) null and void which essentially gave South Carolina the right to refuse to recognize or enforce a federal law passed by Congress which was and still is viewed as unconstitutional. South Carolina even threatened to secede from the Union when Jackson responded with military force. With no backing from the rest of the Southern states, however, South Carolina eventually withdrew the Ordinance of Nullification.

But after John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 and the election of Lincoln in 1860 South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union by opening fire on Fort Sumter in 1861 touching off the Civil War. But that was still decades away when this song was sung.

The other interesting thing about this song are the AAB lyrics many decades before 12-bar blues. Or was it?

Zip Coon handbill