Red Dog Ash The Abolitionist John Brown lyrics

I left my home at eighteen years
Winter ‘fifty-five
Saw those Kansas boys lose their lives
For Missouri's Compromise

Then in ‘fifty-six all full of nerve
Determined, out for blood
I saw John Brown roll into town
Wagons caked with mud

Eight-hundred men and Sheriff Jones
Left one in Lawrence dead
So Brown set out to put a bullet deep
In John P. Doyle's head

There's Jayhawk blood on free state soil
And Missouri bones never more to toil
Each man his own, no more to sell
Gonna shoot you down, send you straight to hell

I'll tell you how if you allow
This weren't no proxy war
But that don't mean ‘twas the hand of God
Just reckoning the score

Abolition was the noble cause

For which he said he'd die
And John Brown stood his holy ground
With fire in his eyes

There's Jayhawk blood on free state soil
And Missouri bones never more to toil
Each man his own, no more to sell
Gonna shoot you down, send you straight to hell

So I followed him across the land
We went to Harpers Ferry
Where he held the fort and took up arms
More than any man could carry

Then at twenty-three I watched him die
Hanging there alone
A traitor to Virginia state
Convictions hard as stone

There's Jayhawk blood on free state soil
And Missouri bones never more to toil
Each man his own, no more to sell
Gonna shoot you down, send you straight to hell