The Folkways album Songs of the Civil War (1960) included a version of this song. Their liner notes explain, "Here is the classic song of bitterness and hate. Written shortly after the war by Major Randolph who, in later years, achieved a minor reputation as a Southern poet, the song in time entered into the oral tradition and has been collected, in substantially the same form, in many sections of the South."
Because the neo-Confederate/Lost Cause rhetoric evolved over time, the song now sounds like a satire ridiculing an unreconstructed former Rebel. But it doesn't seem it was intended as a satire or understood as such back in the day.
Just to be clear, I know of no reason to think that Hoyt Axton was any kind of Lost Cause nostalgic. He performed his "Bony Fingers" hit at the leftie Bread and Roses Festival in Berkeley on at least one occasion.
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