User:Jengod/sourapple

"Oh we'll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree" (and similar) was a variant lyric of John Brown's Body that was sung by the U.S. military, Unionist civilians, and freedmen during and after the American Civil War. The phrase and associated imagery became significant in the post-war legal issues surrounding the potential prosecution of former Confederate politicians and officers. The phrase is sometime referenced in political cartoons and artworks of the time, and in political debates continuing well into the post-Reconstruction era.

In 1880, a U.S. Army veteran took credit for first singing the lyric in spring 1862 in Virginia, having taken inspiration from a prior song about a "A sick monkey in a sour apple tree." A Civil War-era pieced-quilt block pattern called Apple Tree probably references the song lyric. In 1947 a survivor of American slavery named Perry Vaughn recalled, "I fought in Abe Lincoln's army and played the bass horn in the Army band. I can still remember, like it was yesterday, playing 'We'll Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree.'"

A less bloodthirsty variant was "We'll feed Jeff Davis sour apples 'til he gets the diarhee."

Richard Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home references a later-developed white supremacist response: "We'll hang ever nigger t a sour apple tree."

Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, died of natural causes in 1889.